5: Twitter
In 2009, I was 300 yards behind the social media starting line, and had sat down in the grass, like Ferdinand the Bull. Not going to do it. I finally got a Facebook page, which was pretty easy to handle, and kinda fun. But FB also put me a step closer to Twitter, the obvious next step. Twitter is made for the young and the quick, and I was neither. I was a 50-year-old, 10-drafts-before-its-done kind of writer. Joined anyway. Stumbled. Posted lame comments by the dozen. Then got the hang of it at last, kinda, and at this point I consider the fact that I haven’t been laughed off the platform one of the great achievements of my professional life. Big shout out to Rottmouth and Not Dane Reynolds, and the rest of the Twitter’s nameless shock troops. They’ve made surf media twice as smart and five times as funny, and the reason I get up in the morning and work has a lot to do with wanting to see what those guy are up to.