Sinead Keegan

  This post was first published on www.NoDeadWhiteMen.wordpress.com, 15 June 2013. When I tell people that I edit a blog for which other people write and that does fairly well in terms of hits-per-day, I usually get a look that says, "Oh, so you're not one of those 'writers' who says she writes, but really just mucks around in her pajamas all day."  But the minute I say that I use Facebook and Twitter I can see them picturing me back in my red, snowflake, flannel pajamas clutching a cup of coffee, surfing the internet for cat videos and calling it "writing". This is, unfortunately perhaps, untrue on several fronts. First, my snowflake pajamas aren't flannel and I wear pink or blue tracksuit bottoms when I'm working from home. Second, I don't drink coffee. And third, I don't while away time on the internet. That is not to say I don't waste time. I do. I, like all self-respecting writers, am a connoisseur of procrastinat...

I've been on Twitter for all of a month and I think I have a problem. I have discovered that I actually care how many followers I have. Do I care who's tweeting me or whether people are interested what I have to tweet? No, I am obsessed with the number of followers I have. No, strike that, I don't care how many followers I have (1 or even 0 would be fine), I just care that some people have stopped following me. That's right: unfollowed me. Stopped following me? Why? What have I done wrong? What have I failed to do? It's beginning to sound like a good self-flagellating prayer, but my guilty confusion is somewhere near what Sister Maureen used to make me feel about not going to church every Sunday. Out of hand? Oh, I think so.