I Tweet Therefore I Am

Well actually, I'm not so sure about that. Truth is, the Twitterverse and I are still warming up to each other. Or rather, I'm still warming up to it. It doesn't seem to care one way or another. Or maybe it does. I'd like to hope that while I'm sleeping, hordes of tweeters are bemoaning my absence. Hash marking my name. RT ing their endless tweets of angst that I am not responding. Saying, in 140 characters or less that yes they know I don't have a shtick yet. I missed out on the *hello Twitter. taps on glass* that Maureen Johnson uses. That they have caught on and realize that I am alternately whiny and bitter and petulant when I realize that not only has half the world already read some tweet worthy publishing news tidbit and tweeted about it before I did, but 10,000 other people have retweeted it and I am now left with a lame "me too" which is noteworthy only in that it assures that I won't overtweet my character limit. That I am not an NYC hipster living in a loft but a middle of the road Texan English teacher who is at the moment wearing khaki capri pants from Anne Taylor Loft outlet and a t shirt that says ORHS Greenout which the environmental club at the school at which I teach made up as a fundraiser for their recycling efforts without even one whit of irony that they were hurting the freakin' environment more by making the tshirts. But I digress.

We argue about this, publicist Paul and I. (The tweeting, that is. Not the digressing) Or rather, he nags. I listen. He says encouraging things such as that my follower list is growing. (I hear him sighing underneath this. I know he thinks I am being purposely stubborn. Sometimes he digresses, too, and tells me how his parents are going on an Alaskan cruise and secretly I wonder if this is code for possibly you are too old to get it, Joy. In moments like this, when there is that ominous dead silence on the phone, I interject a question or two about his new puppy. I, after all, live in Texas. We may have given you George Bush, but we know how to be polite.)

But I hang in there. That is another thing about me. I am nothing but dogged in my determination. I am after all, the woman who beat every odd out there and whose book is being published in less than a month. (Dreaming Anastasia. At stores. Near you. Soon. It rocks. I tweet about that regularly but obviously at times that only I am reading. Okay, me and my 52 followers. I had more but I had to block a few because they kept tweeting about how they wanted me to click on their adult pictures. I declined. Btw, if you block someone on Twitter, you do get asked by the Twitter folk if you really mean to do this or if what you really think after your initial blocking impulse is 'nah, we're cool' which I think is rather enjoyable.)

That I guess is what the Twitterverse does not yet know about me. That in my little world here in suburbia, I am already a rock star. I am the one in line at Central Market with corn tortillas and milk and baby arugula and that new Snapple green ice tea I like so much in her cart who is nonetheless going to storm the world on 9/1. I am funny and wry and sarcastic and goofy and I've got an endless taste for kitsch and irony. If I can have both at once, I'm the happiest. (like when I imagine that those little wristbands some people like to wear really stand for What Would Joy Do? the answer to which is bitch and moan and eventually get to work) My agent says she loves me because I make her laugh. I say tell that to a certain nagging someone who thinks I should just get with the program. And then she tells me that an attitude like that won't get me that new couch I've been eyeing at Pottery Barn.

Twitterverse! Are you listening? As I just tweeted a few seconds ago, if I tweet my barbaric yawp into the Twitterverse and no one answers, have I still tweeted? We will see my little Tweets. We will see.

Til next time...