Time to Spread My Wings and Twitter. Uh, I Mean Tweet.

The photo from my first post: my son gazes at Perin’s Peak while on a family hike.

It was four years ago that I attended a dry yet helpful seminar on learning WordPress.  Soon after I sat down at my laptop and built a bare-bones website on which to enter my musings on being a parent.  Fast-forward a whole presidential term later and no one is more surprised than me that in a few short weeks Pulseonparenting.com will reach 200 posts.

When I hit publish on  “Hello World (the sequel)”  back in 2013 I thought I was embarking on a fun, new hobby that indulged my love for writing.  I never expected to still be here on a revamped, beautiful website (thank you Cory, of Sweet Pea Web Design) looking to (deep breath)

Tweet.

I’ve ( dare I say it?) developed staying power.  I have lists of post ideas, and a cache of drafts sitting-in-wait and they continue to hang out, as other topics inspired from the day-to-day become priority.  I’m honestly shocked at the pile-up, and eternally grateful.  Now the next step, one I should have taken awhile ago, is to promote Pulseonparenting.com.  Those in-the-know advise going beyond the safety of Facebook and get on LinkedIn and Twitter to join up with broader-reaching communities.  Not being one to self-promote, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of pushing my product.  Can’t I just hide in my house and write?  Sure I could, but I can still hide in my house and tweet and link up.

Ok, little-angel-on-my-shoulder (or is it the devil?), you have a good point.

In Helen Fielding’s third installment of the Bridget Jones series, Bridget Jones:  Mad About the Boy (2013) our desperately-seeking-self-improvement heroine discovers Twitter.  And gets a little obsessed with it.  Ok, not just a little.  Fielding captures so well Bridget’s obsessive quest for self-validation in follower numbers that it’s social commentary….which is part of what worries me about adding that little bird to my phone.

And, to be perfectly honest, I can’t get my head around all the hashtags and “@”‘s.  Even though I have ended Facebook posts with statements like “#whatswithallthebigholesinArizona” it’s supposed to be a joke.  But are those real Twitter, uh address-things?  I really don’t know.

But I’m gonna find out.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing the bird, as I know my trepidation comes from fear of the unknown, of stepping outside myself to ask an unknown potential audience to peruse my work.   And I realize that to truly spread my wings and put myself out there takes time, effort and a few risks.  And I would love, love, love to see where Pulseonparenting.com could go because I’m darn grateful to still be here posting after almost four years.  And, perhaps most importantly,

It’s the hard stuff that’s worth doing.

So over the next several weeks, I’ll be taking some time away from original writing to learn, use and promote on Twitter and LinkedIn.  My promo will be Hey, the countdown to 200 posts!!!! or something like that (must tweak before I tweet).  I’ll still publish weekly, with some reposts of my more popular work and posts I think show what this site is all about.  There’ll be a few new musings thrown in as I don’t want to get a rusty writer’s hand.  So please stay with me.  Tell your friends to take a peek at Pulseonparenting.com.  And please send any good vibes you can spare.

Because I’m gonna leave the nest.

The header from my original pulseonparenting.com website. It’s still one of my favorite shots.