Having arrived in San Francisco last night, I was feeling somewhat poetic. Or so I thought. So I tweeted something about listening to the rumble of the cable cars down on the street.
A friend sent me the following tweet…
Him: Dammit Steven…who cares? Love you man, but your tweet content is sometimes questionable. BTW, I’m sitting at my kitchen table
Me: I’m happy that you love me
I’ll strive for greater profundity
Him: Your profundity inspires me. When you get off track, it’s like when Metallica does a power ballad
So here I am wondering about something that I’ve talked to others about… everything I tweet, as well as everything I blog, and everything I say in any public situation, contributes to how I’m perceived in the world. Since the world includes my professional community, it’s incumbent on me to think about what I say and how I say it. Right?
I believe that it is. So when I tweet something about the weather or where I’m having dinner, it contributes to people’s opinion and impression of me, sometimes in very subtle ways. Mostly, I think about that before I tweet. Sometimes I just think “the heck with it – I feel like saying this” and I go ahead.
I know several people whose Twitter personality or blog personality is DRAMATICALLY different from their in-person personality. This always makes me wonder. For instance, some folks are amazingly nice in person, but downright caustic electronically. I don’t get that. Why should there be such a difference, and why do they do it?
So I’m occasionally random and pointless, and clearly this annoys/disappoints/frustrates at least one friend and Twitter follower. It definitely gives me pause for thought.
How does my humor come across? How do my random/sarcastic/playful comments come across? Am I really being aware of not only myself, but how I affect others? And am I considering this in the generally-less-safe in-person context and the generally-more-safe electronic context?
This is one of the big lessons: being self-aware is work, and the work is never done.
