Ten years ago, I decided to stop taking on new work projects and focus on what I called “Life Phase 3.”
I actually did take on a couple smaller projects, but eventually shredded my degree certificates and moved on with my thinking. While honoring the past, I would try not to use what I once did as a crutch for who I am today. I love that freedom.
Making Each Day Matter
I was determined to make each day matter: I didn’t want to look back, ten years later, and see those days as a blur. I started posting to a blog about once a week, and, to help make each day consciously matter, I started a microblog.
Twitter was the obvious choice for a microblog as I could create a daily Tweet on my phone using the Twitter app. The constraint of 140 characters (now 280 characters) would help me to focus. I would not use Twitter as a social media tool: I never did follow anyone.
#ElonIsDestroyingTwitter
Fast forward to April 14, 2022 when I woke up to the news Elon Musk made an unsolicited offer to purchase Twitter. I found his personality and behavior distasteful, it was time to migrate all my Tweets from Twitter to my blogging platform, WordPress.
That day I created a custom post type for microposts and used a plugin to automatically cross-post to Twitter. I was not alone. #ElonIsDestroyingTwitter and #TwitterMigration would become trending hashtags on Twitter.
The process of transferring around 3,500 Tweets, including images, was a significant task, but I was able to automate much of it and would manually clean up any rough edges later.
New Possibilities
The migration experience has been positive and has provided me with new possibilities.
Recently, I established a Mastodon presence where I automatically cross-post using a WordPress plugin.
Having all of my posts and microposts stored in a single database has made it easy to create mashups. I now have an automated weekly newsletter and a summary of my trips since 2013.
I can drop Twitter when the stench becomes too much for me. I know Musk won’t care: people like me are hard to monetize.