At 9:28AM, I downloaded the Bluesky app, entered the invite code my Tweep Karen Walton (Canadian screenwriter) had just sent me via Twitter DM, and joined Bluesky!
I’d entered my email last Fall on their waiting list, then realizing I wasn’t going to get an invite code anytime soon, last week I launched a Substack newsletter (Mind Explorer) partly to shortcut the wait, and only then did I learn the shortcut was kind of long. I resigned myself to a long wait even though a sense of “I must join now” filled me with an urgency I sometimes get to do something. In this case, I had no agency sooooo…up to God, you know.
Like I have before, I replied to another one of my Tweeps who’d tweeted about being on Bluesky. Went into the kitchen to make my novel-reading-time pour-over iced coffee, and Twitter notified me of a DM. Read it.
I nearly hit the ceiling in my excitement! She’d sent me an invite code!!
I wanted to use Shireen as my handle but like when I joined Twitter, it was already taken. So ShireenJ (again) it is. I thought of using ShireenAnne, but like on Twitter each handle’s characters aren’t excluded from the overall tweet/post’s character count. Plus I thought having the same handle may make it easier for others to find me. Continuity and all that.
I used my duck avatar against the blue sky in a photo I shot years ago of a budding tree against a blue sky for my profile pic.
When I joined Twitter in 2008, I didn’t know anyone (shades of joining Facebook in 2007). I didn’t know how it worked. My first tweet was whatever came into my tired brain sent out into the void. My first Bluesky post was a reply to Karen to thank her.
