Twitter and the Kindness of Strangers

Posted By hiromi on April 30, 2012 in Thoughts on life | 0 Comments

I have started using Twitter as a way to connect with the outside world for business.  It’s been a slow process but I think I’m starting to understand it a bit now.  There are all these how to’s out there, but nothing works like trying it yourself.

In the beginning, it is very strange.  You have this vague idea that you’re supposed to follow people and they follow you back, but how does that happen actually?  Following celebrities and news agencies seems safe and anonymous.  But then, it gets trickier.  There are real people out there who are doing and talking about things that you are interested in.  Do you follow them?  What if they don’t follow back?  Do you comment on a tweet?  Will they think it’s weird getting a comment from someone they’ve never met?  Who are these people who are following you and how did they find you?  Twitter is not for the paranoid.  You just have to embrace the experience.  Don’t be self conscious, you can always delete a tweet if you change your mind.  It is possible someone may have read it before you delete it, but hey, you probably don’t know them anyway.

So slowly and tentatively, I started following people.  Then you find someone saying exactly what you think and how exciting is that?  It’s easy to tweet back enthusiastically about something you agree with wholeheartedly.  This is where the kindness kicks in.  I have become connected to many people who are skilled at what they do and are also very generous with their knowledge and advice.  It’s great to feel supported by people who know what they are talking about and in some cases, have been through the same experience.  Running your own business can be very lonely, especially when it’s still tiny.  There are times when it all seems futile and you’re tempted to just let it slide.  But then I go on Twitter and read about all the things my tweeps are doing, the projects they are involved in, the new ideas they are working on and it gives me energy.  I’ve even met some of them in person and they’ve been just as lovely as they are on Twitter.  It’s just been a great tool professionally.

So while I am very much a novice and still trying to figure it all out, if you have a small business or a project you are trying to get off the ground, I recommend Twitter highly.

You can start by following me – @KinomiLondon.

Coincidence?

Posted By hiromi on June 23, 2011 in Thoughts on life | 0 Comments

I’ve taken on some translating in the last week that has kept me very busy.  I tend to go into hibernation mode when I do these jobs.  My little breaks usually consist of me going through Twitter to see what’s up in the world.  Well one of the people I follow on Twitter is Jeremy Piven.  I know he’s not really Ari from Entourage but when I read his tweets, I can almost hear Ari speaking and I love it.  Anyway, yesterday morning I’m just scrolling through as I was a little panicked about the current project and the timing involved.  And I notice a strange blip in my timeline.  For those of you who have Twitter, you know, that pretty much they get updated in multiple minute increments.  But there it was, between 4 minutes ago and 8 minutes ago, a tweet from 12 hours ago.  I caught it out of the corner of my eye and scrolled back up to have a better look.  I thought, “how did this end up here?” and proceeded to read the tweet.  It was by Jeremy Piven and it was a retweet from Tiny Buddha about creating change.  How great is the name Tiny Buddha?  They also have a great profile picture of a, you guessed it,  Buddha looking very serene.  I went on to the site and found a collection of posts by different people all having to do with thoughtful living.  Just going on the site made me feel calmer.  Apparently they have something like 5 million page views which makes me wonder how  I missed it.  I’m not a huge fan of people with lists for how to get things done.   5 steps to… 10 steps to… then you read and discover that actually step one is about 20 steps and so on,  so this wonderfully simple program could very well take you the rest of your life.  Which is fine if that’s what you were expecting, not so good if you had hoped to reach enlightenment in the next month or so.  The posts I have read so far, some of them do have that multi step approach but if you ignore that part, I like the messages.  So I feel that I have stumbled upon a goldmine of serenity to visit when I need.

So thank you Jeremy Piven for Tiny Buddha and of course, Entourage.