I think of my life as vintage wine

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My 2009 can be summed up in three odd ways: work, Twitter and L.

Work is what I do. It comes naturally, a little too easily and can fill up my days and nights without careful regulation.

They say you shouldn’t work for yourself because the boss is crazy. This boss is no exception. In the year since my emancipation from corporate media, I have been lucky. Opportunities have sprung up throughout the year, and rarely did I panic or doubt that I could pull this off.

This being a career as a communications consultant. I teach businesses how to communicate more effectively, often with social media.

When I say “rarely,” I admit that at times I did panic. I did stare down an abyss of uncertainty, wondering if I was doomed to fail.

But as Winston Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

This job lets me be me, do what I want and need to do, grow and have opportunities I didn’t have in my previous life. I figure it out as I go along. I make it up as I go along.

• • •

Twitter is this new sidekick that tags along wherever I go. A growing universe knows me by my handle, @WadeOnTweets.

It is the ice breaker that brings strangers up to me with a partial look of recognition. Writers and Twitter make for a natural — and dangerous — pair. (I shall demonstrate why in an upcoming post.)

I may say that I use it for business, but it’s my guilty pleasure. At times, I feel pressure to tweet constantly, but that drives me to keep using it better and more efficiently.

I work out of my home office, so it is the watercooler that keeps me engaged in a bigger world out there. My friend, fellow writer and fellow Twitterer Erin (@erinshawstreet) captures it well:

With Twitter I followed breaking news, met friends with similar interests (a pug lover in Columbia, South Carolina for instance), and connected with media and non-media friends right here in Birmingham. Lunch with three mom bloggers I never would have met? Check. Restaurant recommendations wherever I traveled? Yep. Killer story ideas? Yep, found them all on Twitter.

My life often happens in 140 characters or less.

• • •

My time with L. may be coming to an end. She has taught me about love and maturity. I have loved her since I met her, but I was not strong enough to keep her. In fact, I have handled this relationship poorly and readily accept most of the blame.

For someone like me, an abundance of love can be a scary thing. Why does someone love me so much? What’s wrong with them? I don’t deserve it and must do what I can to sabotage it.

As a self-proclaimed communications expert, I have a long way to go in becoming the man I want to be in healthy relationships. I will get there, but losing L. will be painful. Already, there is an emptiness in my life that leaves me gripped in sadness.

I have never loved anyone like I have loved L. And that alone shows how far I came in 2009, and how much further I have to go in 2010 and beyond.

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