Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts

Tuesday, 14 July 2015

An Aspiring Writer

Hard work and aspiration: modern day meaningless tag lines. Aspiration can only get you so far. I am dripping with aspiration I have it in bucket loads. I aspire to be a good teacher, to learn new things, to read lots of books, to play video games, to write, to meet people, to win literary prizes and to wear a fabulous outfit at the award ceremony.


Don’t for one moment think I just sit about aspiring all day long, no I am ….pro active in my aspiration. “Pro-active” I despise that word, I remember the first time I heard it at meeting in Staffordshire County Council. I was outraged that "active", a verb, a doing word, required a prefix to differentiate it from doing things and likeyou know, really doing things.

So in what way have I been activating my aspirations? Well I have made a commitment. Again everything is beginning to sound so new speak, perhaps I have watched, read and listened to far too much politics, but hear me out please.

I have made a writing commitment and this blog is part of it. Now I am an author I will share my take on life, my thoughts, experiences and hints and tips on a weekly basis.  I could just write these in a diary, but a blog is about exposure and no one is going to read my work unless I expose it to them.

I am an active twitter user and am slowly building a small following in the twitter sphere. 
I have created a J Freese facebook page which I post to regularly.

I use Wordpress as a catalog for my short stories and poems.  Writing new stories then gives me something to read at events.  In the space of a month I have read at three events, that’s two stories Count DireLife and The Light map and one poem My Mothers Land.


On top of the requirement to provide words (what kind of a blog would it be otherwise?) I also need images in my posts to break them up and avoid the horror of a wall of text.  So I take photographs, or screen grabs sometimes edit them in photoshop and finally install them into the blog. Now I can include a photo in my twitter posts, on facebook and on Pinterest.

Get that for aspiration, I told you I have it in buckets. I said to husband the other day that I feel as though after ten years (the child is ten) we have finally come alive again, we have woken up and are doing things. The only problem is that ten years ago I was thirty four and now I’m knackered. Much as I have loved this recent burst of activity I’m simply washed out.


Next weekend I want to stay at home and go no further than the backyard. Tonight my main aspiration is to put my feet up, drink tea and watch a movie or else I fear my candle will be burnt at both ends.

Monday, 27 April 2015

Twitter Fighting

“Wait.” I said to the boy, “Let Doc have a sniff.”
Doc sniffed the dried dog urine patterns on the wall, aligned himself and left his mark. I explained that he was leaving a message for the other dogs, “A bit like Twitter?” the boy said. Yes a bit like Twitter. I love Twitter.


I’m not saying that it’s like trails of dried dog urine on a wall, though when it comes to things like #FeministsAreUgly there is a case to be made for the analogy. Having read the comments @CCridoPerez has to deal with dried dog piss might be appropriate after all.

Never the less, Twitter is better than the news, if it’s not hash-tagged it’s not happening. Without Twitter I wouldn't have known about the Baltimore riots, I wouldn't have known about the #WorstCrisisSinceTheAbdication” which for one tweeter was akin to using semi skimmed milk instead of full fat.

What I like best is that twitter allows people to openly fight, not just one another, but the system, it allows them to spray these virtual walls with neon signs screaming to be heard.
Here there might be a big society, individuals determined; for example not to let go of the Grenville Janner injustice. I've seen those individuals work relentlessly to raise awareness of this situation. I've discovered investigative journalism that cuts and picks through the mindless dross and presents hard facts. I've read the pain in Black Lives Matter and I have seen people fighting for what they belief in.

http://www.exaronews.com
Some people are fighting for justice and an end to the killing. Some are fighting for truth, pulling the curtain from cover ups: revealing the detail and yelling to be heard. Some tweeters are fighting depression, some are fighting for our vote, others to find work, to promote their books, to get somewhere to be someone, to do feminism properly.

And we group together with a little press of the follow button. Then you realize you are part of a community, you are communicating with others that enrich your life through their knowledge, their passion and their sharing, and in unity there is power.

So many of us fight alone, we’re not comparing scars here, but it’s hard alone, just battling to keep your head above water, to put food on the table, to apply for another job, to get through the day.

Last week I responded to a facebook group seeking donations, a local mum was moving out of a hostel and into a flat with her little boy. I was genuinely excited that I might be able to help. I sorted through my boys clothes, we pulled bags of toys from the attic, we eagerly awaited her message. As did so many others, I was astonished how many people were happy to give, no questions, no judgements, no asking for sponsorship or recognition, not even on the condition that we read a leaflet, just helping.

The internet, our internet is pulling down boundaries, letting us scream and it’s listening, listening and responding. I love it.


Some of the fighters: