I'm Leaving My Typos There

I’m new to Twitter.

Well, that’s not really accurate. I’m new to Twitter in the same way someone might feel new after moving back to the town where they went to high school. I’ve been here before, but things are different. I am different.

Still, getting back on Twitter makes me feel like I’ve reverted to a previous version of myself. I first had a Twitter account when I was in high school. I’m an adult now, but most of my insecurities have remained, my intelligence has grown slowly and incrementally (I want to say exponentially, but that’s not true), and my haircut is more or less the same (the beard is new).

All that to say, my hands shook as I typed out my first tweet. I decided to play it safe and shared a review of Lonesome Dove, a book I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed. You can read the tweet for yourself and see if you spot anything amiss…

Oof.

If you were wondering, you can’t edit tweets. Of course, you’re probably not new to Twitter, so you probably knew that. I didn’t.

I noticed the mistake a day after the tweet had posted, so a few other tweets had piled on top of it (hiding it slightly?). Still, I immediately moved my cursor toward the delete button. Then I noticed my second tweet.

SO. MUCH. WORSE.

You’re and your. What a rookie move! At this point, my face turned red, my palms got sweaty, and I experienced legitimate embarrassment. I had put my words out into the void and my words had errors and the void had laughed. Sure, I couldn’t hear the laughter, but that somehow made it worse.

Now, I’m sitting on my couch writing this post with the same level of confidence as my 10th-grade self. I feel like a freaking noob.

But I’ve decided not to delete those tweets. They’re still there. Why? Because I’m not perfect. This website isn’t perfect. My writing is not perfect, nor will it ever be. And that’s ok with me—something my 10th-grade self never could have said.

I’m leaving my typos there. Because if you’re new to this website, or to my writing, you should know that I am ankle deep in this water. I am learning how to write. I will always be learning how to write.

***

When I was in high school, I wanted to skateboard. I played sports, but wasn't good enough to be a jock, liked books, but wasn't smart enough to be a nerd, and made jokes, but didn't talk enough to be the class clown. For some reason, the skater kids always attracted me because they simultaneously had a label and didn't seem to care about labels. I didn't know how that was possible, but I wanted it.

So, I got a skateboard. It had Spiderman on the bottom (very edgy, I know), and I spent an entire week trying to learn how to do a kickflip in my driveway. Before I went to the skate park, I thought I needed to have it down—that I needed to know what I was doing.

The end of that story is that I never learned how to do a kickflip, and I have no idea what happened to my Spiderman skateboard. But I’m done waiting until I know what I’m doing. I want to try to get better in a place where people can see me fail.

I don’t like that my tweets have typos in them. I don’t even like how some of the sentences in this essay sound. But these are my failed kickflips.

Welcome to my skate park. Join me in busting my shins.