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!

Ahhhh...Friday morning.  Even though I work at home, and make my own schedule, I love Friday mornings like I used to when I was working in the schools.  It feel like you can get a lot done, but the pressure of the week is off, so everything you complete is a bonus.  It feels like "casual Fridays" gear is called for.  It feels like you can knock off early. 

I actually love working on the weekend a lot anyway, so it's not clear to me why Fridays still feel like Fridays, but it's nice.

I have to drink a little toast (with my coffee, don't worry) this morning to the two young ladies above who helped avert a little Maslow's Peak crisis I was having.  I don't get my posts out as fast as I'd like, and have little freakouts sometimes, because the stuff I write about is so tied to daily events - at least in my mind.  Sometimes it seems like hourly events.

But I have taken some sound advice, and will finish my piece on the PA court proceedings I watched online yesterday, and hmm.. maybe stop promoting my work before it's completed???!?!?  What a concept.

Anyway, those two pretty faces at the top of this page belong to a couple of the smartest women imaginable - always thinking, always questioning, soaking up ideas from around them likes sponges, then sharing them, with their own take.  VIP's, in my book.

Happy Friday.

PS - just thought of something.  I ought to give shout-outs to my friends more often.  There are some people in my life who I couldn't make it without (you know who you are) and I need to throw them some love from this space. 

There I go again, pre-promoting....

Working on the PA Voter ID thing is making me sick.  It is truly going to be HARD TO VOTE for hundreds of thousands of registered voters there this year.  It's a travesty, and I get enraged, anxious, and disgusted.  I am in awe of people like Ellen Kaplan and all the rest who manage to stay positive and just get the job done although I'm sure they feel the same way.

VIVA will come out today if it KILLS ME!!!! woo hoo!

AMAZING interview today with Ellen Kaplan of the Committee Of 70 in Philadelphia.  Her organization has take the lead on creating and managing (and funding!) the Pennsylvania Voter ID Coalition, working to prepare voters for election day.

Ellen was SO generous with her time - we talked for about 1 hr 45 minutes.  She gave me tons of detail - it's really disturbing how the law - bad on its face - is being implemented.  The state dept of PA is either inept, ill-motivated, or both.

I don't know how those people do this work without losing their minds, but I gather that there is a lot of camaraderie and enthusiasm shared amongst the ground teams, so I guess that makes it possible.

So much to do to get my VIVA page ready - feel bad every day that goes by because of raised expectations on the part of a number of family members, plus of course I want to help get the word out.

But better to have it like I want it before I publish.  So stay tuned...

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.

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.