Truly Outrageous

when we fell in love?

Time’s been an interesting commodity for me this year.  When I moved to California I took on a job that recentered my activism from participation in online progressive and radical communities to my all day, every day reality.  It’s been exhilarating and exhausting and completely invaluable.  It’s refined and in some ways refocused my thinking on community and political commitment and the way that American (sure, Western, but especially American) society thinks and values work and career above all else.  Us progressives, we’ve got a big problem with career martyrdom,  in case that slipped by you somehow.  (Who am I kidding?  Most of you know it better than me.)

This space has seen some false starts and I’d hate for this to be another… so I’m not going to make any promises.  Yet.  But there are some things I need a space to think and write about, some people that I need to share that process with again and others who have taken on a lot more since I stepped back.  In a perfect world, here’s some of what I’d like to explore:

• Micro — what’s in the details.  There have been some thoughtful posts on veganism on BFP’s and elle’s blogs — will link directly when I write my own response — that have echoed a lot of my own concerns/questions this year about my eating habits.  I’ve been (unsuccessfully) trying to make the switch from vegetarian to vegan for months now; part of the reason this has failed is because of my own lack of energy and commitment to mindfully living my life when my (12-hour, 14-hour) workday ends.  This also ties into the fact that, since buying my first car at the end of October, I’ve put 23,000 miles on her.  Poor Robot Eagle.  So, in one area of my life I’m fighting so hard for people’s voices to be heard; in others I’m doing as much, if not more, than others to fuck up this planet and further silence the voices of people I’ve never met.
• Personal/political, and where the balance lies.  How to avoid the activist deathtrap of deep depression and burnout?  I haven’t even kept up with my Poetry Mondays!  How do I maintain my love for art and writing and all things restless and creative?  Fuck, how do I maintain my connections to still far away friends and family?  And when do I learn to play the damn banjo already?
• Macro, or the structures I support.  Why does the progressive community insist on replicating the bullshit hierarchies that develop and sustain the injustice we’re supposedly against?  What’s up with the perpetual power-trip?  And how have I played into that, in the past, during this year and even this minute?  How do I get from that structure (in work, in relationships in the broadest sense) to a more collaborative understanding of progress?  I’ve been living mostly out of hotels for the past year.  So basically, I’ve had a fleet of servants making my bed and throwing out my take-out containers.  That’s a relationship I’m in, whether I like it or not. 

Obviously this will all intersect, some of it will be personal and messy, some of it will take the form of cultural analysis, some of it will involve a flurry of blog-linking and commenting as of yore but I don’t know how much, or how often.  Yet.  Like I said.  But I want to be here.