confessions of a morning twitter lurker

ninmah — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:44:56 +0000

I really don’t like getting up early. I used to; I can remember the hushed, private feeling of being the only one awake in the early dawn, watching the world change with the arrival of the day. I remember being filled with peace, and with wonder about what the day would hold. That was ages ago. Nowadays, when I wake up, I’m just grumpy and befuddled.

So I rely on rituals to get me through the sleepy part of the morning, until I’m really awake and the momentum of the day takes over. One of these is Morning Twitter Lurking. Right after the alarm goes off — and I actually set it 15 minutes early to accommodate this ritual — I grab my iPhone, turn down the brightness (because I can no longer focus on the screen in the dark if I don’t), open Tweetie, and read.

from this morning's Lurk

First there are my Australian and British colleagues to catch up on. What did they do while I was sleeping? Others around the world are there too. Then it’s my US buddies who couldn’t fall asleep, and then those that get up really early for travel or because they live in rural Vermont, where it’s 3 hours later anyway and they have to make bread and feed chickens (you know who you are). Then the tweets follow the sun westward and I share in discoveries made over morning coffee, events from the commute to work, and interesting tidbits that appeared in daily RSS readers.

I never post during these 15 minutes; I just lurk. For one thing, I’m still pretty much asleep, utterly uncaffeinated, and squinting at the screen with one eye. I’m not going to be able to type anything coherent, let alone interesting. But I do mark some tweets as favorites so I can follow them up later — links to articles and blog posts, mostly, or ones I want to respond to once I’ve got a keyboard and a steaming cup of tea in front of me.

When my 15 minutes are up, I get up and do morning things. I start the day thinking of my friends and colleagues, reflecting on some of the posts or articles I did follow up on already, and starting to plan my day. So, thanks, Twitter world. Thanks for letting me share in your mornings as I gear up for facing my own.

PS – the screenshot does show tweets from this morning’s Lurk, but I didn’t take it until later. Some good ideas happen at awkward times.

Ninmah Meets World » mornings

confessions of a morning twitter lurker