We had a beautiful trip to DC.  Brett is so warm and so funny and so smart.  Kelsey and I had awesome Mommy/Daughter time.  William and Brett got lots of good talking in about all kinds of things.  The two of them were fabulous hosts.  Fun visits with friends, moving and stimulating sites to see downtown, one helluva good dinner at Founding Farmers, near the White House, and some great down time at their apartment.  Thoroughly great weekend.

I'm excited about the week ahead.  My writing has been full speed ahead for a couple of weeks now.  I'm doing lots of work on Voter Id and other election law issues, but have also written some pieces in direct response to specific political events.  This week I will finish an article on the NC State Board of Elections - I snagged a great interview again - this time with one of our elections officials who I had seen appear on Rachel Maddow!  I just had to call her and introduce myself and congratulate her on her appearance - as I told her she was very clear and effective, and communicated a lot of energy,and a focus on fair elections.  Maybe I can find a clip and add it here.

In any case, we ended up talking at length about the voter roll challenges that have occured here - I have my notes but with the trip out of town, haven;t written it up yet.  Seems fun if I could just get organized and get started!!  I'm up late so I'll sleep 8 hours and then coffee, news, hop up and run to the bank, pharmacy, and quick stop at the grocery, then back here to tidy up my office, then I am settling to finish it.  My find of day!!!  I will grab something easy that the guys can throw together and just work and work until it's time for football at 8!

I've been thing more and more about how drastically I want to shift gears after the election.  Many many thoughts about it....  Take a few days off, finish my "What I've learned"-type piece, maybe take Rufus and run down to Topsail for a few days to clear my head and think.  I think I will write a whole separate post with an outline of what I want the time between say, November 6th, before which I will do analysis of where we stand post-election with a 2nd Obama term.  From 11/6 - 12/22 or 23rd I want to do a lot of planning and goal setting - a little retreat for myself.  Then I usually take a few days off for the holidays - maybe hit Topsail again, then I can't wait to plunge back in hard and heavy in January.

I know what my new writing focus is, and I can't wait.  And I'll start putting the book in my sites.  I'm going to be absolutely ruthless about guarding my time - man, I have never felt so little interest in/need for a social life, plans, etc.  I'm not in danger of getting isolated because of close family and a couple of close friends.  And I want to stay balanced with lots of walking as usual, taking snapshots every where I go, cooking, TV nights with William, some craft stuff...  But those things are only going to be here and there because mostly I crave to write write write.

I've never felt better about where my life is and where it's going.

Welcome, October.

I get to see my daughter!  William and I are going up to DC for the weekend.  I can rest my carpal tunnel wrist, and my brain, and see my baby girl and her boyfriend, and spend time with my husband, and hang out in my favorite city in the world!!

Hmmm, did I really need to just go back and reread all the posts on this page???  I was messing around with my tag categories and decided to review. 

I have to assume that it is human nature to cycle through the same questions and problems over time, feel like you have it figured out, then occasionally realize you are at square one.

And maybe square one isn't right.  I've been doing journal entries on this page - since I created it in June - about focus and productivity, that all sort of sound the same.  But I the same time, I do see progress.

I do have my new computer, and that has made a world of difference.  I have rounded out the "feel" of my office - still loving my curtains to candles of course; just "refilled" my incense at World Market; rearranged my desk, created a better filing system, and bought some more handy supplies.  (Yikes, I just realized every time I go to Staples and putting money in Mitt Romney's pocket! lol)  So now when I wake up I can't wait to "get to work". 

And I do think my output is better.  Still have an uncompleted VIVA page on "hide"...  But I'm getting better at coming in here and cranking stuff out. 

I think.

All I can do is keep plugging away.  Reviewing old posts is painful but instructive.  The one year anniversary of Maslow's Peak is October 3rd, and I have a lot to be proud of, I think.

On we go!

I'm so excited right now!  I have a project coming together on this website - it's on "hide" right now but I'll have it up by Monday afternoon.  It consolidates all the work I'm doing on voting concerns across the country.  It's amazing to me how bad the situation is, and I was starting to get really depressed and stressed about it.  So my excitement comes from the fact that I finally realized that complaining about it on facebook and writing a couple of posts on it here wasn't going to help anything. 

I started focusing on 4 specific areas; voter ID laws, early voting hours, voter-roll purging, and this new creepy area of "poll watchers".  (I'll be explaining the latter one on my new page.)  And I narrowed down a list of states to keep an eye on.  There are a couple of swing states where this kind of tomfoolery could actually have an impact on the election.

(Did I just use the word "tomfoolery"?  It must be because I'm turning 50 in a couple weeks.  I'll probably be saying "land's sakes alive!" soon.)

Once I started digging in, I was energized and encouraged right away.  I was definitely taken aback by the scope and inventiveness of what I'm getting very comfortable calling purposeful voter intimidation.  But wow, the response in the cities most affected is intensely heartening.  I think one reason Republicans hate the idea of "community organizers" so much is they're afraid of us.  Nobody can mobilize to protect marginalized people like a bunch of pissed off, bleeding heart liberals.

I have an interview scheduled for Monday morning with a woman who is the media contact for the coalition in Pennsylvania that has come together to make sure voters who don't have the required ID will have it in time to vote November 6th.  I can't wait to get a sense from her about how things are going up there, and how people in other states can help, if possible.

So, I'm off to save the rights of voters across the country!  And this evening when I break for the night, I think I'll turn up a glass to the great American tradition of activism. 

Cheers!

I'm longing for the open vista of the beach, and for the way being there will create one in my head.  Clean, bright, calm, uncluttered.  Space to breathe and relax, time to let thoughts flow unhampered.  Ahhhhhh...

Leaving for a week at Topsail in 4 days.

William and I had a great, very helpful discussion the other day.  He helped me talk through these problems I'm having with focus and approach to work and all that.  What he heard was a lot of confusion about priorities in my topics of interest, and in the way I want to structure my days.  Sort of obvious, I guess, but it was so helpful to hear him reflect back what he was hearing.

It's hard to capture all that, so I'll jump to the bottom line.  I know without question, if I had to choose one central theme to focus on, it would be race and class.  I am invigorated and driven to write about other topics as well, of course: foreign policy, Presidential campaign politics, LGBT issues, campaign finance, local politics, and many more.  And the whole question of civil discourse is fascinating to me, and I feel I have something to contribute to a dialogue on that, and on all the bedrock liberal issues I named.

But I am driving myself crazy trying to keep up with the news - and my personality being what it is, and my avocation being what it is, it's hard for me to turn away from current events altogether, and hard for me to get riled up about an issue without wanting to spin out a post, or an email, or facebook blog, or to have a big discussion about it over wine or beers.

So I need to let go - I need to see events come and go, trust all the smart people who are writing about these things, talk amongst my family and friends about them if I want, but not feel I have to take on each one, research it, and write something cogent.  This energy I have, this drive to address issues and communicate about them, it's a good thing.  William definitely has to push himself to see that me watching cable news is not a bad thing.  Oh, my gosh, that's such a funny dynamic to think about - who can blame him for saying, Julie, just change the channel.  But when I say this he does appreciate what I'm saying: that burning reaction, that outrage, that argumentation, it's who I am, it's what gets me up in the morning and makes me feel invigorated, and, it's a good thing as long as I can channel it.

I feel like my writing ability still has a long way to go, and even if I narrow my focus, there is still so much to be learned and said.  There is still going to be the challenge of learning to balance the long term, thoroughly researched major work I hope to do about race and class in America against the the topical, immediate issues that come up on the same subject.  I want to blog on those issues to keep my skills sharp, to improve my writing, to keep abreast of what's happening, to eventually develop a name for myself in the field, and to always learn, learn, learn - to deepen my understanding.

The most concise example of this juxtaposition I can think of is about voting rights.  I can't ignore the Voter ID movement happening right now, state by state.  I want to stay current on the status of these laws, and on the arguments for and against them.  But I am also deeply connected, intellectually and emotionally, to the historical context of this issues.  From Reconstruction and Jim Crow, to various suffrage movements, to the mid-20th century fight for voting rights, to the present day, I am drawn to research and read about the development of the inner-city classes and how that concept pertains to access to the ballot, and then try to use my skills (obviously not evident in this free-flowing post) to translate that and make it accessible to people who don't normally think about it. It is so hard for some people to understand why you can't just say, okay, starting now, everybody has to have a government-issued photo ID by election day.

Ach, I'm wearing myself out even right now.  Writing sentences that should have been separated into three.  Hey, I didn't say I was there yet with the focus and the discipline and the structure.  But that's my little task for vacation, and I relish it.  As is my wont several times a year, I am filled with the excited feeling of, hey, when I get back from the beach - LOOK OUT WORLD!!!

Sometimes a barrier needs to be pushed through, other times it's there for a reason.  I have been spinning my wheels, caught up in so many different topics and goals and demands that I haven't been able to properly pursue a single one of them.  Every time I think I have a fresh perspective, and greet the day with determination to end it feeling accomplished, I lose track of what I'm trying to accomplish.

Even last Sunday, when I was so focused on work, and spent hours researching the last session of the NC General Assembly and hours writing, I didn't finish the day with any sort of product.  Just ideas, about where to pitch the article, and how to snag an interview with Bev Perdue.

Good ideas, good legwork, no completion.

I'm still wrestling with the question of scope.  Long-term work on a book?  Up-to-the-minute posts on daily news?  Submitting free-lance articles?

So I'm going to pull way back for a couple of weeks and work out these questions.  It's something I did in January, and I came to some conclusions that led me to the major revamp of this website and the relatively clearer set of guiding principles I'm using now.  Time to go to the next level.

I can't wait to walk the shores of the NC coast and sort through these questions with such free and beautiful surroundings.

When I return, it will be with a whole new level of focus and determination.

The 2011-2012 Session of the North Carolina General Assembly like to gave me the vapors.


All my frustrating vacillations about what to focus on are out the window today.  I just realized the devastatingly regressive 2011-2012 session of the NC General Assembly adjourned Tuesday.  I want to do a wrap-up of their work - horrible stuff.  Actually looking forward to getting it all together and putting it into a post - it's been so depressing, at least I can look at it in review.

I'll be posting it tomorrow or Saturday, depending on how in-depth I decide to go with the status of the most problematic bills.

I bet I'm in a small minority of people who feel that way, and it reminds me I am fortunate indeed to be in a position to do what I love.

To me, Monday mornings herald a clean slate.  The week ahead is fresh and open, and it is so inviting to figure out how to fill it in.  It's daunting too, and often by Wednesday I feel like I'm not doing it right.  But each Monday morning is a chance to try again.

Again with the confusion over what story to cover, how much or how little to write, and how to keep this quandary from making me jump from one topic to another and have nothing to show for it.

The topics morph so quickly when I watch the news.  The Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Health Care Act was huge, and I should have jumped in to write about the plan itself and the questions answered by the court.  But I get fascinated by the politics, so I watched in surprise as the headlines turned to the way some conservatives were so dismayed by Chief Justice Roberts' opinion that they turned on him, some even questioning his mental faculties.

So do I want to write reasoned, in depth pieces about national health policy and the law, or do I want to analyze the fallout?

George Zimmerman's audio and video-taped phone calls and interviews are released, and I made my way through long stretches of each one, knowing I could share some observations that weren't being made by anyone who had only watched little snippets being shown on the news.  But then his bond hearing came up and I watched with intensity as his attorney tried an unusual procedure (that didn't work) to try to get Zimmerman's plea to the judge for bond on the record without having to face cross-examination. 

So do I give folks who can't necessarily watch court TV during the day the play-by-play, with all the dramatic details, or do keep slogging through the video tapes, and work out what I think the important elements are?

And I'm still tracking online and on-TV dialogues about the tone of our nation's discourse, and keeping track of where things stand with Voter ID laws.  This kind of a thought-buffet just can't be good for anyone.

On one hand it seems obvious to me that the more important work I have to do is the bigger pieces, the ones that take the leg work and the analysis, and the extra time in composition.  But I have gotten enough feedback to know there are people who like getting the sort of up-to-the-minute blasts I do on facebook and sometimes on here.

Do I want to turn off the TV and go write my book?  Do I want to chuck the book and even the longer articles, and join the fray of partisan daily bloggers? 

And there is also the question of tone - obviously I can be hot-tempered and polemic, but I am also drawn to more careful evaluation and a balanced tone.

I know, maybe I could just keep writing nothing but journal entries about what I should write.

SIGH.

This is all on a tiny scale right now - a couple of hundred hits a day on this site, a couple dozen people who regularly read and respond to my posts on facebook.  But I need to figure it out, because I am getting those couple of hundred hits with virtually no promotion of the site, so I feel sure if I start promoting and tweeting and cross-posting with other bloggers and so forth, I will have enough of an audience to feel like I'm headed down the right road.  So I need to figure out my pace.

Late morning on a Monday.  For several weeks I've had in mind that I'll reserve Mondays for reading blogs and newspapers, and develop a sense of my focus for the week.  Instead I find myself occupied more with office tasks like phone calls, looking at bills and making appointments.  Maybe that makes the most sense for Mondays, I don't know.  But I gotta keep some hot news in there too - keeping my finger on the pulse of the big political issues in real time is what motivates and energizes me, so I have to figure out how to make my Mondays a balance of doing "infrastructure" work and tuning in to the haps of the day.

My organization and time management are better than they have ever been in my life, but there is always room for improvement.  If I can get myself working like clockwork - or at least like daily planner-work - I will soon be THE QUEEN OF THE WORLD!!!

One thing I do know I'm going to focus on this week is the idea of civil discourse.  I have been mulling it over off and on for over a year, but now may be a good time to start writing more about it.  This political contentiousness is coming to a head, and has to give way to something better soon - I just feel it. We will figure out how to fight fair.