Will I get fired for tweeting about how cute a speaker is?

I've been asked to tweet about my impressions of the speakers from my personal Twitter account, such as if I think a particular speaker is really good or insightful or dynamic or whatever.

But my question is, what if I thought a speaker was just simply adorable, all rugged and perfectly stubbled and dimpled?

I'm not sure whether a tweet expressing this will meet with an approving response. I'm thinking best case response will be Oh never mind - let the youngsters have their fun.

Or actually even better, I knowww, right??

Sadly the reality is likely to be something more along the lines of How dare you besmirch the name of our publication with your juvenile tweets?!

Thankfully I have a blog!

My first bout with sleeplessness

I'm going to be covering a pretty large-scale business and media conference and tomorrow - my first (yay!) - and I feel super-nervous, on account of the fact that I have no tools to work with - no internet data card, no video recorder, no 3G enabled device. And I'm stressing about the stupidest of things, like finding time to cut my nails tomorrow morning so that I won't end up mutilating the surface of my poor iPad. I've found work-arounds for all these things that I do not, currently, have - but it's left me with a deeply uneasy feeling. With so many things being substitutes and set up quite precariously, at least one of them is bound to go wrong. 

Strictly speaking, it's not sleeplessness that's my problem right now. I'm pretty positive that if I shut my eyes, I'll be out like a light in the next five minutes. I'm just too scared to sleep. I'm terrified that I'll sleep right now, only to wake up and realise that it's 8am, and I'm fired. I have a comprehensive history of oversleeping on the most critical occasions. 

Even more worrying, I don't know what to wear tomorrow.

Thoughts that occur as I'm forced to watch a trance-y YouTube Video at 1:30 am

I find distorted music annoying on the most fundamental level. I heartily dislike most electronic music (barring the odd exception or two). I find music without lyrics very very boring. And put them all together - electronically distorted lyric-less music : I have no words. Barf. 


Why does it exist?


Oh right, the whole dividing by genres thing if we all go to prison for music piracy. While I think on the whole that it's a sound idea (pun intended :D), I think I'd probably be friend-less there.


Shucks yaa.

Happy thoughts

I've spent this far-too-cold Saturday afternoon sitting a blanket, ostensibly reading work-related articles - which later turned into a Thought Catalog marathon - and wanting to write a new blog post. Every subject that came to mind was some sort of a rant and so I decided to go the opposite way. A list of the things that make me happy. In no particular order:

Sunny afternoons in the end of winter. Coming home to find my favourite food for dinner. Reaching the platform the exact same time as the metro. Thinking I've lost my favourite pen and then finding it in the pocket of last week's jacket. Discovering a really pretty new pair of earrings at the street-side hawker. Reading a book and remembering the last time I read it. Waking up to find that my hair has curled perfectly in the night. Reading a book and noticing something that I had (somehow) missed in all the previous reads. A friend texting/calling/pinging just when I'm thinking of them. Someone returning a book that I'd given up as long lost. A new episode of any of the shows I watch. Glee covering a song I like. New shoes. Being welcomed home by my dogs. MasterChef Australia. Waking up before the alarm rings and being able to spend a few minutes in bed. Getting caught in a heavy downpour when I don't have any electronics/books on me. Walking in the rain. Watching the rain when I'm warm and dry and alone at home. Knowing I've put my best effort into something. Walking in sync with the beat of the song on my ipod. Red light blinking on my blackberry on a slow day.

I think if you start making a list like this and don't know where to stop, it's a pretty good bet that you're doing alright, even if the day/week/month/year/decade isn't going the way you hoped it would.

Touchwood!

:)

The attempt to post again

A week down and I’ve not had a moment to think about updating the blog. Either that or I don’t have an opinion on too many things. In which case this blog is just a complete waste of space. Or I haven’t gotten the hang of it yet. It’s hard to walk the line between writing a personal journal, and writing something that’s of interest to other people who might read it.

Right now I’m struggling with how much context to provide. Do I write it as a vent saying just what I want, or do I provide background information so that my post reads like a story and then people can make sense of it? And if I do that, do I selectively tell the story, do I embellish to make it more interesting, or delete what occurs to me as superfluous?

What’s an ideal post length? As long as I want to write, or short so people don’t get bored?

How totally meta is this – blogging about blogging?

The why

I used to be another person on the internet. Not someone particularly interesting or witty or funny or popular or anything. A jack of all trades type. Interested in lots; authority on none. I always wanted to start a blog, but resisted - I didn't think anyone would want to read what I had to say. I procrastinated to the point where I decided that everyone worthwhile already had a blog and now it would be entirely "wannabe" if I got one. I bemoaned my anonymity. I wanted to be read and loved but I didn't want to write and publish on the Net. I wanted to be somebody, but I didn't want to put myself out there. 

And I figured if I was the only one reading it, there really wasn't any merit in putting my ramblings up in public, over say, letting them stay in my journal. And so again and again, I signed up for blogs and then chickened out of uploading a post. 

Then, recently, I became a journalist. A young budding journalist, still not someone whose views were sought after; but suddenly I was someone whose views were now associated with the publication I was writing for. I felt "cool". I thought I was on my way to actually having people clamoring to read what I was writing.  And then yesterday, while scrolling through my Twitter feed, I came across a tweet which I thought was absolutely hilarious. I was just about to retweet it, when I abruptly paused. What if someone took offence? Suddenly I had to keep in mind that I couldn't afford to tick off anyone prominent, because I was no longer answerable only to myself, I was also answerable to my organisation.

The tweet in question was poking fun at two celebrities who happened to be in the news then. I wanted to retweet it not because I had any particular animosity for those celebrities, but because I thought it was really witty and it made me snigger. The chances of those people seeing my tweet would have been slim to none, but I still felt curbed. The powers above certainly would not have appreciated what I thought was a harmless joke and so, giving in to the doubts, I decided not to retweet it.

And since I had lost my absolute freedom of opinion on Facebook/Twitter, I decided I needed a blog. That would not be linked to my professional profile. Where I could say anything I wanted without worrying about whether my boss might object or not.

Ironically, because I had become a somebody (albeit a very very very minor somebody), I wanted the anonymity of a nobody again.

But the long-forgotten thought of a blog got me super excited and in a burst of enthusiasm I proceeded to type my first blog post pretty much instantly. I debated briefly about where to host my blog and then having made my choice, signed up. Then the big page asking for the title of my blog showed up and I was stymied. I had absolutely no ideas about what to call my blog, and every name that I thought of was more clichéd than the next. Over an hour passed by and the blog still didn't exist. And for some strange reason the word 'swivel' got stuck in my brain, probably  while I was thinking of how thoughts were swooshing around inside it. I decided to stop fighting it, and quickly, before I could change my mind again, I submitted it.

After all there are few things in the world as cool as swivel chairs. And the arbitrariness of the name pleases me. Sadly the blog domain was already taken and I had to try various permutations before I found one mutually acceptable to both me, and the site. 

So I have a blog now!

Yay.

Yes I clearly have a tendency to abruptly lose steam and peter off awkwardly.