what if im addicted to twitter?

since Friday i have been without my phone. my girlfriend is more uptight about that than i am.

WHAT IF THERES AN EMERGENCY she asked as we drove to Inglewood last night to get some ribs.

then i die.

have my ashes sprinkled among the ashes of Hollywood.

the day before we went to Target and she did not let me leave my phone at home in case we got seperated in the two story store in Pasadena.

now its lost somewhere in this house, locked, and trust me when i tell you last night when i gleefully told her i dont care where it was she about blew a gasket.

things i miss about my phone are minimal. i miss calling my mom when i go on long drives. i miss having it tethered via bluetooth to my car’s Alexa so i can say hey alexa play Tsar

but other than that it has been a pleasant separation and im sure my phone feels the same way about me.

but this twitter. holy moley, i had no idea.

it all happened saturday night, as per my previous post. i watched Josie get arrested and via twitter and my iMessage i was able to alert some of the people she works with. Lord knows i was not going to sit on my hands as she wa being driven to prison because of some weirdo goal to be off the grid.

but as the conversations got weirder and weirder on Twitter regarding her case, the first amendment and the plausibility of a pro journalist jumping into a law enforcement scrum like some modern day Leroy Jenkins i began seeing why i love social media so much.

often times it’s an interesting conversation, but moreso it’s debating with people who are so different both politically and otherwise that it’s eye opening that we can both be looking at the same half full glass of water and they say

not only is it half empty but because of Obama it’s undrinkable.

theres many things i should have studied at UCSB than poetry, namely: Spanish, coding, and apparently Philosophy. I flunked two courses in school, a cinema class on Buster Keaton because i refused to over analyze his slapstick comedy because i didnt want to ruin future viewings, and the philosophy of Berkeley because apparently im dumber than i look.

in that class we had one book. it was a paperback called The Philosophy of Berkeley. It was about 75 pages. I couldn’t get through 5 of them.

im someone who was able to read much of The Bible, Finnegans Wake, and The Sound and the Fury in college. while distracted by the beach, the ladies, and my real goal: writing 100+ articles for the Daily Nexus a year. but those who understand philosophy is something i really admire because it was so foreign to me.

Give me Faulkner’s crazy, trippy, stoned, drunk run on sentences and Joyce’s Ulysses (which I tried to read on shrooms) any day over philosophy.

I read Milton’s Paradise Lost as an ice cream man on summer vacation, for fun but i bombed big time with Berkeley which is why i appreciate trying to conversate with these twitter people with their American flag icons in their bio about what a good journalist can and cannot do.

and yesterday i went on twitter to see the rest of the debate AND TODAY I DID IT TOO!

partially i did it because two of my stories for Los Angeleno were published over the last few days an i want people to read them.

the first was about diversity at the Oscars and how their new rules can be easily gamed

and the other is about diversity at the LA Times and how they really should bite the bullet and let Angel Jennings have full on veto powers otherwise she will be frustrated as merely a token.

going forward i have no other excuses.

but here is the biggest problem i have with twitter: i learn s much. i follow about 1,300 people. about half of them are fully alive on the platform, tweeting out and retweeting fascinating things. news breaks and theyre on it.

who doesn’t love breaking news?

who doesnt want to talk about the president visiting california and saying that the global warming will just disappear? who doesnt want to talk about the Bears’ crazy comeback yesterday or the Cubs’ no hitter or a thousand other things?

i do i do i do!

the greatest thing about being the blog editor of the LA Times was being able to bounce from desk to desk and talk with some of the greatest writers and editors of those sections about the stories theyre working on and how we can make the ones theyve recently published get seen.

it was like going to college and being given an All Access pass to every classroom, all the star students, and all the best professors. every day i learned so much.

twitter is a tiny version of that. oftentimes the journalists will tell you in real time what they are working on or what their recently published stories are all about. and the best ones will answer your questions. you do not need to be a Philosophy major to chat with them because they see the half full glass of water and will talk all day with you about it.

using their real names.

using links to support their point of view.

and often the people who follow them are also interesting and educated people who also want to learn.

so why am i giving that up for even a week?

because all addictions should be put under control.

even if they are fulfilling and wonderful and incredible.

at least for me.