Character Cap

Open my iPhone Notes app and you'll find a jumble of "dramatic" text message drafts, an amusing list of all dates gone awry, and hodge-podge scribbles of tweet-length thoughts that never came to be. Fleeting notions that felt too trivial to say out loud or blast to my 350 Twitter followers (but really, WHO is counting). Although, read my tweets and you'll probably wonder why my thought provoking-ideas about Trader Joe's made the cut while the embarrassing 10+ drafts of my one-line Tinder bio did not.

More and more, I've found myself reimagining these small soundbites in written form rather than just letting them be forgotten (granted, many times, they probably should be left behind). Pre-social media, I would have just scribbled them down in a journal and never looked back. But now, even with a million social outlets at my disposable, I can never decide on the right medium for these ideas. Because truthfully, I can't help but constantly self-edit. Is this too random? Is it too spammy to post 5 things at once? Will anyone understand my "creative" revelations? Should I just text this random garble to someone instead... (hint: the answer is usually, NO.)

And it's only after running through all these questions that I sit back, and realize I've just spent the past 10 minutes agonizing over a statement about hipsters. Or LA traffic. Or something passive yet political (is that a thing?) that I don't feel informed enough—despite all my Skimming—to publicly associate myself with. And after all the internal back-and-forth...I feel a little silly. BUT, unfortunately not silly enough to keep myself from writing this blog post. I guess the creative process is weird like that.

So, I'm going to continue making a habit of jotting these ideas down and sharing them on whatever medium strikes my fancy in the moment. Beware of rogue text messages, iPhone contacts. Because, you never know when divine inspiration will hit and turn that nonsensical tweet into a NY Times Bestseller...

At least, that's on the 5-year plan.