« February 2007 | Main | April 2007 »
Hello, Plateau.
It's been a terrific couple of weeks, including a tremendous trip to CA. I don't travel well, the security guards took my hair conditioner, but my spirit is completely revived. I am exercising every day, eating vegetables, working like a dog, it's all good. Even the bad parts.
Anyway, still fatblogging, but expect to see this number for a while.
Hope all is well with you!
In the Virtual Communities talk by Jeff Henshaw and Catherine Winters, 2 products were demoed: 2nd Life, and Xbox Live. Xbox Live is largely set up to give people a sense of accomplishment. Jeff said that there are a percentage of purely what he called “story gamers” who do not go online for the competitive aspect, and instead play the game out of the box with little interaction with other people online. These story gamers are in the minority in Xbox Live. To reward the majority, there is the Gamerscore, which builds up points for your playing on a social basis across all Xbox titles. They also have a cute little glyph for the G (I like using the word glyph.)
The reason I am not a gamer is temporary. I was a gamer and will be a gamer again. However, where I am now in my life, if I play a game and am productive at solving a problem, I feel like I have DONE SOMETHING. This is terrible because then I do not feel like working or doing something else. It’s time to take a break. No sense that the game itself was supposed to be a break in and of itself. So it all kinda breaks down from there. What I really need in my life is (well, not REALLY need, but you get the idea) is an activity that feels completely unproductive. Something that feels like a break. Something that starts the guilt timer going and sends me back to some supposedly productive activity when it maxxes out and I feel bad enough for those delicious few minutes of pointlessness.
Enter 2nd life. Catherine gave a stunning demo of bizarre and pointless social interaction that was interesting and fascinating for what it did NOT have. There was no urgency or sense of panic. There was random social subtleties everywhere. There was the sense that time could go on and on. Sure, you could look at the game as a money making venture and consider that equivalent to points, but then again you can look at the real world that way too. It does not seem to be the point of 2nd life. And that is the challenge of the game. If you are type A, you will be very confused and not know where to hang your hat. Then again, you will feel as if you actually had a break.
Proposed: a first rule of entertainment. A new rule. People don’t want to do anything. People want pointless. I say, let’s give it to ‘em! (In small quantaties of course.)
While listening to “How to be a Citizen Journalist” by Travis Smith, I vividly felt how little I know about reporting. His crisp slides on how to bring a seasoned profession into the topsy turvy world of the grassroots internet, left me wondering what that seasoned profession was all about in the first place.
For a good example of how little I know about reporting, consider this example from my life around 1998 or so. My roommate had a friend who was a reporter, she would come over on occasion and we knew each other pretty well. She found out where I worked at the time, and was very interested to know that I worked with a certain person Ms. A who was in politics. I had the odd sensation of being sortof interviewed but not really. This led to several layers on inconsistencies regarding policy: 1) Since I knew that this friend was a reporter, I clammed right up when being asked questions. These questions I would have answered freely to any other person, just because I like to talk. 2) When the friend told me I would be able to answer her questions “off the record,” I still clammed up. I was not the company spokesperson and not interested in giving background information for any story, period, due to the stress it would bring me in the workplace worrying about fallout from overstepping my bounds. So I acted a bit rude probably, and clammed up, not like I had anything interesting to say anyway. Which leads to the third and implicit policy inconsistency: 3) If you are talking to a reporter, and she doesn’t say “off the record,” does it assume you are on the record?
As bloggers, we look for material everywhere. One poetry slam I attended in San Francisco with my dh had a terrific performance by a poet who threw a story at us in the audience, regarding his breakup with his girlfriend (what else), where the girl comes to terms with her guy being a poet. Her parting line: “I’m not your girlfriend, I’m your MATERIAL!!!” Which correctly sums up the state most of us bloggers would be in if our material could yell at us.
My key question regarding being on the record. What is the default? What is polite? And most importantly, what is DONE (are people usually impolite and gather all material on the record unless explicitly asked not to?)
According to Jason Mogus, in the Northern Voice session “User Generated Contact and Activist Campaigns,” the tipping point for climate change occurred somewhere around Jan 2007. People are coming together in a cumulative way, there being as many as 50 local meetups organized for the Vancouver BC area in just one month. This begs the question of how this tipping point occurred.
This winter was unusually harsh for illness around the pacific NW. In fact, some refer to the Moose Flu for those who went to Northern Voice healthy and returned to face a week of the crud. Myself, I escaped the crud only by having had it already. There I was, some week in January, in bed and watching TV. Like he has every sick day I’ve had when I was a little girl, Bob Barker came onscreen. It was very different watching him as an adult. The sets were old and 70’s looking. It brought back memories of that episode of Seinfeld where the set from the Merv Griffin show came into Kramer’s hands. You could see the dust even though the cameras. The contestants were way fatter than I remembered. And they were about my age. The font of their name tags was the same. They stood in those little podiums in the showcase showdown, straining in their stirrup pants to not suffer the indignity of bidding “over” yet numerically closer.
Bob was older, of course, and maintained a kind of dignity that his sets did not. He shook as he held the microphone, knowing the song of the lines so well, introducing the models with the clever themed presentations. Of course this was not nervousness but simply old age. This was one kind of gift to us he gave. Another gift was tacked on right at the end, where Bob took 2 seconds of airtime to remind us to “please control the pet population. Spay or neuter your pet.” These 2 seconds under the complete control of someone so respected just for the longevity of his work, not to mention the cultural signpost it provides. This is the reverse of blogging, heroic, one person, doing what he wants to broadcast to millions for the duration of our lives with that 2 seconds. In blogging, we make one statement that may or may not be read, and stands on its own as a reference. What Bob had was like a monarchy, powerful but ultimately not scalable. As a blogger, you have democracy or even anarchy, thriving on the association of person to person and meme to meme.
Given these two experiences, it seems to me that the reason the tipping point for climate change occurred, is it had both the monarchy and the democracy. It had Al Gore, at the top, and environmentalist hippie do gooder bloggers (and I mean this with the greatest respect) forming the long base of the pyramid. Perhaps working from both sides is the key to the tipping point?
I made it to CA and very happy to be staying with friends and going to the Solutions retreat tomorrow. Not sure what the day may hold but I hope it does not include getting lost driving there. Most attendees are going to be staying onsite. Me, last time I got a little ancy staying onsite, so I hope to have a more down to earth experience this time.
It's 10pm, time for some sleep before the adventure continuing tomorrow.
Earlier in the year, I wanted to be responsible regarding the stuff I was eating. A food journal is a tough undertaking. You can do quite a lot with a food journal if the monitoring in this specific way will actually help guide your choices. This was hard for me because at the end of the day, I want to know if I had done a good job. A good job is defined as, will eating in this way help me toward my goals, which is to better my health, without sacrificing my happiness. Ultimately a simple food journal did not help me because I was not weighing my food and not keeping track of the calories. So by not wanting to be too obsessive - and weighing your food IS obsessive no question - I was sacrificing the goal of knowing how well I did. Turns out for me, the behavior which I thought was obsessive, is actually responsible. Hello grey area.
Today I did several responsible things.
I threw away the halloween candy. Without telling the kids. It is March, after all. Responsibility grade of A+. However it was not really a problem for me, so it's more of a silent success.
I placed the coffeemaking appratusses into a cupboard. Because I haven't used them since December. (Sorry I'm a little wobbly when I crouch down). Responsibility grade of A- because the jury is still out on how much damage the stuff was doing to me in the first place. I'm doing OK though.
I have my food weighing and measuring stuff right next to something I do use, which is the liquor. Ha ha - those of you who might feel judgmental about this can stuff it in a sack. Here is the thing I learned about using an external solution. There is not a category of things that are good to use and bad to use. If a thing becomes a problem for you, then that's a problem. Moderation is sometimes about turning the knob down on your usual thing and turning the knob up on others. So, while having alcohol in the house, even for comfort, might be a problem for other people, for me alas it is not. At least not yet, and I am secure that my skills are strong enough to stay with myself and monitor all of these hobby-excesses. For now, picking one up is great, because it takes the pressure off of food.
This curvy countertop space is an area of the house which I insisted on creating just for coffee. I thought of it like a transitional space for guests, where maybe they don't want to be in the center of all the action area in the kitchen, but maybe they do want a cup. It has turned into the shrine of stuff for Beth, which is fine too. What this stuff says to me is, "You are a responsible person. You are putting things in your body that you want, in the quantities that you want, and those quantities and choices are resonable. You are perfectly permitted to lose it, just as long as you keep track and write it down, and don't have the coffee." Responsibility grade B-. For obvious reasons.
And now I go about cooking myself an entire batch of spinach, with one 300 calorie sausage and some onion. I'm eating it right now. The onions are sweet. Very yummy. Responsibiilty grade B+, depending on what else I eat today.
Today I attacked the taxes, also the immediate family finances, and it is my second day of counting calories. Each of these fronts is threatening to splinter me into a thousand pieces. I remember the tagline of this blog, and how it has been a moving target for me personally during 2006 and through to today. I expect even more changes throughout 2007. I target the idea that I can craft the elusive fourth meal which will truly satisfy above and beyond the basics. But when under attack, the target moves or disappears entirely. It can give way to despair.
At the point where I am in my Solutions work, most of the way through kit 4, I have really shaken up my dependency on food, the artistry thereof, the creative aspect, the social magnetism, and the caloric mischief that it entails. Note I have not solved this problem, but I have created a place of internal emotional safety which gives me something to stand on when I reach for it. I know when I get thrown a curveball, such as today, I am prone to pouting and reaching for a sure thing. I also know I have a set of things I can reach for instead, and even have a track record of reaching for them on occasion.
Nothing gives me more curveballs than facing the evil demons of the taxes, what bill to be behind on next, and the list of calories I consume each day (note - I will be hungry at 2500 calories a day. obviously a flaw in my o.s. because according to the government and traineo, I should be like a tick about to explode with that much food.) So after grumbling, and nothing being like how I wanted it, I went for a walk. At the post office, I mailed bills which were getting shutoff notices. That was a practical thing that made things a little better. I also mailed the ballot for Seattle's new viaduct (no to both plans). At the espresso stand I bought a split-shot, when I have been off caffeine since December. Bad girl. But at least it was not a caloric choice. Then to the grocery store for a bottle of wine, some Tikka sauce, chocolate, and a small shrimp party platter. Just in case I decide to lose it calorically and at least don't want to regret the lapse asthetically. Then to the tanning booth, required due to the vitamin D. Viva la 9 minute vacation.
Feeling better, I waited for the bus, knowing that as an adult I was going to have to face these demons again. In fact, as an adult, it is my job to decide the size of the demons and whether to duck or jump. One unreasonable expectation I have about both the taxes and the finances is I expect to be perfect and therefore risk-free. In fact, I cannot be perfect, as even the most closely monitored checking account can bounce checks by mistake, and even the most carefully prepared tax return can get audited. Given that I cannot inject myself into a risk-free world, I can do what I can. The fact is, these troubles are not new things, I am just looking at them more closely. Like finding out I am really 5 foot 8 and not 5 foot 11 like I have imagined all my life, it hurts to find out information you don't want to know. BUT not knowing the information does not change the underlying truth of it.
The evil and dark things are lurking in the box, and each year I crack the lid open a little more, each year it seems I can stand to look at a little more of what's in there - without losing it completely. The pride in that is what feeds me today.