LaurieWrites

Rouler

I was supposed to leave tomorrow for New Orleans and I had a panic attack in the middle of the night and canceled the ticket. I feel relieved, although I'm sad I won't be there to see the party unfold.

I just can't do everything. I'm finally reaching that conclusion and it's taken me a long time. You can't do everything, not by forcing or not sleeping or ignoring the stuff you really need to do to do the stuff you want to do. These elementary, elemental truths are a long time coming for me. I'm having like ten existential crises per day right now, coming as I have to the end of a major life event (school) and facing the paradoxical great wide open and choking narrowness of my daily life on the other side of it. I'm in that horrible spot where I don't like anywhere I am or anywhere I have to go, and yet it's not so bad, it's just the nagging sense that I ought to be somewhere else, that where I am this minute I just can't be for another one, I can't stand it, could you stop talking to me about this particular thing at this particular minute because hello my head is going to explode.

My diploma came in the mail last week, in spite of the fact that I owe $55 to the university for a parking ticket. Fuckers. It made the degree seem sort of real but it also clarified that I am never satisfied, not with anything. I'm always afraid that they'll come and take it back when they realize the administrative error. I fixate on the train wreck of the last three months instead of the sum total of the work which really wasn't so bad.

I'll go into more detail at some point perhaps about just how long it took me to get the weird mailing tube open that the diploma came in (a classmate called me three DAYS later to ask me how I got it open. She'd been trying that long, and yes, life is that hard sometimes for stupid reasons and that sucks.) and how I took pictures of it both in the tube and out, and how I may have cried a little from relief, mostly related to the parking ticket and also a library book that I'm not sure they'll ever get back.

Personally, I am not happy. I am...discontent. Dissatisfied. And I really wanted to go to Louisiana and forget about the reasons why, to watch a city just freak out about itself for five days. But unfortunately the running isn't possible this month. I'm really just too tired. I don't have enough money for it. I don't have the physical stamina. So I'll stay here in this city that is kind of driving me crazy right now (I really want to move, every minute, but I have no idea where and that's clearly no good place from which to make a decision) and I'll keep overusing parentheses and do my Photoshop project and get geared up for Texas next month instead.

I'm actually going to housesit for my parents and sit still for periods of time. I have visions of a living room command center of vision boards I've had the supplies for since January and back taxes and blog posts to get some more of this garbage out of my head. I have visions of doing all of my laundry and cleaning out my car for spring (please, please, spring.)

And in the midst of all this I'll continue to deal with the reality that at this fragile moment in my life I have no belief whatsoever in miracles, which is the reason why I believed I needed Mardi Gras in the first place.

No exercise at all keeps me in terrible shape

I have a hate-hate relationship with exercise. I need it, oh right now how I need it, and I don't want to do it. What I want to do is sit around and shove food in my mouth and just keep sitting there, and fail to gain any weight or die of progressive heart disease because of the plaque I'm allowing to build up in my arteries.

Seriously, I am so incredibly lazy.

I had not exercised in a year and a half and after two weeks of much angst and worry over what I would do to get back in the game, I went to a kickboxing class at the gym where I've been a $34 monthly donor for several years. It was hard. I thought I was going to expire. I was profoundly bothered by the man in front of me, who attacked this class with a drama unseen in Beijing this summer, and yet I wasn't satisfied to admire him for his energy and instead chose to judge him for his overwrought punching and kicking and for my rear view of his unfortunate shorts.

I am lazy and I am also a judger. Nice.

Really I admire people with energy and discipline, people who won't give in to their mind games with themselves, who just (oh God) do it.

I need to go back this week. I really do. I need to develop a routine. I just don't want to at all.

Dear Heart, Wherever You Are

Cross-posted from BlogHer,  as part of our Letter to My Heart project.

Dear Heart –

You really are all over the place.

You had an innocent murmur at birth, which more or less means you made an extra sound, a breather between beats. And now you’re oddly palpitating such that I can feel you in my chest, which I really wish you’d stop.

Always a risk-taker with impossible depths, you took off running a long time ago, and it takes some backwards tracing to figure out all the places you’ve landed. You’re down the hall at my parents' house, for sure, and in the two wooden boxes of dogs' ashes downstairs. You split time and space between California, Delaware, Georgia and Virginia, because that's where my people have gone, and you’re in more places in Maryland - my home - than I can track.

You've stayed behind in places where I've lost things. There are shards of you frozen in mid-air in Boston, in the southwest corner of Ohio and hanging in an apartment hallway and a cemetery, both a few miles away in either direction from where I sit. You’re in Vietnam and New Orleans, places where I've seen love and pain, and I'll cop to feeling you big time in a Denver stadium last summer. You're in the songs that make me cry. I unfailingly keep records, so you’re between the covers of many journals and all over the place in the crazy attic of the Internet. You’re in thousands of photographs, in the stories of vacations, birthday parties, sunsets, and self-portraits.

A lot of times I don't like you. You're difficult and stubborn, and you're also, in case you were wondering, not funny at all. Sometimes I (really do) think I lost you along the way. Never lucky in love, nine years - an eternity - ago, you fell in it with an utterly compelling, fairly odd, equally defensive person who seemed like the counterpart you'd been looking for since you started looking. You trusted, planned and dreamed a life when you had no business doing so, and then you sold me out. Once you met him, you were done, in spite of my need to never lose you again for no good reason. You stayed in, way over your head, for way too long. You ignored alarms, stuck your fingers in your ears and went "lalalalalala," seriously. You refused to see the obvious.

And while that’s all thoroughly and completely over now, it cost me so much for far too long. You went with him when he left, you would have crawled into his pocket if I'd let you, in spite of my best efforts to keep my center, to be okay, to stay safe and happy. I can’t forgive you yet for this. It still doesn't make any sense and it still pisses me off.

Worst of all, as a result, even if I had a reason, I can't trust your judgment and I don't know when, or if, I want to again. I can use you for the no-brainers and the necessities, for the puppies who suck you in and the family and friends who give me so much that I need whatever you can dredge up to reciprocate it. I use you for my work, for my students, for my stories, for the sheer will it takes sometimes to get through the day alongside other human beings in all the places we find ourselves together.

I use up a lot of your reserves for the news, for what I see of the world that isn't kind, and is in too many cases unbearable. I feel you. Because I still produce tears on a regular basis even though I really don't want to, I know you're there. I rely on you for awareness of what others experience, for freedom from the self-centeredness that would, if it took me over, make my life a nightmare and my value questionable.

I admit, I've wondered over the past few years how much you can take before you shut down entirely. Some big losses have piled up, the inevitable surrender of loved ones and the crushing exhaustion that I've learned goes with it. I've had to be stronger than I felt like being most of the time, because along with the loss there's been an absence of true joy, of anything solid to replace everyone and everything that checked out. I feel sorry for you, because a lot of times you're lonely, and often you feel like your chance is past. And the effort to think that's not true, that you just have to do this or that thing to get it back, to still believe in magic and the power of possibility, sometimes feels like a little too damned much.

What I've learned is that while it may look messy in the moment, given the choice between feeling and the absence of it, I'll still try to take you, as messed up as you are. A lot of times it doesn't look very graceful. I have to ride out those hours where it feels like the black hole's opening up again, where I don't feel at all like being a team player or a good sport. Even when it doesn't look like I'm trying, I am - to reach out, to be grateful maybe, to shut up the panicky thoughts that what I've got's not enough, that what I lost was the best there was, that everything poured out through your senseless holes and nothing can and will ever patch them. And I guess even though sometimes things feel dire and old and over, together we try to foster something, anything, better than that.

I still hear the faint whoosh of an innocent murmur, pushing 40 now. An idealist and a romantic in spite of myself, I wish this were a different letter, a love song or a poem or God help me a valentine even, but that's just not how it's played out. I'm keeping an eye on you, and in spite of the lack of warm fuzziness lately there must be a reason I still sign my notes "xo" like my mother has since she left notes on napkins in our school lunch bags. I feel a little bit of hope, in spite of all evidence and every reason to dismiss it. Because like it or not, from what I understand of biology and other things not at all scientific, I really do need you, wild and random as you are, to survive.

xo, Laurie White, who writes at LaurieWrites.

Mashing the Internet Potato

I am an Internet potato. (Mashed. And also fried.)

Are you always online? Does work take longer because you see that your friend sent you a David Hasselhoff cd via the German gifts Facebook application and you look up 20 minutes later no closer to deadlines met but having sent sauerbraten to 227 friends? (Or maybe that's just me.)

Middle Aged in Biz says:

It’s amazing how easy it is to find time when we cut out all the wasteful and pointless things we do with our time. Take surfing the net for example. This has now become one of the biggest time consuming activities in our society. The couch potato has been replaced by the internet potato. How many hours are wasted drifting from one site to another?

Cut out pointless surfing and you will suddenly discover that you have hours of spare time to use in productive activity. Then there’s that traditional time wasting activity, watching television for hour after hour. One program after another; hypnotized by the screen in the corner.

My inertia is overwhelming, I admit it, for reasons Internet-related and otherwise. I would love to write this post from the perspective of a rah-rah, raring to go, look at me, I'm an exercise superhero person who's back from the farmer's market before my loved ones are even awake.

But I'm not, and this isn't fiction, so I can't. Instead I write this post from my bed, drinking a bloody Mary and eating pistachio nuts, because I just had to put the remnants of fresh fruit that I once again failed to eat before it spoiled down the disposal. (I did eat yogurt though. Does that count?)

Yes, I am ridiculous, and yes, I believe it needs to stop. I can count the times I've been to the gym since I began graduate school in 2007 on less than one hand. Not a structure magician in the best of times, my schedule imploded, a few times over. I spent a lot of time running around but none of it felt terribly productive, and because I was studying multimedia journalism, the boundaries between online and real life grew incredibly blurry. And when I did get home? The laptop snapped open - again - and back to working mindlessly surfing the Web until deadlines snapped at my heels - I went.

Needless to say, I gained weight, which seemed incredibly unfair because I felt like I was running a daily marathon and a lot of times I felt melodramatically like I was STARVING, when really I was in denial about the amount of caffeine, salt and fake sugar a late 30-something body can consume before turning into carbon with a side of hydrogenated whatever oil. I didn't get enough sleep, ever, ever, ever. I talked a lot of nonsense. I have no idea what my blood pressure is, but I should probably find out.

Now, diploma in hand and back to my regular job, you'd think I'd be better. But given the choice between putting on my cross-trainers and walking for an hour on an unseasonably pretty day, or sitting on my ass edifying my Facebook friends with yet another 25 things about myself while procrastinating on the important work of telling you that I'm an Internet potato? Let's just say: #14: The song stuck in my head is - sorry, Denise - Beyonce's Single Ladies.

(Have you actually listened to the words besides "put a ring on it"? The part where she demands that you "put your hands up"? She's trying to kill me.)

I'm not sure this internet potato-ness has so much to do with me being single as it does with me being inherently fond of leisure while also singularly set in my routines once they form - especially the bad, lazy ones that mean no exercise and another dinner of Whole Foods olive bar, crackers and brie in front of the Biggest Loser and Twitter (which I'm sure has caused a ten-pound weight gain alone. Twitter, you...witch.)

Yes, if I had children I would need to get up with them and shuttle them around everywhere. But the thing is, I should get up anyway. And I can totally eat candy and pay attention to my e-mail while shuttling myself, so I'm sure I'd be stealing McNuggets from my children too. I know plenty of single people who run and eat right and are morning people even though there isn't a child involved. I even know that rarest of creature - the single, exercising morning person who gets up on purpose at 5 a.m. Shudder.

That said, I also know slacker parents, seriously - not that I'm talking about you, or you - or even you, so simmer down. My best friend has two kids and if there were an Internet/Couch Potato Olympics, she and her 5 million television channels would totally medal. Another is a DVR master who watches more tv in a week than I do in six months. As I said about my school experience, action does not mean health, or fitness, and motivation to take care of oneself - partnered, parenting or not - generally has to come from within.

This week, I hit a nexus of slack and finally disgusted myself. My already-perilous tendency to avoid exercise hit another wall, when I realized I'd been carrying around gym clothes and shoes in the car for a week, intending to go back to wellness classes at work, or to the gym on the way home, and spent the time and mental energy I could have used to actually DO THIS talking myself out of doing anything at all. I weighed myself for the first time in a very long time. I noticed I was out of breath for no reason besides walking. I dozed off at my desk and in my evening class (where thankfully I'm not the teacher.) I'm avoiding being in pictures. I. AM NOT. HAPPY. I. DO NOT. FEEL GOOD.

So what to do? Well. The number on the scale is in the red alert zone (which in my lifelong weight-battle equals a number I never wanted to see again and when, once I do, spurs me into action.) Wheezing while walking is frightening enough that I must do something about it, and honestly? I want to feel good about myself. I want to feel healthy.

There aren't any magic answers. I just have to do it. Monday, I go back to wellness. I've been trolling Kalyn's South Beach Diet Recipe Round-up for January, because while I don't want to commit to a full diet plan at this point, I know the lower-carb options tend to work with my metabolism and food preferences, and actually cooking things that taste and look good in the process makes me feel better about what I'm putting into my body.

Minimizing tv watching isn't a problem, aside from my Top Chef and CNN issues. As far as stepping away from the laptop, I'm not sure I have the answer for that yet. I'd be totally lying (and setting myself up for failure) if I said I was going to drastically reduce my online time, but there are steps I can take to check my extreme time-wasting habits and how they affect my life. Here are a few that might work, for you too:

*First of all, let online activities run their course. Like in real life, a lot of this ebbs and flows, I believe. I'm already less active on Twitter, for instance, than I was last year, and I can't really say why. I'm better at self-selecting with whom and what I actively engage, and the amount of time I spend doing it. Much of my increased Facebook time is due to old and in most cases mostly real-life-first friends getting on board, which has added a new dimension to those relationships that's been mostly fun, if time-consuming. I'm sure that'll slow down, too.

*If you're really in the face-in-the-screen-zone, set a timer. Anything in moderation is okay, right? Ration out feedreader time or whatever it is you do that takes you down the online rabbit hole.

*If there is anything you really can't stop once you start, there's not much to do but opt out. I can't play games online, because once I start I have trouble stopping and they just aren't worth it to me. That means no Tetris or Bejeweled for me anymore, after my early online years were sucked up with them.

*That said, relationship health can be a fabulous motivator to shut off the laptop or the television and actually TALK. As a former gaming (specifically EverQuest) widow, like this woman on GamerWidow.com (how I love Google), I am really sensitive to the impact of obsessive online gaming on relationships. I'm sure others have had different experiences but this was mine. I'm on my laptop a lot but if I need to be present for conversations, etc., and I'm not because I'm stuck on my screen or my phone or whatever, then I'm just a jerk, not a good friend or family member. I don't want to be a jerk. Log off. Look up. Look - and be - interested. (It's like reduce, reuse, recycle, but not.)

*Add it up. I did that today, and realized that a lot of this time that I'll never get back online I wasn't even aware of. Awareness is key to deciding if behaviors are a problem for you in the first place and what you can do about them if they are.

*Turn off the computer occasionally, just because. Again, log off. Off off. I've started using visual cues like shutting the laptop whereas I usually leave it up and running, and finding that the online world turns without me is a rude, but refreshing, awakening. Log out of e-mail, Twitter, Facebook (yeah, I know.) They will not die without you, nor you without them. And note that when you return in two hours (or however long) nothing really that monumental happened - unless of course something did, which in that case is totally a fluke I promise.

*Take an inventory of your offline activities. Do they suck? Are they in need of an overhaul so you actually want to leave the house or do things that will take you forcibly away from the tv or computer? I know that my exercise abandonment is a fixable situation, and once I get back in the habit of being in the classes again, there are no distractions there. I'm just there. Zen, I know.

*Use your online powers for good. Bookmark fitness sites (including many from the BlogHer blog lists, of course) and add a health and fitness category to your reader to make the topics part of your online life if they're not already. Join a Wii Fit or a Biggest Loser challenge, like these folks, if those are your thing, or find one for whatever is. (Hi, all of Upland, California. Go you. All of you.) Let the people there kick your butt in real time, too. I'm paying for the Jillian Michaels online program, so it would probably be a good idea to actually participate. Yes.

*Tell someone. Ask for help. As much as I love my friends online, in real life and any combination thereof, when I'm making the choice to change my habits or to waste another night online, I'm generally making it in isolation, and that does not work for me. I've reached out to a couple of colleagues and friends and let them know that I really could use exercise partners and people who know about my health concerns (and while this might seem like a single-person's problem, it goes for the coupled who are going it alone on this count as well.) I'm expected in class on Monday and it's a lot harder to bail when someone's waiting for me, jogging in place, by the door.

Seriously, this stuff is hard, and if any answers here sound easy, that's not the intention. But on some level, if I want to feel or look or live differently, I just have to do it.

Motivation around the Web:

Lots of motivation hints at FitSugar (Where Barack and Michelle Obama are exercise motivators? Alrighty then.)

Music is a huge exercise motivator for me. Courtney from the 17 Magazine fitness blog shares her playlist here, which I also just noticed contains Single Ladies. When will it end? Not at GoodyBlog, where it also made Diane's list. Check out the playlist suggestions on Melissa Anelli's Fitting It In Ning community. (I'm going back here, for sure.

If God is your motivator, Therese Borchard at BeliefNet's Beyond Blue wrote about a Catholic Approach to Internet Addiction. (Just interesting, that's all.)

Photos - especially those that I'm truly awakened by, and not just in the "oh I hate how my hair looks here" way - can be a motivator for me. I have an old "after" picture where I just look healthy that i've dug up and I'm going to keep on my desk to remind me of my goals. Ashley just told her story in photos at her Staying Healthy and Maintenance Blog.

Zan, who is way more motivated than I am in the fitness department, wrote a great piece on the subject a couple weeks ago. Bottom line: do it anyway. There are lots of great links here.

Did I miss anything? Do you have a great playlist or a tip for getting yourself moving when you're lost in the Internet time warp? I'd love to hear about it.

Laurie White writes at LaurieWrites. There are a few old "after" photos - and several thousand more - on Flickr.

Serious

I've had a Myspace account for a long time that I check but I don't use. Turns out I am dumb because clearly my destiny awaits me here:

Hello,
My name is Ken,male, single , I saw your brief profile here and was impressed hence my sending this mail to you to enable us get acquainted to each other.I want us to be good friends so that we will have a long standing relationship that will mature and blossom to a better,intimate and romantic affairs.
I await to hear from you to enable us establish a more cordial relationship. i am new will like to chat with you on my message and get to know each other and written me back here mcdonald1964ken@xxxx or mcdonaldjones1@xxxxx
Much Regards
Ken

A cover letter or a come-on? You decide.

And yes, Tom is his only friend. (Head - meet wall.)

Two songs I've been convinced to sing at a karaoke bar and one I would, no payment necessary.

And no, one of them is NOT 99 Luftballoons, although that's what my brain keeps telling me to put into that little #3 box there. Seriously? 99 Luftballoons? I can't even pronounce kielbasa correctly. Or, umm, schnitzel whatever.

Reunited was great fun and I sang it with some random man, in circumstances I cannot recall. My sister and I performed the Poison song on my second-to-last birthday at rock'n roll karaoke with a LIVE BAND. It was seriously one of the most entertaining experiences of my life - and hell no, Charlie, I didn't need a lyric sheet.

Bobby McGee was actually my first request, and the band didn't know it even though it was in the binder. I will never feel okay about that, and I'm perhaps partially kidding.

Reunited by Peaches & Herb

Talk Dirty To Me by Poison

Me and Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin

Fem 2: Final session - From Individual Voice to Law of the Land - Continuum for Change

Heather Holdridge from Care2. She's from upstate New York, not a new-agey person, but she admits to feeling the positive energy today.
It's important now to join together and move forward.

Linda Hallman, Executive Director, American Association of University Women

Kristina Wilfore - Ballot Initiative Strategy Center - when is it smart to run particular issues on particular ballots?

Liza Sabater - Culture Kitchen

Avis Jones-Deweever - Director, Research and Public Policy and Information Center for African-American Women, NCNW

Kierra Johnson, Executive Director, Choice USA - Speaks not only on choice issues but other reproductive rights and social justice issues.

Question for Linda: What has AAUW recently done on pay equity issues?

Lily Ledbetter and coalition partners - Lily Ledbetter Act -

AAUW's mission is advancing equity for women and girls through advocacy, education and research - that is how they moved LL bill through. Members worked tirelessly to pass it.

Pressure came from three main fronts: Hill lobby staff, AAUW members in the field and from their lobby corps, group of volunteers who come from DC/MD/DE area when Congress is in session, we brief them, give them materials and assignments and they hit the Hill. They ahve friends and allies on Capitol Hill on both sides of the aisle.

Equal Pay Day - marks point a which women's earnings finally match the man's from the previous year. It takes 16 months of a woman's labor to equal 12 months of a man's salary. Served cookies with bites out of them, held Unhappy Hours, examples of how community gets together.

Added new feature Web site - free fair pay compensation tool. Can plug in Zip code and what you do, find out what you should be making and how things differ. Knowing your salary scales empowers you, gives you a weapon to fight for what you deserve.

First research project refuted the notion that higher education hurt women's health. (!)

Women earn less than men do as soon as one year after graduation.

We get fuel for our work, continue to address wage discrimination. Current pay equity campaign = Keep the Change Until Women Have Real Change. Calling this one-cent raise chump change. 

Linda: Volunteer lobbyists come on via word of mouth primarily. You want people who can do a good job lobbying. At this point it's self-generated. Every age from upper 20s to 80 year old woman.

Kristina Wilfore -I'm a feminist. I heard that was a little controversial in some of the panels today, people not embracing the term. I am and proud to be one.

Two formative experiences: grew up in Montana with Christian Conservative Evangelical REpublican parents. 1980 election - my mom was going to vote for Carter. Dad, a Reagan supporter, made fun. Mom voted for Carter anyway. A 14, Planned Parenthood clinics bombed. She was outraged, wrote letter to editor about reproductive choice to family's alarm. The rest if history.

How do we take this energy and put it to use in small and big ways?

What do we need going forward? Four things. I think we are in crisis. Do not think we have a feminist movement. Think we have vibrance of thought in writing, speaking, utterly lacking in political apparatus that takes women's issues to the level it needs to be effective in this society. It lacks discipline and lacks a plan. 

Would not have Obama taking out family plannig component if there was a stronger women's political movement. Shows how lacking we are in something that has real political power. Think leadership is out there but we need a plan.

2. We need to be smarter how we frame issues. We are in a defensive posture and we gotta change that attitude.Three anti-choice initiatives have won.

There are rightwing gimmicks and real progressive solutions, so gimmicks aren't having as much power. We need to work our issues in without being defensive.

3. We have to jump on opporutnities, both threats and immediate opportunities. We beat for the first time in 12 years the attempt to roll back Affirmative Action as a ballot measure. 

Local referenda are ignored in favor of national races and issues. Let's not look at Obama as savior, look at things we need to do on local level. 

let's govern like we are the majority because we are.

4. It is time to define our enemies and go after them in smart, non-emotional ways. let guys get away with a lot in ways that ocntinue to undermine. it's an economic business for a lot of them, not an ideological sandpoint.

We need the blogosphere to do smarter campaigns, zone in on egregious backgrounds that most of them had. Defeated personhood in Colorado, alreayd moving in South Dakota. States banned same-sex marriage are already moving to strengthen these initiatives.

Banned gay adoption in Arkansas - will probably see this in many states.

Who is behind thees? What do they mean? How do we organize smartly on these issues? I think there's a lot of hope and opportunity, but we have a lot of work to do and need a lot more political organization in the women's movement going forward. 

Heather: Former rap, Kumbaya Dammit -

Liza - Opportunities and threats at state and local levels. There is a disconnect still between vibrant, fast-growing feminist blogosphere and also women's issues online ecology that goes beyond feminist bloggers...and the advocacy organizations.

A lot of it I feel is new vs. the old, and also it has to do with tools. That's where tech investment is absolutely important. We bloggers took on these tools like water in the desert because a lot of us are writers, creatives who needed a soapbox and didn't ahve it before.Can see disconnect with organizations where we're linking to them but they're not to us.

We have to start thinking collectively as bloggers - will to start with some kind of foundation and let the people grow it.

Reframing - there is a lot to learn from bloggers who are wordsmiths, who use snark and parody and sometimes bad words in order to talk about politics, but there needs to be reframing about progressive issues. Our advocacy organizations allow GOP/conservative movement to frame issues and have us on the defensive.Sometimes the way we speak the issues has more resonance because they're more true - coming from persona nd not committee of PR people.

There is a lot to learn from wha we do online. One of the trends we're seeing - a lot of the health care battle is being reframed as culture wars. Disembowling of womens' health issues as we're getting closer to deealing with it on a national scale. As bloggers we can keep an eye on it but don't have access to Hill, lobbying reach.

She cannot get women to write about local politics. Hard to hit the pavement on a local level but that's wherea lot of our battles are being lost.

Avis - organization not new, has its disadvantages. We have to be pulled into the 21st century sometimes. Proud of new initiative, trying to merge traditional organizing techniques with new tech to spur movement and activism at local and national level.

Liveblog: The Story of Women

Now we're cooking with gas. This conversation just got good.

Elisa: Anonymity is totally important. sometimes, but if we're activists it's important to claim who we are, otherwise people won't know.

Creating new history and moving forward, claiming identity is important.

I have no time, can't care if someone automatically dismissed my identity before they even knew me.

We get mocked and dismissed before BlogHer for talking about shoes.

Memory, association, skills used to know tv characters is dismissed whereas knowing baseball stats is praised.

The more we say "fuck it," the more judgments will become irrelevant.

I'm nobody's token. So i they put me on tv I will kick ass and it won't matter if they wanted to tokenize me.

Jessica of the Saartjie Project: One of the ways we use the Saartje project, we look at music videos every single day. There's a legacy behind us. You take what people are seeing every day, the Twinkie, and then give them the recipe for cake. Just telling stories, as mundane as they may seem, someone else can connect to it.

Ann Stone of National Women's History Museum: People don't like history because they don't hear fun and good stuff.

Discussion about story. We should become a story-sharing culture. Woman in audience lost her connection to a project recently that involved hundreds of hours of filmed stories.

How can women's history projects pop up on BlogHer. Elisa: do-ocracy. If you want it, post it.

You have to care about what other people write to get them to care about your story.

LIVEBLOG: Bloggers and Activists: an intimate and frank conversation

Gloria Pan - Two worlds of advocacy and online media are very different. Online = wild, wild west.
You must get momentum for advocacy.
Trying today to get down to nitty-gritty. What are similarities and differences so we can get the two sides to work together.

Kim Gandy - President of NOW.
Liza Sabater - CultureKitchen @blogdiva
Tedra Osell - BitchPhD. @bitchphd

Liza - Someone said Internet made her more of a feminist. Same for her. Comes from very political family, very much a grassroots activist.

Tedra - Housewives and soccer moms are feminists. A lot of stuff that isn't paid work is still work that needs to get done.

Gloria Pan - Are bloggers introverts (ed. Not this one. ;))

Kim - Idea of being able to write just whatever you think is attractive. Not always possible in an advocacy organization. 

Tedra -

At the crossroads

I'm at the Feminism 2.0 conference, doing some liveblogging.

At the crossroads: Organizing the next generation of feminists online and off is excellent.

@HumanFolly - Jen Nedeau

@nerdette - Tanya Tarr

@csamuels - Cynthia Samuels

Tanya - The Women's Conundrum - strengths of a community not leveraging its potential

Power bases - power as women voters in the elecorate and our power as consumers - because we exist here and are the majority here.

Women voters have exceeded men since 1964.

266 women have served in FEderal govt as elected officials - 37 are WOC, 31 have been governors. Impatient for future when percentage of population is represented in the government. We represent a majority but we're not there yet.

Consumer power - women make up 80 percent of consumer choices in the country. Quoted frequently. It's a true thing. Buying homes - women are part of that. Entire marketing divisions at P&G, Kraft, J&J devote millions of dollars to tracking women's consumer decisions. TREMORS? (MIdwestern moms?)

Enormous potential if we can find common ground. 3 of 4 women in Emily's list poll state that sexism remains a problem in the U.S. Talk about -isms and prejudices but distinction not made that everyone walks around w/ prejudices but isms are structural, keep people from jobs and equality.

@csamuels Boomers are tribal. Anything that brings us together on or offline is comfortable. We're completely available emotionally for it.

Why women get the Web - think about what the assets are int he Web for women. Trying to figure out how to reach women, make the most of them.

Web is so inclusive and hospitable to women. Community building is something women do organically, a carpool or a spa for someone's bday. Web gives us tools to do that. I really think we have to remember, women have been doing this since the birthing tent, the quilting bee, not something we figured out when a computer hit our desks. 

Thinks people love BlogHer so much because it's become a tribe. Allowed me to find people who are much more comfortable for me.

KIm Gandy and Eleanor Smeal are us.

She started on iVillage when it was sites started by women with 12-step experience. She knew how to put meetings together.

Bifurcation between older and younger women re: feminism that doesn't have to exist.YOunger women will not allow feminism to die.

At BlogHer, person said problem was "old feminists." She went home and consulted with colleague on how to bring younger women in, seek inclusion.

We should be looking for each other. Someone said "how can I write about family issues, I don't have any kids." She had been made to feel that just because she was not herself a parent, she didn't have a right to have policy or philosophical views that were worth blogging about. It's unnecessary.

Jen+ For the younger generation feminism is like fluoride, we scarcely know we ahve it, it's simply in the water (quote from Manifesta.)

Friends don't consider themselves feminists although they benefit from and hold the values.

Feminist2.0 is like self-fulfilling prophecy of the Web. Two-way conversaion, input and output, ability to opt in and opt out.

Younger people able to opt in and out of feminism.

How do we unify with existing divisions?
Young women are not the same species you had 20/40 years ago.

Younger women might not take "ladder" approach, might take lateral moves...Twitter, etc. Don't believe in pyramid. Internet is inherently democratic place. Levels distinctions of social status.She started on Twitter a year ago - amazing that she can tweet at Ellie Smeal and she will respond.

Tanya - is going to video questions.

Questions: Idea of social media. Alot of women talk about feminism/womanism but don't know what a blog is. When she told 70 year-old aunt she had a blog, she didn't know what that was. How do we bring people into our sphere.

Cindy - This is an online and offline opportunity. We can reach people on and get to them off and vice versa. People can go into senior centers and teach them how to use computers. For most people of a certain age, as soon as they have grandchildren they want to be online. Want to use webcams. Homey answers but the first thing that sounded like they might be productive.

Jen - Making Web more female-friendly - default avatar the shape of a woman rather than a man on every social network would be nice, for example

Cindy - Wouldn't expect everyone to have a FB page.

Lulu -Women are stretched for time and resources? How do we get around this to get them to use the tools?

Tanya - Woman took her Flip video camera everywhere she went. Video clip about how she figured out how to jimmy her camera to dashboard witha  hair clip. She was so excited. Wonderful thing about mothers, is that we're amazing engineers. Have to make it all fit and manage our time. Question comes up alot - we all want to blog, make time for it in our life, but we have to find ways to jam it into our life.

Great thing about Twitter, it's constant, mobile, I do it all the time. Carving out those tiny moments as we're walking to the next thing.

Question: Who are not considered feminist but are important swing voters? 

Jen - Unmarried bloc is huge

Tanya - We don't have any form of even loose unification among all women voters.Coalition-building, have to get men involved. There are men in this audience, thank you for coming.

Cindy - How do you get these people into the tent? We have to think outside of litmus tests - there's one box they check, reach them on that, they don't have to believe in things they don't believe in.

We have purist definitions and all it does is shut people out.

Tanya - Saw various "(blank) for OBama" - everyone can throw up what they want to help define their participation in the campaign. "Scientists for Obama," "Armenian-Americans for Obama," "Mac-Users for Obama." Want to create something like that for feminist movement.

If we want to coalesce as the next 3rd wave, going to have people with a range of values but join together on a few of the important ones.

Alice Cohan - Political Director of Feminist Majority - Difference between bldg feminist movement and bldg communications network. 

There are issues that are inherent to what a feminist is - reproductive rights and justice is one of them. If we soften that position for the good of reaching out, we may have more numbers, but we will turn around and not have a movement. We need to be clear and firm and srong on what issues make up feminism. Reach out to sisters and welcome and join them on those issues.

Sarah Palin is not a feminist. She is a political user.

It's important to be clear that we have goals that we need to achieve as a movement. 2.0 are tools - not the end result. 

There are groups taht are single-issue, working on particular things. If we''re working on equal pay we wouldn't

But to define yourself as a member of the movement, it's important for people to know what that means, what we stand for.

Jen - it's a matter of telling the feminist story. Bring them into the narrative, show them their place in it.

Question - We are women who want to pass something along. We have our stories. We don't necessarily want to sit in front of the computer and blog. Like idea of someone blogging our stories for us. Want to get the word out. She appreciates knowing about the blogging.

Tanya - Cross-generational collaboration was successful- can work in Asian cultures, blogging, language barriers and taboo topics. Told a story of cancer in a family that was difficult to talk about.

Podcasting and videoblogging, a lot less typing. 

New Moon Media - magazine for girls 8-12 are complete feminists; much more focused on what is equal and fair than teens are. Young girls still very connected to idea that world should treat them fairly. Fascinated by stuff online, new media. Ten year old niece wanted her own Flip Video so she could start making her own films. Huge amount of energy there. Helps girls to bridge that time from girlhood to time in college when many young women have traditionally discovered feminism. Don't ahve to have that disconnect in between. 

Man in orange, first day of fellowship at AAUW. Grew up in Chicago, didn't talk about feminism in his neighborhood. As an AFrican-American man, how should he talk to his male friends who are mystified by feminism. How to bridge that gap? His grandma was his feminist role model.

Lauren blogs at Change.org - wrote about OBama, embracing feminism, re: Ms. Magazine covers.

She put her blog on gtalk status, guy friend wanted to talk about it. She explained fem2.0 conference. He rolled his eyes and said, "Ugh, feminism, I don't want to hear about that." You have to make it a teachable moment. Black people aren't a monolith and feminists aren't either. I wear heels and don't mind door being opened for me. But I believe in equality and reproductive choice. Need to be more men of color who are embracing feminism. Men of color in particular are misogynists and sexist without knowing it. Need to let them know it makes them no less of a man to be committed to equality.

Jen - Feminism allowed women to redefine themselves in such a way that men do not have idea of how to redefine themselves.

Source of lists of feminist blogs? PunditMom, Momocrats, BlogHer.

Carolyn Cook - distressing to me that progressives/democrats ahve assumed position that it's our way or the highway. Voted for Sarah Palin.