So I've been playing around with Twitter for some time now and an incident this last week made me think: um, am I a Bulgarian blogger?

To lead up to this question I think a short musing on twitter is in order.  First, if you regularly poke around on my blog you may have even found and read my twitter feed on the right side of my blog post when you were hoping for a new blog post (only to be disappointed not to find, yet again, no new post). If not, take a look for it now.

I am writing this post with the assumption that many (if not most of you) now know that Twitter lets the user post comments/updates/questions/rants that are 140 characters long.  In fact you can post links to blogs to pictures to cool websites using Twitter.  The sky is the limit really.  I wont get too into the lingo of tweets, twittering or retweeting because I can only imagine that if you know the lingo you'll be annoyed with me or if you haven't gotten on the twitter bandwagon I think that you'll begin to glaze over with the seemingly absurdity of the application.

The most important thing to understand for this post is that each post on twitter is a tweet and that anyone can read your tweets (unless you've changed the security settings).  If people like what you've been tweeting (writing) they can decide to follow you so that your tweets show up in their twitter feed.  In other words it's easy for them to follow you because what you're writing shows up on their home page along with the other people they are following on twitter.

I hope you're still with me at this point.  Now I am going to return to the thought: <em>um, am I a Bulgarian blogger?<!--more--></em>

Here's how it happened last week I got an email about a new follower on twitter.  I decided I'd see if I knew this person or if they were following me out of some other interest.  Say: Bulgaria.

What I found was a couple of pretty basic tweets on what the person was up too (dishes, work and going out) and a list of the 21 people this person was following.

Here's a short version of the list:
<ul>
	<li>Pete Cashmore</li>
	<li>The Library of Congress</li>
	<li>Times.com</li>
	<li>StumbleUpon</li>
	<li>Elenk</li>
	<li>Jimmy Carr</li>
	<li>GeorgeStephanopoulos</li>
	<li>Neil Gainman</li>
	<li>ExecTweets</li>
	<li>Newt Gingrich</li>
	<li>Rada e</li>
	<li>Terry Pratchett</li>
	<li>The White House</li>
	<li>Jack Welch</li>
</ul>
Oh yeah and I was on the list.  So I laughed and laughed.  Of the 21 people he was following a few seemed to be friends, three of us I know write blogs about Bulgaria (Elenko, Rada e and me) and then there were the big names like George Stephanopoulos,  Pete Cashmore, The White House and Time.come. I think it was the ridiculousness of the high and the low, the popular and the unpopular as well as the small number of people he was following that made me laugh and laugh.

That's when I was struck by the thought: this person is following me not as an American--I can't compare to George Stephanopoulos, The Library of Congress, Time.com or even Newt Gingrich(oh and for the record, I never imagined I'd see my name grouped with his). Likewise, he's not following me because I am kind-of famous like Pete Cashmore, Jimmy Carr, Neil Gainman or Jack Welch.  Rather, he's following me because I write regularly about Bulgaria.

So I found myself in the ranks of Elenko and Rada E who also write blogs and tweet about the happenings of a life in Bulgaria.  But they are Bulgarians.  I am not.  I follow them because I think that they have their fingers on the pulse of life in Bulgaria for twenty-somethings.  Elenko with his blog <a href="http://eenk.com/">Eenk.com </a>which he writes in Bulgarian (and I regularly look at the pictures and try to sound out the post titles) and Rada (who happens to be Elenko's sister) and writes the blog <a href="http://sosofia.com/">sosofia.com</a> in English and I love reading for inspiration and motivation.

In the end I think that I was laughing mostly because never in a million years did I think I'd see myself grouped with any of these people.  I am just an American living in Bulgaria trying to figure out which way is up and trying to have a good time while doing that.  I think that I was also laughing because it's both flattering and terrifying to see yourself in such a light.  I don't think of myself as an expert, I am definitely not anyone famous and all I know about Sofia and Bulgaria is what I've learned in the last in year.  But nonetheless for some reason people read what I write and say to themselves: I want to follow her on twitter.  I want to know all of the mundane things she does, says and thinks.

And when I put it this way, it kind of makes me wish that I more interesting things to write about.

One last thing, if you still want to follow me on twitter, after this well un-glowing review of my life, myself and my writing, you can do so <a href="http://twitter.com/CarolynEmigh">here</a>.