Keep refreshing Twitter, don’t miss out on the important stuff. With so much going on in the world and our lives, how do we keep track of our time and what is important?
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Have you ever noticed that there never seems to be any time? Yeah me too. There’s just always so much going on and everything’s really busy. So sometimes you have to put things off and save them for later.
For example, on my phone’s web browser I always keep a bunch of tabs open to different articles that looked interesting enough for me to click on.
But I can’t read them right now. Things are way too busy right now for me to read something with the same consistent thought or idea for five straight minutes.
No reading right now, because right now I need to keep scrolling through my twitter feed to make sure I’m not missing anything.
What could I be missing?
I don’t know, maybe just everything? And isn’t that the whole point anyway? We don’t know what we don’t know.
I could be missing something really cool or really funny right now. It could pass me by and I’d have no idea. I’d be out of the loop the next time someone mentioned it. That can’t happen. So I have to keep searching and clicking and typing and scrolling to find out. There’s no time right now. Things are just too busy.
Oh look.
Some celebrity posted a picture of their new car on Instagram.
Oh look.
Someone on Facebook doesn’t think LeBron James is as good as everyone else and now people are arguing about it. Oh wow. Now they’re resorting to personal attacks to prove their point.
This is important stuff.
Those articles I saved on my phone can definitely wait for later. I mean, I thought they looked interesting but I really only read the title and liked the artwork they used at the top of the page.
But that’s more than half the battle, right?
So anyway, there’s just so much to do all the time. So many things I need to keep giving my attention to.
Like they always say, “your Twitter feed isn’t going to refresh itself.” It doesn’t do that yet, right? They haven’t added an auto-refresh feature so the newest tweets appear at the top automatically without having to swipe down? Did they do that and I just missed it? Ok take a deep breath. That probably hasn’t happened yet.
I’ve just gotta keep moving, you know?
I might be missing something right now while I’m typing this.
Before I do anything else let me just check to see if I got another retweet or favorite. Yeah I know Twitter will push an alert to my phone if that happens, but sometimes I don’t always get them. Especially when it’s a stranger who is favoriting or retweeting something I posted.
Usually it’s just a bot but sometimes it’s a real human being on the other side of their phone doing the same thing I’m doing. Searching and clicking and typing and scrolling and retweeting and favorting. When it’s an actual person who favorites or retweets something I posted, those are the best ones.
So yeah, anyway, those articles I wanted to read. I’ll get to those soon for sure. They seemed cool and enlightening. I might even learn something new. That would be nice.
Maybe one of them will even make a good conversation piece for the next time I see my friends. Which might not be for a while because you know, we’re all really busy with work and life and all that stuff. And then when we’re not busy with work and life, we’ve still got so much to do.
Right now I’ve gotta check my email to catch up on anything I might have missed in the past 45 minutes. Because most emails are super important. Very few of them are spam or an advertisement trying to get you to buy something you don’t need. Nope. All really important stuff sitting in that inbox of mine.
Ok so what’s next?
I better send out a snarky tweet just so my feed doesn’t look dead if someone happens to click on it.
That would really be the pits. If someone saw your feed and your last tweet was from 4 days ago. They might unfolllow you. And if they don’t follow you to begin with there’s no way you can expect them to take you seriously if the last thing you posted was a picture of your breakfast burrito and that smoothie from 4 days ago.
Nope.
You’ve definitely gotta step your game up. This won’t cut it. You’re trying to crack 1,000 followers, remember? That’s a really, really big deal.
Only 2 of your friends have 1,000 followers and everyone knows cracking into that 4th digit is huge.
When you hit a thousand followers you’ll really see things start to change. Reaching 1,000 people every time you tweet something is incredible. Never mind that at least 70 percent of those followers are a combination of strangers and bots who never read your tweets anyway.
The Important thing is making sure it looks good when someone visits your profile. Because they’re about to start coming to your profile any day now. Yep that’s definitely going to happen soon.
Especially once you have some more time to keep working on that really cool idea you had a few weeks ago. You know that idea you had that will help a bunch of people and might even make you some money too? Yeah, that’s going to be great once you have some more time to keep working on it. And if only things weren’t so busy you would have the time to get that done.
But not right now. There’s too much going on.
- Gotta keep refreshing Twitter.
- Gotta check Instagram.
- Gotta see what’s happening on Facebook.
Ugh. More people in your feed are arguing about politics. Let’s leave Facebook alone for a little while.
Where was I? Ah man, I can’t even remember. No worries, it couldn’t have been that important anyway.
What I’m really thankful for is my phone.
I don’t know where I’d be without it. All the things it does for me with just a few clicks and swipes. Without my phone there really wouldn’t be any time at all.
You know, I’ve often wondered how people got anything done before smartphones.
- What if someone was trying to call you but you weren’t at home?
- How the hell did that work?
- Did they just call back later?
- Did they even bother calling back later?
- What if it was something really urgent?
- And what if you were out somewhere and didn’t know exactly where you were going?
- How did you figure out where to go?
- Did you have to ask an actual physical human being for directions?
- Is that really what people used to do?
Man, that must have really sucked.
Yes, I keep checking my phone during our conversation.
No, I don’t think it’s rude. What if someone texts me or I get a new email? Well, yeah, my phone would vibrate if that happens. But you never know, maybe this is the one time my phone malfunctions and doesn’t vibrate for some reason. I’m sure that’s happened to someone before. What a nightmare that must have been.
Have you ever checked your phone to see what time it is only to put your phone down and not remember what time it is so you have to check the time on your phone again? Yeah, me neither. Definitely never done that before. Who would ever do that?
A lot of the time I feel like that guy from that episode of the Twilight Zone.
You remember that one? Where he really loves to read but he never has enough time to do it and he’s always complaining about it? And then finally he gets the time to read. I forget how that episode ends but man, I’m so jealous of that guy. Having all the time in the world to do whatever you want.
Things have to slow down someday, right? Once they do I think I’ll start working on something really awesome. Maybe even start my own nonprofit to help underprivileged kids somewhere. Yeah that’s a great cause. I’d like to do that some day.
I’m sure all of this important stuff will slow down eventually. My inbox will hit 0 and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram will be devoid of breaking news or anything interesting. That will be a good day. Then I can finally catch up on all those articles I have saved in my phone’s web browser and a ton of other stuff I’ve been putting off too.
But right now there’s just no time.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images