Twitter-sated, and what comes next?

My, that has felt productive. I mean, it didn’t go the way I expected, because I really thought I was just going to learn and write about music, and then move on to television. Suddenly it morphed into feminism and fertility. However, I feel like I am writing better. I am better at organizing and focusing, even if what that means is 14 regular posts rather than three monstrously long ones.

Also, I have a way for the fertility to get me back into television. (That statement seems open to misinterpretation.) There will probably be some more music posts when I finish the comments on the 100 greatest guitar songs, but I am not very far in yet. So far I’m not that impressed with Pavement, but I’m digging Dinosaur Jr. Then there should be more personal stuff, and I will probably get into politics again because I can’t seem to help that.

Well, it will have to wait, because tomorrow I am taking off on vacation. Most of the family is taking a cruise up to Alaska. I love being on boats. With a large ship you are not quite as close to the water, but I still expect to enjoy it, and frankly, I could use a break.

I still intend to be productive. My sisters and I will be exercising daily, I want to start my Black History Month reading, and watch some DVDs I have had lying around forever. Also I want to write a screenplay during the vacation. This would require writing about 14 pages a day, which is quite doable, if I can get the laptop up and running and find a story that I am ready to roll on. I’m curious about whether I will be able to pull it off myself.

(Funny story about the reading—a friend had posted to grab the book nearest to you, open to page 45, and the first line describes your sex life for the next year. I had just gotten the first of my planned books from the library. It’s about the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment. Good thing I’m chaste.)

Often when we head out on vacation, my sisters will buy a People and some other magazines that we don’t normally read, but that work for vacation. I am always so behind on my magazines (Smithsonian, Shape, and Psychology Today) that I do not need to make any purchases—I just try and get a little caught up. This time though, I am buying a Rolling Stone, and wondering if I could or should aspire to writing for it. I mean, I have enjoyed blogging about music, maybe I should look into that, but to some extent I also question whether it is possible to write meaningfully and usefully about music, or if such a thing would happen in Rolling Stone.

I do not know if we will have internet access while we are gone, so I do not anticipate posting while at sea. I am probably wrapping up my Twitter experiment here, with posting the blog links with hash tags.

Incidentally, while I was doing this Blogger changed their layout, and after the initial adjustment, I like it. You can see the number of hits for each individual post, though I still use Analytics to see traffic sources. It hasn’t been as helpful as I’ve hoped.

For one thing, the amount of traffic does seem to have risen somewhat, but apparently only three hits have come from Twitter, so I am mystified where it is coming from. Also, I feel bad for the posts with low view counts, and again, no idea why one post has only six hits and another gets 35. Also, there always seems to be about six hits that come during the middle of the night, which seems odd to me. I don’t think Blogger can track anything that comes from Networked Blogs. If it does, it does not show it as a source, and there aren’t really that many hits from Facebook. It’s all still a total mystery to me.

Now, the experiment has not been without worth, because twice this month I have mentioned messing around with Twitter, and people’s eyes have gotten all big and they have wanted to know more, so now I am a Twitter tutor, which is pretty good progress. Always glad to be of service.

Now I am going to ask for your input, and see what you can tell me.

First of all, there is a contest. If you can guess what the next blog post will be about (with the hints of television and fertility), I will proclaim you smart on Facebook AND Twitter. You would have to guess before I post and before I publish a comment with someone else’s accurate guess, but if I find multiple comments with correct guesses, I will proclaim multiple people smart. I don’t have a problem with that.

The other thing I want to know is how you get here. What first brought you, and then if you are returning if you do it by linking directly or a bookmark, time of day, and if you ever pass it on to anyone, and anything else you think I should know. My thought is that I would publish these comments because it could be interesting, but if you don’t want it published, just say so.

Obviously if there are people who come to the page and don’t read it, they’re not going to comment, but if this is your first read, and you believe it will be your last visit, I would still love to hear from you. And it is possible to leave comments anonymously, so that’s fine too.

One problem with my mind is that once a question is raised, I have a hard time letting go of it without an answer, and so now I am wondering in a recurring loop. You can help relieve my aching brain. Thank you.