Not Birb
Hi 🙂
I spent some weeks away from Twitter this early Autumn. This extremely not fancy website was to be my alternative home base for brief spewings online (hence 'not birb' = off Twitter). That didn't work out. These pages don't scroll for new entries the way microblogs do & I don't know how to make such a thing happen. I'm also having trouble with images. BUT I like having this site, so I'll keep it, wth. I write, so I put whatever small items I've actually brought to completion on here, one item to a page, and I'm liking the orderliness of that. I'll add items now & then. You see the titles up top, there.
Anyway, I'm back on Twitter for now. If you want to read just me talking, pls go do that at my dumb old blog. I keep reminding myself to update it, and then forget all about it as soon as I get home 😐 But, there it is.
Twitter & Instagram (@ccnomad)
Google (ccnomadwrites) - I contribute to Maps images & reviews
Moar shyte: I began using Twitter in 2007 as @cath68. I quit for a hot second in early 2011, and deleted the account - a huge mistake. I know better now, and the current @ccnomad account will remain as long as the internet does. If you Google 'ccnomad', you get links to my online presence, such as it meagerly is, from my Pinterest & IG to an old Tumblr & Goodreads, etc.
So hey, welcome & thanks for hanging out this long! Grand Tour: Below is the meat of what this page said originally (when I stomped off Twitter for a minute). Up top, those little pieces of writing. I'm partial to the short fiction Bike & the duo of poems Archaeology & Anthropology. If you like that stuff & feel like supporting me (first of all, wow, thank you!), pls click the PayPal link below, then email me & let me know. Because I will totally write a smashing little Haiku just for you, and I will tweet it, tag you & generally thank you to the best of my ability ❤️❤️❤️
(You DO NOT have to have a paypal account to use this nifty thing. THANK YOU!)
Why I stepped away from Twitter:
It ain't all because of 45 & the GOP, but they're the crux of it. The news of the world is just hurting me. Too much to bear, the poison they've spilled all over my country, flaring up the chronic infections of racism & other bigotry, unleashing their most vicious manifestations.
The other major thing was a growing disbelief in Twitter's leadership. They aren't listening, they're acting beholden to the bad guys, etc. etc. - so many more people articulate all that so much better than I can.
But it was mostly the first thing. I stopped watching TV news in my mid-twenties. Couldn't stand it anymore. I withdrew from full attention & alertness to political goings-on & other terrible shyte I had no control over, because it pressed in on hard-fought repair work to my psyche, it made me rage high & fiery. I have a very fine-tuned justice-O-meter, and the news made it spin with a fury I couldn't handle without incurring fresh damage to myself. I've got managing depression & anxiety down to a fucking artwork, an ongoing feat of calibration. I need as few monkey wrenches in that raw & delicate project as humanly possible. I've had some rawness my whole life, I've been in very serious mental health trouble; I have to take as much care as I'm able.
For years, I read physical newspapers & magazines. Which is a pleasure, really. But I loved Twitter when it came around because it was a much more efficient way to take care with how I stayed informed & educated. It was cutting edge & constantly fresh, demanding new standards for all kinds of publications, from alternative weeklies to dictionaries. I could curate my news from more sources, more quickly. This resulted in the broadest & best-managed news-exposure I'd ever experienced.
Until recently.
Sigh.
I've lost some control over it. There are new algorithms making my experience different than what I would choose, for starters. But there's also a particular onslaught of harrowing, horrifying news that rarely eases up & often becomes a raging downpour. And I can't bear it. I've never been so violently upset so routinely as during the last two years. Anxiety, a thing as tricky as depression, is mixed in more heavily than ever before, compounding harm.
I've been harmed enough. Despite my pinned tweet, a nod of solidarity to my fellow left-leaners, I'm no fucking snowflake. But I'd had enough of the uncontrolled onslaught. I want to keep my head intact. So I wandered off to a quiet table in the corner for a while. I just had to catch my breath & feel some peace for a while. I'm back, now :)