The world is ending. Do I have to tweet about it?

Happy Monday, y'all. Or Unhappy Monday, which might be more accurate. Mary here, and like much of the rest of the world I've spent the weekend obsessing over Russia's illegal, immoral, and utterly ignoble invasion of Ukraine. Explainers, think pieces, live updates, articles, essays... I've read them all.

You wouldn't know it to look at my Twitter feed though. Or Facebook. Or Instagram. Nah, I've been posting the usual nonsense -- circus videos, book promos, pet pictures, snarky comments about the PATH train, blah blah blah. Luckily, I'm no celebrity, and I haven't built a following off my sparkling social media personality, so no one much cares about what I do or do not post. Because if they did, I'd probably be accused of being insensitive, ignorant, and a host of other things for not commenting about world politics during a time of crisis.

Social media has set up the bizarre expectation that everyone should have something to say about everything. Beauty influencers are expected to share their thoughts on international politics. Authors of children's books are expected to have well-informed opinions about systematic injustices. Somehow, everyone is supposed to have the same depth of knowledge and ability to comment on any given issue as a professional journalist who's covered the topic for decades or an academic with several degrees in the matter. And if your hastily written, shallowly informed tweet you dashed off to prove you're paying attention doesn't get it quite right, well, may the odds be ever in your favor.

I understand why there is this expectation, both from the creator and audience perspectives. With social media breaking down the barriers between public and personal lives, individuals want to know that the people to whom they give their time (and money) are worthy. Creators want to meet audience expectations and prove that they are, in fact, worthy.

But I think it's a mistake to assume that everyone has to comment on everything. Sometimes, just because someone is silent on a matter doesn't mean they don't care. Social media is a public space, yet it's expected that we act like we would in a more private setting. It's like expecting someone to get up on a stage in a public square but act the same way they would at a hang-out with their two closest friends. Personally, I simply don't consider myself enough of an expert on... anything, really... to shout my opinions publicly.

There was a time when I tried to jump on the whole "have an opinion about everything" bandwagon. Partly it was because I got swept up in the energy of Twitter (there's something of a rush you get from firing off a string of hot-headed tweets), and partly it was because I saw how people were rewarded for this behavior (with followers, clout, and, perhaps most relevantly for me, book deals). But then I got tired. It was exhausting not only trying to keep up with everything, but trying coming up with things to say that felt right. Perhaps it's the nerd in me, but I feel the constant need to fact-check myself. And I'm not comfortable talking about things I have no expertise in. 

For me to tweet about the war on Ukraine, I feel like I'd need a background in the history, culture, and politics of the region to be able to say something that felt accurate and meaningful - and not like empty awareness signaling - and I simply don't have that. 

Awareness signaling. That's another thing I don't feel like doing. I don't know if it's a real term, but it's what I've come to think of whenever something significant happens in the world and everyone parrots the same generic lines, seemingly just to prove to the rest of the internet that they know what's happening and they're on the "right" side of it.

Anyway, I'll sign off with a plea: Just because you follow someone's social media, don't assume you know everything they're thinking.

Why Do I Write?

By Cheryl Oreglia


How do you view your blog? Is it a hobby, art, your passion, or a means to an end? Most fellow bloggers, who have been keeping a blog for a few years, will admit it is stressful, time-consuming, without a lot of rewards. Or is that an unfair statement? I’ve poured my soul into blogs that garner shameful stats, dismal likes, and very few comments.

I have to ask myself on occasion - why do I continue to publish a blog?

Well here are my reasons for continuing to blog despite the stresses and hassles. I’d love for you to add a few of your own.

1. When I don’t write I feel as if I’ve not exercised my brain, she gets lazy, and after a while, I can’t get her away from the television, or off youtube. When I’ve been working my brain, reading, writing, and synthesizing the material I’m able to think critically and write with ease. But still, I take breaks and send my brain on a mini vacation.
2. It’s a great outlet for my thoughts and observations on life. I can process my experiences and hopefully, this informs or resonates with others. What I don’t like is spending precious time promoting my work on social media with zero results or obsessing over meaningless stats. But still, I write.
3. I find it difficult to balance the competing forces in my life which are living, working and writing. When I’m working I’m thinking about the blog and when I’m blogging I’m thinking about my classes, and then my life tries to squeeze itself between me and the keyboard, tempers flare, and at times I’m accused of “sitting on my ass for hours doing nothing.” Which I choose to ignore. Not. The struggle is real but still, I write.
4. One time I was nominated for a writing award, I got all excited, answered all the questions, followed all the rules, publicized the award as instructed, and then found out it wasn’t really an award at all. It’s what I call the circle jerk, crude, but accurate. The expectation is you are nominated and you go out and nominate others, this is like getting a gold star on your paper, it’s one person’s opinion and meaningless. But still, a small part of me was thrilled “just to be nominated.”
5. It’s difficult to respect and please those closest to me, the people I interact with on a daily basis, because they end up in the blog, and believe me when I say they’ll let me know if something is inaccurate or exaggerated. Oddly, some of my most popular posts are about my husband, whose only claim to fame and being featured on the blog. On occasion, I admit writing about that exasperating man just to see my stats go up. I’m not proud but still, I write.
6. I suppose the best part of maintaining a blog is the writing community I’ve come to know and befriend. I have people across the world who I interact with, exchange comments, and enjoy immensely although I’ve never met them in person. Recently one of my writing friends who resides in England is sending me some Yorkshire Tea to try because he’s annoyed with all my references to coffee. I don’t care why, a reader is sending me a gift, and I’m thrilled.
7. I may have started my blog to establish a platform for this book I’ve yet to write, but it ends up I write because life seems meaningless without exploring my trials and tribulations on paper, and besides, it’s not as if there’s a chance in hell it’ll go viral. One always can hope.

I would love to hear your thoughts about why you write, your frustrations, your successes?





When I’m not writing for Across the Board, I’m Living in the Gap, stop by anytime.

I'm not that good a writer...on social media

Hellloooo friends. I woke up this morning with a vacation hangover. You know that feeling. When you've been away for a week and you finally get home and you're exhausted, disoriented, and suffering from a headache. Honestly it wasn't a vacation, so much as a trip. My son played in a soccer tournament in Hershey. Then we decided to tack on extra days to do the amusement park and Washington DC and let's just cliche...I need a vacation from my vacation. Yuk. Yuk. Yuk.

And while on vacation, I posted photos of my kids to social media with cute captions like We're at Hershey! And Smithsonian Day with a healthy dose of whine. Then, later that day, I wrote the same thing while on the beach with a cup of merlot and punned a healthy dose of wine. And you know what I realized? I am terrible at composing pithy captions on social media. In fact, I am a crappy writer all together on social media. Which wouldn't be a thing if I wasn't a goddamn author.

My friend Dave was a writer for Mad Magazine. He is the funniest dude on the planet and his one-line Facebook updates are Pulitzer worthy. Another friend is a copy writer and her Instagram posts about ballet and coffee are eloquent and artsy. Meanwhile, I'm on Twitter trying to blog about my favorite television shows because I don't often know how to relate to people other than to talk about what Netflix shows I'm bingeing. I am literally that person at parties. Because it's not cool to discuss politics and religion and those are my two favorite topics of conversations, I'm the one who asks, "So whatcha all binge watching?" And then I get the response, "I don't really watch TV." Or they respond with, "I'm into the Real Housewives."

My last Tweet that got traction was me asking the Twitterverse if anyone found the exhaust fan above the stove as annoying as I do. And it turns out, lots of people do.

I marvel at how sassy and clever people can be on Twitter. Especially about mundane things. And there's me over here revising the same sentence ten times just to vary my word usage. Half the time, I don't add commentary because my brain is fried from trying to simply write a novel that I have nothing left to devote to cleverness. I have to work at being smart while others simply do it on instinct.

Do you ever cringe at your Facebook post memories? I do. I'm like, "I wrote that trite piece of crap observation?" Ugh. Thanks Facebook for reminding me that I'm a hack.


Please don't judge me by my tweets and status updates. And why is there no edit button on Twitter?

An Old Dog in a Social World

After about four years of this writing gig, I seem to be socially stuck. Yep, I can finally admit that my social game is in a pit of quicksand that exists right smack in the middle of:

AND

I’m no stranger to stepping out of my comfort zone. If I never stepped out then I never would have published a book, let alone three. I have an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering, a Masters in Business, and I spent 17 years climbing the corporate ladder before publishing my first book. Writing and publishing that first book was so outside my comfort zone that in my first post here on Across the Board I talked about how it was scarier than jumping out of a plane.

But when it comes to social media, I’m an old dog. If you don’t believe me, I was in college when email was an ‘innovative’ thing. It was so exciting to get an email address and connect with people through the computer! Mind. Blown. Of course, most common people didn’t have personal computers at that time so you couldn’t check your electronic inbox until your scheduled time at the computer lab. But that just made it as exciting as waiting for those yellow slips to show up in your mailbox letting you know you had a package to collect.

Now we live in a time where my 12-year-old has more Instagram followers than me (and she’s only had access to it for less than a year) and email is so old school.

I’ve read the articles that tell you how to do good social media marketing. I’ve read about the best ways to connect to build your platform—and I can easily recognize when others do it to me. For simplicity, I bucket them into three categories:

The Soft Connection:

This is when I get random comments of “Great pic! Thanks for sharing!” or some similar sentiment. I know they are leaving a nice comment on my post in the simple hope that I will click on their profile and follow them.

The Medium Connection:

This is when someone leaves the random comment from the Soft Connection AND they follow you first. It’s as though they’re saying “I’m being nice and I’m going to stick around, so how about you give back?”

The Hard Connection:

This is when someone straight out asks me to follow them because we’re all in this together and need to support each other.

I don’t really have any issues with any of these approaches, although I’ll admit to being a bit more drawn to those who fall in the Medium Connection category.

But here’s the thing: I haven’t been able to look at my social media venues as straight up book marketing tools. I know some of you might be thinking that statement means I’m looking at it wrong. That doing it right means showing my personal life as well as my book life. And I totally agree. I can keep posting about my books and my life, however, if I start randomly following and commenting on twenty random posts/accounts a day in the hopes that I’d get five in return, then I’m still only doing it for the business.

I know that being ‘old’ is not an excuse for being able to adapt successfully to the social media trend. I’ve seen several people older than me do an amazing job of building a robust social media platform. So this is where the comfort zone part comes in. I’m just not comfortable doing it any other way than what feels genuine to who I am—and I’m not someone who randomly follows people just because I want to pull the attention back to myself.  I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with it if that’s what you’re doing. Many times I’m super jealous that I can’t do it that way. It’s just not me, and I have a very hard time sounding sincere when I’m doing something that isn’t genuine to who I am as a person. And I’m old enough to know that going that route will certainly backfire in my face.

So here I am, an old dog trying to find a way to at least nudge a toe outside my social comfort zone because I do know that it’s important to the long-term success of my writing life. I will say that I do like when people leave comments showing they actually read and connected to my post. It means they were at least paying attention enough to give a thoughtful comment rather than a ‘one comment fits all’ approach. Maybe I’ll create a new category—The Genuine Medium Connection—and shoot for that. Compromise is the spice of life after all, right?

How about you—is there any place where you feel stuck?

~ Carrie