I made my Twitter account public yesterday.

I’d been considering it since I started actively using the medium recently (for more than just conference chatter and the once-a-month update, that is), and I finally decided it was just time.

Yes, I know, it’s not exactly a monumental thing,. It’s a tiny, inconsequential, minuscule thing. But hush, and bear with me. I had developed a real appreciation of the privacy of the thing, that what I said wouldn’t be visible to just any acquaintance who happened to stumble on the link. It was reassuring, and everything that Facebook isn’t when it comes to the reasons I hardly speak on Facebook anymore.

It was a little bit tucked away, and I could control who followed me, and I liked it.

But, see, I’m planning to start blogging again. And, for once, when I say planning, I actually mean I’ve started writing several things, finished a couple of others, and am considering different manners of maintaining and of continuing. I’ve thought through what kind of blog i want it to be, to start with at least, and have worked through a few of the reasons why I often decline to write publicly. I’ve decided it’s time to ignore the fact that I really have nothing particularly worth saying, say it anyways, and enjoy the act of saying.

One of the biggest changes I know I have to make is to begin engaging into the blogging community. Or blogging communities. Blogging cults? All of those. I read a good number of blogs, but there’s this little thing: I’m a terrible commentor. I never know what to say, and I never feel like it matters if I do — so I just don’t. I’ve never emailed a blogger, and I wouldn’t even know what to say — so I just don’t.

This makes engaging a community a little bit difficult.

So I’ll be working on that, on turning the act of reading blogs into an act of conversation, but it’s going to take some time to leave that comfort zone of anonymous reader.

In the meantime, there is Twitter. I’ve already broken whatever wall kept me from using Twitter actively before, and I may as well use that.

So I made my Twitter account public. It’s a bit unnerving. It may mean nervously looking over my digital shoulder a lot. And I’ll have to pay attention to what it does to my desire or lack of to say things, anythings.

But it’s a step forward. It’s a start. And I like it.

(But if I flake and don’t post anything for awhile, you are all welcome to mock me.)