Election Night Anxiety and Self-Care
While that question applies to me as well, I should start thinking about how to improve my Twitter game
As much as I wanted to resist the urge to check back at recent developments election news, I couldn’t help it. I checked Twitter and almost every news outlet online hourly. I am a journalist who is relaying the Sundial staff recent updates on Slack (at my own will). And I’m a self-declared news junkie since I was 10, with election tracking being one of my keen interests.
And I too am exhausted.
I’m sure that many Americans feel the same way as I do. As I have seen on social media, many are afraid of violence, depending on who wins. Even my parents are scared of what could happen knowing we are living in perhaps the most divisive time in the nation.
So whenever I wanted to keep my mind off of election news, I would either finish up my school work, drawing, cooking, playing the drums or listening to whatever song I might like on Spotify. (I’ll be honest, music is my escape from everything and experimenting in the kitchen can be therapeutic for me.) Everyone has their ways to maintain self-care and we should use them as many times as possible. We don’t want to be tense and cranky all the time!
Curious about how others would think, I turned to Twitter to ask the following the day before Election Day:
And then I asked this on Wednesday:
I kinda knew what was going to happen, given my history on Twitter. As I’m still trying to build a following, nobody replied to either post. I was dismayed, but I knew that it was mostly on my part for not building a profile that could boost my chances for engagement.
However, a sigh of relief came from tweet analytics. On that first tweet, 171 people saw it. But how was it that 5 people read the whole thread? Meanwhile in that second tweet, I was surprised at seeing that 471 saw the tweet.
Laura De Leon, one of my class colleagues, suggested me in an earlier social media outreach assignment that I should invest more time and commitment to my Twitter feed. Meanwhile, I thought to myself, ‘how do I gain more followers on my Twitter feed.’ Somewhere around Wednesday, I began thinking about whether I would have attempted asking this question to people that my family and friends know, similar to the test questions. But I wasn’t sure if I could pull that off.
Also, I barely joined Instagram while I’m learning how to use it(I have less than 5 followers as of now), and I thought if I could have relayed a story to my brother, who in turn would reach out to people he would know, might have worked, but I wasn’t sure if it would be feasible for this project. Maybe, despite my tiny number of followers, I could have garnered at least one or two replies.
I may have found pieces of citizen journalism asking people about their thoughts on the election (aside from traditional media), but I know it’s out there. This election doesn’t seem to end, and at the time of this writing, we’re now in Day 4 with nobody reaching 270 yet. I have no idea how will people, including me, will get through once this election is over.
