Lazy Day – Networking is not working

i barely got out of the hotel today.  i watch Aljazeera and the BBC and SkyNews and soaked in the work news of Greece teetering on the edge, Syria in Civil War, Egypt looking at a counter revolution and floods in the UK.

i spent a bunch of time on this kids laptop that i got from Angie a couple of years back.  The  argument back then was that a splash proof keyboard would be handy for an 8 year and that i could care less about the bright blue carrying case and the vomit green details on the machine.  In fact Willow has never spilled anything on this machine despite using it all the time and i have on at least a couple of occasions.

Willow and i watched both a Harry Potter flick and How to Train Your Dragon.  Though i slept through part of Dragon.  i was not even dressed for most of the day.   Hawina and Corb came over and Hawina took Willow to the licorice shop.  I spent some time on Facebook.  It feels now like a lazy day.

Except it was not really.

I did logistics organizing around money transfers that ultimately required 4 people in the states to help me.

I gchated with Gihan about what was happening in Tahrir Square and scheduled an interview with her for after the big demonstration tomorrow.  [For those not following Egypt, there is an encampment again in Tahrir Square of people dissatisfied with the President Morsi's self expanded powers.  Some people think this might be the start of a second revolution there.]


Tents in Tahrir Square. But only hundreds of protesters not hundreds of thousands.

i write 9 postcards and a letter to my mother.  i have written 145 pieces if mail since the start of this trip on October 1.  It does not take long to write them and people love to get them, especially people who i dont have strong relationships with. or friends who i dont tend to email.

At absurd o’clock this morning i was flirting with Sarah Taub from Network for New Culture in Death City.  We agreed to do a long weekend event that we would organize at Sofia House in Louisa.  It will likely be on practical polyamory, using a mixed format (like the communities conference) where there it is about featured speakers and about half open space where anyone can present and participants select from the offered workshops).  Sarah and i discussed briefly outreach, content, logistics and food.  After i got off with Sarah Taub i wrote Sara Tansey and Sky asking if they would work on it with me for an April/May time frame. By morning Eastern Standard time Sara confirmed her interest and it moved out of the “good idea” stage into the “likely to happen” stage.

Elephant Journal wrote back and said that they loved the Cat Calling piece i wrote recently and wanted to run it with more background on Gihan.  Which is like a request to write a public lover letter to a very inspiring personality.  Gihan was tickled and agreed to edit.correct what i crafted before i sent it to Elephant Journal (which ran a rewrite of the Wanderlust Film review i blogged about).

Willow and i walked around Oosterpark around 11 PM for exercise and air.  When he is with me he stays up late, generally much later than this.  He often sleeps in the next morning as well.  I dont see much harm in it. And i may be on the next cover of Negligent Parenting Magazine.

I answer some marketing and customer questions for the community hammocks business.  I help push forward a Belgium TV show which wants to do reportage about community through the lense of food.  I have a Skype conversation with Abigail about which career paths to pursue.  I have 4 separate IM sessions on community room assigning and waiting list issues.  i wrote about 20 emails pulling these and several other things together.  I wrote on several online newspaper articles why Small Modular Reactors are a terrible solution and started a blog post on it.  I posted a handful of links on Reddit.

Part of the reason i love Aljaseera is it is the only place you are actually going to see the spokes person for Egyptian president Morsi make the official statement on the meeting with the judges and why he is not stepping down.  Aljazeera on Morsi presidential powers Later in the day i FB chatted with my new friend Mahmoud who is, i believe, not part of the Muslim Brotherhood (president Morsi’s party) but certainly is sympathetic to  their struggle and cause.  Mahmoud and i will Skype tomorrow to help me create my own “balanced” piece (anyone who has read a lot of this blog knows that “balance” is not something i am often interested in).  I also succeeded in dragging my old mentor Crystal into the Egypt discussion and pending blog post, which makes me very happy.

This morning at absurd o’clock Angie and i started organizing another event for later in the year on repairing gender relations, with a full queer inclusive component to it.  Angie is starting some google docs, which will also push it into the “likely to happen” stage.

Perhaps 20 years ago some rich guy advanced the idea that most of networking was in fact not working.  And i think internalized this somehow and dont think much of my own networking and can walk away from a day like today, feeling like i have not done much.