From Blogging to Twitter

There are moments in life that change everything, and people who are the catalyst for such change. Phillip is one of those people for me. David and Rachel are another two.

In late 2007 I was working on writing fiction on my old desktop computer. I couldn't get my computer to do the things I wanted it to, so my friend Larry, a retired philosophy professor at Portland State, put me in touch with his favorite student and friend Phillip, the man who understands all things having to do with computers and the internet.

Phillip worked with me for awhile trying to get my old computer to do what I need it to do and finally insisted I get an Imac. He said it was the best computer for a writer. He told me it's a more intuitive technology and more suited to the kind of work I was doing. He found the best deal for me and I bought the Imac and had it shipped to him. He set it up for me, loading it with every program I could ever want or need, plus a large collection of great movies. Then he shipped it to me and talked me through the set up. He is and always will be my Administrator.

During early January of 2008 my New York friends, Rachel and David, were in town for a visit and dropped by. They were delighted with my new computer and decided I must blog. I didn't know what a blog was. It was explained to me and within minutes I was a blogger.

It was the beginning of the political season and the field of candidates for the Presidential election was narrowing. I have always been a political junkie, so politics was what I blogged about. And low and behold I gained a small but growing following.

Now almost two years later I have a blog archive of 1,473 posts on Utah Savage plus six other blogs I manage and contribute to. I have a Netvibes account. I post my photo albums to my Picasa web album. I've received twenty two awards from other bloggers. I learned what a meme is. I became a blogging fool in the space of two years. I became a member of a blogging community. It was one of the other bloggers in my circle who first discovered Twitter. I took to it like a duck to water and before you know it I was neglecting my friends and ignoring my blog.

Now when I get up in the morning the first thing I do is tap the space key on my computer as I pass it on the way to the bathroom. And Twitter is the first place I go once I've let the dogs out and have my first cup of coffee in my hand. I have spent as much as ten hours at a time on Twitter and I've all but stopped visiting my blogging buddies unless I spot them on twitter. Time speeds by. It took two years to gain a following of a hundred other bloggers. It has taken only a few short months to gain a following of over 1,000 on twitter. Now I seldom see my blogging buddies on Twitter. They have not been bitten by the twitter bug. But I'm a full blown twitteraholic.