Wordle

Just a quick post – quite a lot going on after moving back to Lincolnshire, trying to find a job, change of address stuff, lots to think about RE the upcoming PhD – including practical things like finding somewhere to live, as well as my involvement with the arts and tech conference Shift Happens (website, twitter) being run by Pilot Theatre (website, twitter) – I’ve been asked to consider a slightly more formal role than the volunteer-support role that I’d hitherto been offered (via twitter, a completely wonderful out of the blue response to my moaning about not being able to afford to go!). It sounds like a really exciting way to be involved (I’ll go into more detail when it’s a bit more certain) so I’m formulating ideas about that. Likewise I’ve also got to arrange a chat with TWP who have asked to talk to me about some potential website/social media questions they have after I’d moved, I also have to complete my treatment/casting info for the commission from Box of Tricks for the 15th of June, and on top of that this weekend I’m going down to see On The Beach, one of the Contingency Plan plays by Steve Waters at The Bush, and the weekend after I’m in Leicester/Loughborough, visiting many friends and possibly house hunting, plus I need to fit in a trip down to Portsmouth/Southampton area to catch up with 3 dear friends thattaway who have always been too expensive a train ride away, and of course there’s probably another Manchester trip in the pipeline, a gig in Birmingham on the 26th of June, I’d dearly love to go to Latitude, and a friend and brilliant writer also has a piece at Edinburgh this year…

Phew. I’m clearly far too busy to worry about things like coherent sentences and punctation too (Chelle, I can hear your cry, “you’re never too busy!” I’m sorry).

Busy is good though, my only worry is having enough money to do it all, so hopefully someone will hire me to do some mindless filing or bar work soon, and I can fill my weekends with exciting trips to see friends and theatre and festivals, and my evenings with writing and preparing for everything else!

Oh, and the wordle*, see above for a wordle aggregation of my most commonly used words on twitter, click to view it at a slightly more friendly size. Basically the bigger the word, the more often I use it, interesting – and actually I don’t appear to swear that much ;-)

*To make the wordle, I got my TweetStats, chose the ‘tweet cloud’ tab, towards the bottom right there’s a ‘Wordle’ link which take the tweet cloud and make it into a wordle, I clicked there, fiddled with the selection of aesthetic options, and then just did a basic screen grab/crop/save.

RE Twitter, I continue to value it, far more than I’ve ever have Facebook or Myspace or anything like that. I’m trying to put my finger on why- and I’ve not really formalised my thoughts on it yet. I suppose there’s something of it which isn’t about you, what you look like, where you’ve been, and what you have to say so much as it’s about listening to others. For me anyway. I do know that of all the things I have done this year, being a part of twitter has been one of the most life enhancing ones- I laugh a lot more than I used to do, I’ve had interesting exchanges sparked about New Labour, the British-Chinese experience in theatre, the tactile qualities of moleskines, anarchism and collective decision making, all of the biggest breaking news stories and tech info has come to me first through twitter. In a way that I’ve never been before – I’m connected to intelligent, politically active, funny, musical, artistic, and clued up people. I’m not saying that isn’t something you can’t have in real life, but to be perfectly honest, after all my 24 years, 3 schools and 2 universities, I’d never even come across someone my own age before who was remotely interested, let alone active in politics/feminism/environmentalism – through twitter I know they’re out there, that they have the same struggles and frustrations, I suppose that in ways that before now I have felt alone, I’m not any more. Is that a sad thing to say? It doesn’t feel it. It’s brilliant, I get to test my ideas properly, and I get a nice reminder that I’m not all that radical, and I’m not active so much as I am aware. And yes it is useful (has demonstrably been useful for me on several counts) with regards to career-networking – but that’s not the point, really. You follow people who say interesting things. I find that exciting. It’s all about the words, really. 140 of them. There’s no room for filler. Like I said though- more formalised thoughts later – particularly as these new ways of communicating will drip drip drip into my beginning PhD thoughts.

I will post again this weekend with my thoughts on the Contingency Plan play, and I also have a bit of an epic blog bubbling away in the back of my mind RE politics… I had a massive rant on twitter after the horribly cynical, opportunistic, and empty-as-a-pepper (capsicum) reform promises of David Cameron. So I might try and squeeze that into some more reasoned words soonish, depending on what else happens.

Right, I must go, it’s quite late, and I’m biking the 6 miles or so to sign up to a few more agencies tomorrow (I can’t afford the extortionate bus fare! £1.80 for a single!)

Thanks for reading!
Hanx