I spent the first couple months of 2018 reading through The Lymond Chronicles, a six-book series of historical novels written by Dorothy Dunnett in the 1960s. I picked up the first one, A Game of Kings, because a podcast I follow had recommended it. When the first 50 pages proved to be VERY Scottish slang heavy, I tweeted the podcaster and asked for encouragement to keep going. That interaction evolved into me live-tweeting my Intense Emotions and becoming Twitter famous.
Let me be very honest. By “Twitter famous,” I mean I gained about 50 followers who do not know me in real life, and I had a regular group of 5-10 people who would interact with me about these books, including a couple people who I started to consider friends. An unexpected highlight was when the author of Flora Segunda (one of my favorite books, check out this review I wrote in 2013) liked and retweeted me because apparently she also loves Francis Crawford of Lymond.
…And then I finished the series. And two or three people stuck around to like my real life thoughts, but mostly it ended. I no longer woke up to 20 notifications. My fifteen minutes of fame were over. And I could SEE how it had become an addiction for me, the likes and retweets firing dopamine hits to my brain that I didn’t know how to do without.
So I worked through it, dealt with my return to obscurity, and am now doing just fine!
HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA.
Just kidding.
I bought Dorothy Dunnett’s eight-book House of Niccolo series because I feel so empty inside without regular validation from total strangers!!
The end, no personal growth, just the sad but relatable truth.
