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Hello, Twitter

About My Twitter Icon

My Twitter icon is an edited zoning map of the city where I currently reside. Before life got in the way, I wanted to be an urban planner and I run r/CitizenPlanners and r/UrbanForestry on Reddit.

By all accounts, I was beautiful in my youth. I was also sexually assaulted and sexually harassed and told it was my fault for how I looked. I choose to not have my face as my icon. I've thought a lot about it and I just don't want to engage with any of the cultural garbage concerning what a woman is supposed to look like. That's not a criticism of your choice to do so if you are using your face as your icon.

Me

I'm medically handicapped, so I'm sometimes on Twitter when I'm not at my best. Sometimes my tweets are really full of typos and the occasional horrifying social gaff -- or sometimes just something I THINK is a horrifying gaff because one of the side effects of my medical stuff is that I sometimes have a lot of biologically based anxiety.

At such times, I have no ability to tell if I'm overreacting or if I really said something dreadful. So I am prone to deleting a lot of stuff because I've realized it is full of typos or I am feeling like I said that really badly or I'm more or less hyperventilating into a paperbag about my feeling like the entire world hates me and I can do nothing right.

I cope as best I can, but my underlying medical condition is incurable, so stumbling my way forward is as good as it gets. Que sera, sera.

My Interests

My interests are pretty far flung. I'm interested in homelessness, housing, placemaking, my Native heritage, social stuff of various sorts including SJW type stuff, tech, women's issues, health topics, international stuff, language.

That list is not comprehensive. I'm a dabbler and I have many interests and I'm old enough that I sometimes know a lot about various things just because I'm not 15 anymore, basically.

Following and Unfollowing

Like any other human being on the planet, I tend to follow people who have things in common with me -- or appear to at first blush, which isn't always an accurate assessment. The quickest, easiest way to determine if people are tweeting things I want to see more of is to follow them and see what else they tweet.

Sometimes the result is "Oh. No. This is not my cup of tea." and then I unfollow them. Unfortunately, a lot of people with whom I have things in common have a lot of pain.

Among other things: I'm medically handicapped, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and spent several years homeless. I'm also a small part Cherokee and interested in my Native heritage, so I also follow a lot of Natives on Twitter though the world views me as a White woman. That tends to be kind of a touchy situation.

Me unfollowing someone is not a rebuke or a personal attack. Unfollowing someone on Twitter is the least worst, kindest answer if two people just don't click for some reason and only know each other through Twitter.

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