I'm standing in the line at the grocery store. I grab my phone, open Twitter, then start mindlessly scrolling. These moments blind me with a two minutes fog of consuming links and other people's thinking. I feel like some kind of blob that has so many things and opinions floating around in it's head. Meanwhile the line gets shorter, I return to the real world, and feel like somebody who has just woken up.

I hate this melancholic state of mind, but, somehow my brain always wants a short amount of information dose which causes a temporary chemical pump, then I turn back to a less happy state. This is what Twitter does with me. I'm not familiar with the science behind this phenomenon but I'm sure it's making me less happier and less focused.

Twitter was a fun place couple of years ago. This feeling has long gone, most of my timeline contains politics and pessimism. Pessimism towards everything. I've always hated this attitude, it makes me angry too. I was trying to filter this out, but what can I say? Couple of days ago, I unfollowed everybody and then followed back some Apple related bloggers, writers, and developers. I've also started tweeting in English. From now on, I will use Twitter for two things: talking about my content, and following Apple related stuff. Twitter is great as a backchannel for my blog. No more politics, religion, and more importantly, pessimism. When somebody isn't interesting anymore I unfollow.

I've also changed how I consume Twitter. Safari has the Shared Links section which is a dumb RSS reader but it can show links from Twitter as well. My RSS reading habits are fine, I read RSS usually once or twice a day, so mixing it with links from Twitter makes sense. I removed Twitter from my phone too, I can still use it from Safari if I want to.

Now let's talk about Facebook for a minute. Couple of my friends use it but I've never really paid too much attention to Facebook. While people on Twitter were arguing about it, Facebook became the communication app that everybody uses around me. Messenger is huge now, nowadays, I mostly use iMessage and Facebook Messenger on my iPhone.

Facebook has been working on their stream in the last couple of years to make it more interesting. It's still just a blob of crap by default, but I can tune it to my liking. You can actually follow stuff on Facebook as you do on Twitter, but you can also prioritize what you like, it's going to learn your interests. Basically this is what Twitter should has been evolved into now, but, I'm not planning to check it daily, since it's way less in volume.

What I'm definitely going to use Facebook for is connecting a bit more with my close friends. I can plan a garden party with them using Events, check out where they are with Nearby Friends, or just talk with them on Messenger. Having connection with friends is way more important than following bunch of random people. I've also made friends on Twitter but it starts to form into some kind of real-time news whatever. They even changed their category in the App Store from Social Networking to News. I'm starting to understand why.

I've started this blog more than a year now and I haven't written much lately here. I've found podcasts are the best way to express myself on the web quickly. Almost everything I was going to write about got mentioned in my podcasts. Blogs still have a place on the web and I've wanted to do something with mine, so I came up another idea: maybe I should use this site as a way to get experience writing in English, which alone is really interesting, but also very scary for me. I've never written anything longform publicly in English. It feels like a fresh start, although I haven't changed the subject I'm going to write about: it's still technology and productivity. I've just changed the language.

I'm working with a swiss company where we speak English daily, but that's a completely different thing than writing on the web, where anybody can read your stuff and be mad about it. As we know, everybody knows English better than the next person, so I'm trying to use this "collective knowledge" to my advantage. I'm open to every advice related to grammar — you might want to fix some of my phrases too — although I have no idea what type of feedback I'll get. I'm sure I'll have problems with the language since I'm not a native speaker. We'll see.

Keeping a blog is a big challenge alone and I have no prior experience writing in English other than daily emails and Skype messages. The best way to learn is to do it the hard way and write. Also, there is a couple of people who might enjoy following this challenge. I have no other goals with this blog currently, but it may form into something else later.

I started taking an English class to learn grammar again back in March. I also had English in high school, but I never paid much attention to the class and forgot a lot of stuff since then. Years passed by and I had to relearn lot of words and phrases by watching TV shows, movies and listening to podcasts. I've been reading almost everything in English since I started working as a web developer. It's okay to start with, but the problem remains: my grammar sucks and I want to get better at it. My English class has ended and I haven't practiced the language enough.

But why this matters so much? First, not knowing English well enough is a problem. I usually work with people abroad, so great communication is a key. Second, I have same plans to do stuff for international readers, but that's still far away. Currently I'm not even comfortable with the longform writing of English. This is going to be a multistep process.

Couple of months ago I thought I'm good at English, but I'm not. I'm just as bad as anybody else. Writing stuff comfortable in a different language is a skill I can learn, but I have to practice it. So, here we go, I'm doing it. Just follow my stuff here and don't hesitate to fix my mistakes, but also follow up with me in email regarding topics I'm going to write about. I'll try to learn from every feedback I get. Just be nice. ?