I’ve got so many things that I want to write about that I start a ton of posts and don’t necessarily finish them.  I’ve got drafts in WordPress.  Virtual sticky notes on my computer and phone.  Voice memos that I recorded on my phone (some taken while driving, which probably wasn’t the best idea).

Yet I haven’t posted anything in a month.

Why?  Because work has been crazy.  Because I start something here but forget to finish it as this blog is low in my list of priorities (it really should be higher).  Because I’m a little too perfectionist when it comes to posting.  Because I spent more time proofreading and editing my posts than writing them (thank high school essays for that one).  Because I forget about this blog.  Because I’m paralyzed by the routine of my schedule and don’t adjust for the things I want to accomplish but don’t.

Sadly, almost posting doesn’t count.  It’s yet another one of those areas where showing up is what matters.  So I thought I’d start by listing all of the things I’ve been thinking about writing about lately.  It’s a way to jump start writing posts about some of these ideas.  It’s also a way to make sure that I actually follow through, as putting this out in public places imaginary social pressure on me to start writing.  So without further ado, here’s a few lot of seed ideas:

• Symbols allow us to inhabit a shared reality (see Walter Lippmann).
• Why time isn’t fixed despite the fixed nature of the second.
• There is so much information online we need to rely on the Internet to process and store it (think exocortex).
• How the branding of commodities isn’t that different from the branding of general retailers.
• Why I have way too many profiles on way too many social media networks/websites/platforms.
• How being on the inside often means we can’t communicate with the outside – even though we know everything about the inside and there’s nothing stopping us from talking. (Expanded a bit in Inside, Outside, Upside, Downside)
• Overriding Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a defining aspect of free choice.  Also why every single professor I had who mentioned it in class thought it was inaccurate (except for my Intro to Psych professor).
• Tweeting like a pro isn’t that different from playing video games like a pro. What does it mean to be a power user?
• What quantum mechanics teaches us about Russian Roulette and our understanding of success.
• How going from a user to a marketer on a platform allows for the possible growth of a kind of code of ethics of marketing in that space.
• Twitter = microblogging = tiny blogging. How does the Twitter ecosystem change our definition of blogging? Or should we redefine our definition of Twitter (note that Twitter did this a little bit today)?
• How ritual allows us to access personal and cultural memories, leading to a continuity of expectation and ability to surrender the decision-making process to precedent.
• Plan your dive, dive your plan.

And last, but most definitely not least:

• How I work best when extremely busy (as in every hour of the day accounted for and filled with some kind of activity).  How I need a new side project (five to ten hours a week).  What I’m looking for in said side project (social media, community outreach, marketing, etc).  Why I like working virtually (and generally for free).

I know that not all of these make sense right now.  They don’t necessarily make complete sense to me either.  Which is why you’ll probably never see full posts on all of these topics.  You may see mini-posts focused on one or two ideas from a bullet point.  Or what’s written above (kind of a micro-post) might be it.  We’ll see.

Now I’m not arguing with this.  It’s totally accurate at least from my (somewhat limited) experience on Twitter.  But what I find interesting is what happens after this.  I like Twitter for many reasons; one is the fact that I can follow lots of people who write on a variety of subjects.  So one of the first things I did after joining Twitter was to check and see if some of the brands/websites/people I regularly interact with (and/or appreciate) were posting.  I followed them, and some of them followed me back.  But what was interesting was the people who then began to follow me that I wasn’t already following.  I noticed that some of them were in some way related to the people I originally followed.  Here’s an example.  Let’s say I follow a user who works in interactive marketing (one of my primary interests) and they follow me back.  I would then end up with two or three new followers, who more often than wrote on interactive marketing (or whatever the original subject was) .

What did I then do by the way?  Follow them back because they followed me.  Reciprocity in action.

Anyway, my point is that it seems from this perspective as if there are micro-networks on Twitter.  Here’s the steps, to recap:

• I follow Sam, who writes about environmental sustainability.
• Sam then follows me back (reciprocity)
• Jim and Jane (two other users who write about sustainability) then follow me (perhaps they found me by looking at the list of Sam’s followers).
• I then follow Jim and Jane (reciprocity)

If you’ve followed me this far (no pun intended), what this basically means is that mini-networks within Twitter are being created as the Jims and Janes of Twitter look at Sam’s following list to grow their networks.  If we take this to the extreme, we could see a self-reinforcing element arise as users focused on a particular topic just start to follow each other.  The overriding factor here is the nature of Twitter’s users; they’re interested in a diverse set of topics and are likely to jump from one micro-network to the next.  This seems to eliminate any downsides to this phenomenon (which may be entirely in my head, I don’t know) – at least for now.  As to what will happen as Twitter continues to grow and as more and more users discover new ways to use the service, well, your guess is as good as mine (there’s a very good chance it will be better, as I’m operating with only one data set – my own experiences).