I can still remember my first tweet.

Image: Ranjit Bhatnagar via Flickr, Creative Commons

And thanks to myfirsttweet.com, I can share it with you.

Oh. My. God.

How unbelievably ridiculous. Or pathetic. Use whatever adjective you’d like to make fun of me.

What can I say?

I was new. I didn’t know how this “Twitter thing” worked.

So I answered the question that Twitter used to ask at the time (what are you doing?) as honestly I could.

Hopefully, I was going to go eat a dosa.

I’m pleased to tell you

that I did, indeed, go eat a dosa that day.

Now, about two and a half years later, I talk about a lot of other stuff.

PR, social media, and news articles I’ve found interesting, for example.

I’ve used it to find sources and new handbags.

And yes, I still talk about food. Maybe not all that often… but I still do.

Because if my Twitter stream is an extension of who I am, then it will reflect just that.

Who I am.

Not who someone else wants me to be.

And guess what?

That food talk has helped me make connections with people I’d otherwise never know, let alone work with.

And because I’m as much who I am on Twitter as I am in 3D, work comes to me… the kind of work I want to say “yes” and not “no” to.

Have I “grown up” in my use of Twitter and other platforms?

Sure.

But I don’t forget where I started… and I still have a ways to go.

So if you’re trying to figure out social media, and are about where I was a year ago, listen up.

Stop worrying about what other people tell you to do and not do.

To say and not say.

Be human, be decent, be yourself.

And the rest will fall into place.

And if they unfollow or “defriend” you, so what? Are you really worse off than when you started?

So, what will you have for lunch?