The Road Les Travels

40 Days Without Twitter

April 23, 2011

Posted by lesbrown under twitter

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So I gave up Twitter and Facebook for Lent. I’m not sure that I learned a whole lot from the experience. I didn’t seize the day more often or learn a new skill with the extra time I had on my hands. But I did notice a few things that I think are worth mentioning.

1. I Relaxed More – For some reason that I’m sure is unhealthy, I feel the need to monitor social media at an alarming rate. I check twitter and FB over and over again throughout the day. I wonder what other people are up to and I look to see if anyone is noticing that “funny” thing I wrote earlier.
“What was that sound?”
“Just my latest tweet blowing up!”

The last 40 days have given me a lot of perspective. I don’t need to know what everyone is doing all the time. I can relax and enjoy where I am and who I’m with.

2. I Enjoy Blogging. Obviously I haven’t been keeping up with this site a ton, but my other site, TeamBrownTown.com has definitely gotten a lot more attention recently. It’s been fun to spend that time working on something rather than just reading stuff. That brings me to my final big point.

3. I Want to be a Producer, Not a Consumer. For whatever reason, I enjoy making and doing new things. I like to create. But when I’m spending south free time doing Facebook and twitter, I’m not really producing. Sure I might write something humorous or useful sometimes, but that’s not the majority of my social media time. No, most of the time I’m stuck on the Social Media Teat just nursing away. Depleting. Consuming. It’s not healthy. In the words of Bernie Mac, “I’m a grown man!” I don’t need to be a consumer. God made me to be a producer. Over the last few weeks I’ve definitely been producing a lot more creative projects and I’ve loved it.

So, now what? Do I leave the Social Media world forever? I don’t think so. There’s definitely a place for it in my life. I just need to make sure I’m not stuck in Consumer land anymore. I’ll probably unfollow and unfriend some folks in the near future. I’ll also probably cut way back on my monitoring efforts. I’ll still tweet but I won’t be checking my twitter feed every few minutes. Not exactly sure how I’ll do that but I’ll start figuring that out tomorrow. Your suggestions are welcome.

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Self-Promotion

November 22, 2010

Posted by lesbrown under regular

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Today I was reading in John and stumbled across John 5:13. It’s interesting. Jesus had just healed a man who had been ailing for 38 years. Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be well. When the man said, “Yes,” he was immediately healed. Jesus told him to pick up his mat and walk.

This all happened on the Sabbath. When some of the Jewish leaders saw the man they reprimanded him for carrying his mat on the Sabbath (something he hadn’t been able to do for 38 years) and he told them that the man who healed him told him to carry his mat. They asked him who healed him but the man didn’t know. Why? Because Jesus slipped away into the crowd before the man could figure out who he was. Jesus did this sort of thing on a number of occasions, especially after healing people. He would heal someone and then ask them specifically not to tell anyone who had healed them. Jesus just wasn’t into self-promotion. He knew his time was coming. More importantly, he didn’t heal people in order to make a name for himself. He healed them so that they would be healed.

Every day on Twitter, Facebook, etc., I’m inundated by shameless self-promoters telling me all the great things they’ve done or re-publishing all the great things that others have written about them. I’m tired of it. In my opinion, if you do what God made you to do and you do it well, you shouldn’t need to promote yourself. If you’re faithful, God will find a way to promote you. People will find out about you because of the work you do. You shouldn’t need to promote yourself. Just do good work and let that speak for you.

I’m about to thin my twitter herd a little.