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The Twitter mini-posts of 140 characters may not seem very promising, but I’ve been able to pull quite a bit from the onrush of mundane details: interesting conversation, links to helpful sites, answers to questions on any subject, new ideas for projects, new contacts and whatever else I can think of.
So, I’ve been throwing a few tweets into the torrent where most of them drown. Here are a few samples addressed to #mental that I’ve been playing with. Depression is not a hot tweme, as you might guess, so these have a high evaporation rate.
- Feeling great on a dark rainy Sunday, I get nervous that the weather is warning me. The blues just don’t want to be bright.
- I’m trying to strangle depression, but that’s my own throat I’ve got.
- A fundamentalist minister on the radio said he admired earth’s beauties but saw them as God’s scar for human sin. That’s the Good News?
- Therapy used to be that Freudian place where I was expected to talk to a brick wall until it turned into a mirror.
- I’m taking depression out back so I can hack it to pieces. Then I’ll mow it to mulch with the star-thistle patch.
- I’m telling myself anxiety is energy without purpose, so I’m connecting the brain lightening to a lamp.
- I’m writing down the anxiety flash – not as random as I thought: playing it back, closely listening, finding patterns.
- Anxiously making deadlines, piling up projects I can’t finish, plotting a strange self-defeat – trying to say stop.
- I’m slaying depression like a dragon, but it’s a smoky, bloody, most unheroic mess.
- If mood disorders are shadowy & insubstantial, why have I so often been knocked flat by a weightless punch?
- An Amazon mood disorder arrived in the mail marked No Return & Open at Your Own Risk. Who could resist a peak?
- Depression is an attack on the immune system of the mind – the troops are firing in the wrong direction – brainwashed.
- The louder you shout, the less I hear.
- I’ve stamped a mold in depression’s ashes and turned that shape into shining gold. Revenge!
These are great…I just signed up for Twitter and I feel totally lost. I feel old.
Don’t despair about tweeting on Twitter. Use Twhirl or Tweetdeck, not Twitter. Go to Twemes to follow themes, Twitterurly for urls tweeted, Twellow for yellow pages, TwitGroups for organized tweeters and Twubble or Tweeple for more people to follow … You get the idea. There are helpers out there – or rather too many sites to waste time on. Good luck!
John
Don’t use twitter, yet; am I the only one on earth? But these are great, John. I especially like the Amazon arrival! Very clever. Thanks!
Thanks, Etta – I’m very much experimenting with Twitter to see how it can be most useful. A great feature is sharing information – but it’s not so easy to find things in the endless info river rushing by.
Thanks for coming by! John
These are great, John. Not because you were feeling like that, obviously but they just run the full gamut ‘eh. Depression in its infinite variety. Little wonder it’s so hard to fight… ruddy hydra!
Catatonic Kid – True enough – too many heads, too many faces. And I haven’t be any means touched on them all. I’m glad you like them – this twitter thing presents an interesting challenge – how to communicate with people (oops, I mean tweeple, of course) in that limit. I’m starting to use it more and more and searching among the tweets for helpful info.
Stay well! — John