When the man comes 'round

Spent all night prepping blogs for AVEN and thinking about how to take on the DSM. Here I am overcommitting, but it feels so GOOD. Last night I deep cleaned the very soul out of the refrigerator, then helped out with A-date. Ran into some very cool kids swing dancing before, I'm hoping to make some friends out of the mix. E-mail is sssllloowwwlly getting caught up on, and I've turned Asexual Underground into a blog and podcast, which makes it way more fun. Still need to get my interview with Carol Queen up. I'm joining Net Impact and going to bed...

Some semblance of victory

Back from DC, where the good times ran rich. Had a pretty incredibly lobbying session with the PsTB, and got some great time with fam and crew. Now I'm catching up on sleep and full-on grindin'. Made a nifty little dinner and hung out with LT, then fixed up analytics on her blog and burned through about 30 e-mails that had been piling up (40 to go.) Ran into JL online for the first time in months and got some good catchin' up.

Got my groove back

After a weekend of procrastinating, a night of dancing and a day of bouncing around barbeques I feel back in the game. I just put together not one but two blogs for AVEN, and should be able to roll out more with relative ease. Now all I have to do is clean my room and look forward to tomorrow's workshop....

Down to Business

Party planning proceding perfectly. I'm settling on the tortellini (Aliza's never had it!) Got home and made a shytload of a light dinner, caught up with Andrew and Cole, caught up on e-mail from the week and finished fixing Eli and Jack's computers. Feels solid.

Bitch Magazine!

Just interviewed KL Pereira, a very cool reporter from Bitch magazine. I'm getting back into the podcast thing! Got some good time in with P2 in on Mon night and have been on a gleeful spurt of creativity and productivity ever since.

• E-mail interview with a Turkish reporter
• Beginning to wrangle Wordpress MU
• Podcast interview
• 3 intense dinners

Now I've just gotta figure out what to do for the party this weekend...

Talk @ Stanford

I think I have an unhealthy relationship with public speaking. I feel the need to blow minds when talking about asexuality, which leads me to intellectually overreach, have too much ego, take up more space than I should and generally be a less than ideal speaker. Things could have gone better, and I feel like I owed it to Karli to have the space to do her thing. I'll have to make it up to her somehow.

GG Happy Hour

The Green Guerrilla happy hour was phenomenal! Lots of people showed up, tons of connected professional activists (it would be good to get more of a mixed crowd, but we can dream.) After I had a burrito and nice long conversation with Sarah Klem, which turned to relationship stuff. Talked about how I have a hard time getting how people would be attracted to me in certain ways. Interesting, now I'm working on going to bed early...

Weekends Kill Me

Seriously. Wake up, haul ass to the Embarcadero, register people to vote (or I would have if the event I was going to had any participants), read up on strategic options for social movements, meet up with Peta, talk queer politics and fascism, run into a cool Navajo guy studying drafting on his way back home to New Mexico, see Iron Man with a dreamy, DREAMY RDJ, go to Chris' b-day and retirement party where I get a shot at reconnecting with Karuna. Crash. Clean my room, swing dancing, arezmendi, GGAG meeting, emotionally intense but fantastic dinner w/ PK, then back here to enjoy a new pasta maker, get a bunch of AVEN e-mail out of the way and put up a podcast for the Bro. Plus I remembered to call my mom.

Volunteer Day!

Had a great time at a VM volunteer day. We went and volunteered at a track meet with a bunch of middle school and younger kids. I worked the softball toss, measuring how far kids could throw a softball and tossing the softballs back. Pretty incredible to watch 7 year old girls chucking softballs as hard as they can for hours and hours.

Got home and finally began to catch up on my e-mail. I'm down to 40. Eli and Jack had awhole event, but I wound up napping for 5 hours before really doing anything. Our recent housemeeting has inspired me to be cleaner and to build a going to bed routine, which I'll try out all next week. Here's to midnight...

SF2SF2SF

Back from Santa Fe, where I had a great time and a million pictures. Good chance to clear my head, long mostly quiet walks with Dad. Got some good perspective, a new jacket and waterbottle, more I won't discuss just now. Came home and kept it simple- cleaned my room and chilled out a bit.

Gave a talk at SF state today on VM, followed by a low key, chat-filled green guerrilla meeting. This grad school limbo is beginning to wear on me, I'm getting very ready to know what's going on with my life and so I know what to feel about it. Did some more asexual studies work and looked into timeline stuff for Mandy...

I Hate My Birthday

Jack just had the coolest birthday party ever. We dressed up as fantasy creatures and went to play minigolf, all and all an unbelievable experience. Of course, it's late April and I'm booked solid for weeks with no time to plan my birthday, yet again. These things never work out.

I'm grumpy because another party that I'd been looking forward to/stressing about for a couple of weeks got cancelled at the last minute last night and because I woke up with an awful neck pain that's sort of ruined my day. I'm trying to push/medicate my way through enough to relax and make propoer use of my one day to myself in a good while.

-Laundry
-Fixing Jack's Computer
-Figuring out Grad School Finances
- Cooking Lunches for the week
- Reading a few chapters from my social movements book

I'll leave it at that. Hopefully a few AVEN chapter things can get attended to as well...

Man, that trip really took it out of me. Great to see DC though, and the Yale interview went well I think. This week: stayed caught up on e-mail and slept. Today- went to see Zombie Strippers with Jack for his birthday (surprisingly incredible) and wrote a thank you note for my interview. Feeling ok for a Friday.

Sorprendar

Studied me some spanish. Went to a YouTube thing for nonprofits and did a little networking, then had a good long phone conversation reconnecting with STL Ali. Chat/work party at Aliza's where I typed up some Prop E research.

Ug..

Been feeling sick and crappy all day. Had dinner w/ P2 who's also feeling sick, after a relaxing weekend. Researched Prop E, caught up on some AVEN e-mail, bought the soundtrack to the Wire. Here's hoping it's worth $17. Yesterday-made ravioli from scratch. Good times.

Spanish Class and Little Else

Though I got to have a good conversation with Senor Sunshine. Cooked dinner, did a little laptop research for Jack and reconnected with Cole. Pas de SROI.

Went to a friend's birthday tonight and saw PK, who's back in town. Came home to talk A1 pranks w/ Eli and Jack and study Spanish. I'm realizing I have no time for the aforementioned CL folks. Last night- hang out w/ Aliza, watch Sex and the City and write half a GGAG article. Tonight I'm watching The Wire and feeling allright 'bout it, but it may be getting time to pick up some pace...

Weekend Out

Went hiking this weekend, which I desperately needed. Got a great walk in on Sat, then camped over in Big Basin and came back here in time for a relaxing afternoon of catching up on AVEN stuff. I went to the E bay for a concert at Karuna's house, some amazing artist who sang Hindi songs all night, then came back in time to record a podcast for my brother.

Great weekend, but not too much of a dent in the broader things I'm up to. Hopefully this week...

Heavy Lifting

That's right:

• Gave blood
  
• Got groceries
  
• Moved my friends' couch through a goddamn labarynth of stairways on the side of a hill
• Made pizza from scarth
• Made 2 loaves of bread for tomorrow's hike
• Wrote Winch
  

Bright Colors!

Yesterday:

• Lunch w/ Ellen
• Went to visit Ruby and Sam, saw their new apt for the first time
• The cabin this weekend is no go! Did some frantic but fruitless research on an alternative w/ Aliza
  
• Wrote an article for the GGAG website
• Was stressed out, anxious and therefore self-centered all day for no reason
  

The Zan

I probably shouldn't talk too much about work. Suffice it to say that something big (beta) ended very well today and otherwise I failed to get done quite as much stuff as I would like to.

After work my friend Zan came over for dinner. We just reconnected for the first time since 4th grade, and have been clicking with only a few minor bumps. We had a great high energy conversation, she talks very fast and very passionately about green stuff. She has more of a "isn't this all cool!" vibe to her than the "let's get empowered to address the insurmountable environmental and social justice issues facing our society right now" that I'm used to, which gave her a new and useful perspective but which I had to adjust to a little. I wanted to get excited with her without having to worry about whether social justice and some other important baselines in the conversation would get kept in mind, it was a cool exercise.

She updated me about her life, which sounds like it involves a lot of sports. Fantastic. Could use some outdoor/sportsey relationships as a way to unwind and introduce new folks and get a powerful new social skillset. Plus our convo was high energy, very smart, and went for two and a half hours without seriously pausing, so we've established a great baseline for hanging out more. She's about to start working at Google, so time's gonna get scarce for her. Hopefully we can sement some sort of a biweekly-ish tradition right quick, or something else to keep the relationship solid.


Now the constant dilemma-having done NOTHING for AVEN today, do I chill out because it's 11PM and watch the Wire? Just 'cuz it's hear? Maybe I knock one of two things off of some list first and start at 11:30....

The Inspiration

I have a strange love-hate obsession with Craigslist dating, the way that I am obsessed with eating food from taco bell even though it is evil, unhealthy and gross. Taco Bell is OF THE PEOPLE, the day when I can no longer relate to the reasons why people drive 40 minutes just to order a Baja Chalupe is the day when I have rendered myself uselessly our of touch with most people's life experience.

Craigslist dating is to community building what day trading is to running a business. It can get the job done, but it's risky, crass, and not really based on the fundamental forces that create value in the world, IMHO. For that reason I'm really interested in seeing how it works and why people do it.

The best way to figure that out seems to be experimentation, so I'm trying to put things out there and understand better how relationships actually come out of what happens there. If I can further flesh out my community in the process then bonus, but I don't think that there are gaping holes to fill right now (cuddling would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath for this to be the mechanism that makes that happen.)

In this spirit of experimentation I got all inspired to write a craigslist posting yesterday, which made me realize how fun it is to just account for the stuff I do. Here it is:

There’s a lot you can tell about someone by how they spend their time. Here’s my week so far:

Sat- Woke up at 5AM to take on a pundit on Fox News radio, totally got him to agree with my frame on the whole Elliot Spitzer thing. Celebrated with a 4 hour hike, then went to the bday party of a friend who I haven’t seen since 4^th grade. We caught up by randomly throwing out years in our lives and saying what happened in them.

Sun-Swing dancing in the park! Dropped off $200 that I’d fundraised earlier that week, grabbed pizza from Arezmendi and finished a book I was reading on oil politics. Met up w/ an accountant friend of mine to do my taxes, then made a tomato, feta, basil and tofu salad for dinner*. Played around with some new blog software and wrote a postcard to my friend who is doing biological research at some game preserve in South Africa. Flip out over how much the basil on my windowsill has grown.

Mon- Rollerblade to work. I’m trying to get all of my friends who work in the Chinatown area to have lunch together by figuring out the holes in their respective circles of friends and doing some platonic matchmaking. I’m having reasonable success. Rollerblade home and make another tomato salad (ever had one food you’re OBSESSED with for like a week?) and meet w/ folks about affordable housing initiatives currently underway in the city. You heard what’s up with 98 on the June ballot? Nuts. At the meeting my friend brings me some flowers for no reason, super sweet. I walk her home and her and her boyfriend and I all cook together and joke around while they pressure me to post an ad on craigslist. I go home, make chocolate chip cookies from scratch** and go to bed.

Tues- Take cookies to work! Work on some software which will (fingers crossed) get a few thousand folks to volunteer next year. Meet with a friend for coffee to joke around and nerd out about ways to be creative/create social change and have it feed your life without burning you out. She gives me shit because I’m obsessed with community building as the answer to everything, but whatevs. After work meet up w/ some progressive kids to drink Tecate and discuss a voter guide for the June ballot. Get in an intense and interesting discussion w/ this kid who’s pro nuclear power as a solution to climate change (I’m not). Get home and watch Arrested Development (amazing show) with my housemates while cracking jokes, eating a burrito, and setting up an online network for queer folks from random parts of the world to get advice and support.

*In the interests of full disclosure- after I ate the salad I was still hungry so I had a hotpocket. I’m from St. Louis, MO so crappy microwaved foods have these strangely grounding food-of-my-heritage feel to them. Totally worth it.

**Chocolate chip cookies are a thing for me, I make them ALL THE TIME. My recipe has evolved pretty substantially over the years, it’s got antioxidants and omega3’s and all kinds of craziness and is incredibly tasty. I keep the dough in the fridge so I can keep making fresh ones throughout the week.

Drop me a line and let me know how your week’s been so far.

The Plan

Most things, 80, 90, 99.9% of the things that I start I do not follow through on. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing, but blog, don't get too comfortable. Take fair warning.

I've realized that I'm a lot happier going to bed at night when I have a sense of accomplishment for the day. For better or worse, my self worth is deeply tied to getting shit done, and if that's the case then self worth for me demands good accounting. So the idea is to log in and write, eloquently or in half a half-conscious sentence, whatever my sorry carcass spent the day dragging to fruition. Here goes.