Connecting

“You ought to Twitter,” my book publicist told me months ago.  “No thanks,” I said, “it’s just not me.”  A month later, a friend advised the same thing.  “Want to reach out to your on-line market?” she asked.  “I’ll help you get started.”  Once again, I demurred.  I wasn’t exactly sure what Twittering was, but I didn’t think I needed to know either.  But when a writer friend from California told me how many book people she’s met through Twitter, I began to reconsider; she is not a high-tech junkie, she’s a serious writer who is making good use of the tools available to her to reach out to potential readers.  It seemed as if the stars in the Twitterverse were lining up. By Monday afternoon, thanks to a three-hour tutorial with another friend at my kitchen table, I was sending out my first experimental tweets.

I’m still not sure that this is “me.”  I write slowly, and usually with lots of words.  Tweets are blurty, and limited to 140 characters.  Every time I go over the limit, the little message box on my computer screen turns bright red: Edit yourself! I’m learning.  And I’m determined not to tweet unless I actually have something to say.  The amazing thing, however, is that all of a sudden, I am connected to booksellers across the country.  And I am reading tweets by people who have interesting insights into the things I care about–simplicity, motherhood, creating a meaningful life.  Links to terrific articles come my way.  Yesterday, after reading a sad, provocative op-ed piece about the death of Gourmet magazine in the New York Times, it took me all of about five seconds to share it with everyone I know on Facebook and Twitter.  If I’m so moved, I can also pretty much follow what David Pogue, the technology writer for the New York Times, thinks about all day long.  (He tweets as he breathes, it seems.)  It’s new, it’s fun.  And I can see that Twittering could easily turn into a full-time obsession–the bigger your online world becomes, the more compelling it seems, and the less time you have left over for the real one that’s right under your nose.  The thing is though, I like the real world way too much to give up any significant amount of my time to a virtual one.

This morning I took a long walk with my friend Maude, who I haven’t seen all summer.  She brought me a book she’d loved, and some saved poppy seeds from her garden.  Outside, the dogs ran ahead, chasing squirrels and tearing around in circles. And we walked our favorite seven-mile route through woods and down country roads.  The dogs had a chilly swim, we marveled at all the different shades of brown and yellow that ferns turn in the fall, and we caught up on each other’s news–in a leisurely way, and in person.  We realized how much we’ve missed one another’s company, and how happy we were to have two hours together, to talk about books and gardens and what we intend to do with the rest of our lives.  By the time we’d restored ourselves at my house with some hot tea, and I’d read her the first part of an essay I’ve been working on, we both felt full and heard and satisfied.

Connection happens in all sorts of ways, through all sorts of mediums.  It is pretty cool to get a tweet from a stranger in Australia.  But I worry a bit about the busyness of the world, and the pace at which our abbreviated communications fly around the globe.  I guess I’m just not quite comfortable moving that fast.  And I know that when we get too caught up in the business of being in touch, we lose our real connections–with one another and with ourselves.