She wrote a new intro for the upcoming paperback release. A condensed excerpt, taken from the full text available free on Amazon:
Quote:
For the past couple of years, I’ve been envious of every woman I saw who was able to leave Twitter and maintain her career. For those of us who crave a steady flow of information and interaction with like-minded people (especially in the midst of a global pandemic that sees us all isolated at home), it’s incredibly difficult to stay away.
I’ve tried to leave Twitter in the past, and taken multiple extended breaks, but it’s never really stuck. I’ve felt too out of the loop when it comes to industry news, to world news, and even to the constant stream of in-jokes and low-stakes controversies drummed up on the site each day. But after this latest wave of harassment, something in me broke. I asked a few people, including my agent, Noah Ballard, for advice. Could I leave Twitter? If not forever, for a substantial period of time? Months? Half a year? And still be able to push my work out to my followers? Would everyone stop reading my writing? Would I lose the ability to market future work? Would I lose my voice?
In the end, it didn’t matter. I’d recently turned to therapy to deal with the constant misogyny online and in the industry and talking through my feeling with my therapist made it clear that remaining in a space that was so damaging to me personally wasn’t negotiable. I’ve been harassed to within an inch of my sanity. It has affected my mental health and therefore the lives of my husband and sons and my parents and siblings. Enough was enough. It was time. After all, if Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka can drop out of major international competitions to focus on their mental health, I can certainly log off Twitter.
As of the time of writing this note, I’ve been off Twitter for five days, which feels more like five months. I feel completely out of the loop but I am sleeping again. My heart rate has come down to its previous level, and then seven beats per minute lower than that. Everything feels lighter, softer, more manageable. I can feel the desire to create slowly coming back. Without Twitter, I’m going to have to learn new ways to fight because, for so long, screaming into the void on Twitter felt like fighting for something. And in a small way it was. But I’m no longer interested in small victories. It’s time for big victories.
That was written in October. By November she was back on Twitter.
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To IkeSouth, bigfan wrote:
Are you stoned or pissed off, or both, when you create these postings?