For those of you who were addicted to Group Hug, you’ve gotta check out e-admit. Users submit some sort of admission, often with a poll following it. Readers can then vote on their admissions.

[Sorry Scott for a new addiction.]

“Keeping a diary is bad for your health, say UK psychologists. They found that regular diarists were more likely than non-diarists to suffer from headaches, sleeplessness, digestive problems and social awkwardness.
…
“Although she does not have proof, Duncan speculates that diarists buck the usual trend because instead of a single, cathartic outpouring to offload trauma, diarists continually churn over their misfortunes and so never get over them. ‘It’s probably better not to get caught in a ruminative, repetitive cycle,’ she says.” — Dear diary, you make me sick in NewScientist

I wonder if blogging/online journaling differs from diarying in this fashion, given that writers have an audience. Do they still get caught in the cycle?

Jim and James have a sweepstakes going to get people to promise to vote. Check out Vote or Not

And dammit, if you’re eligible, make sure you get out and register to vote. There’s no excuse to not participate.

What a goofy weekend. Last year, i went to Burning Man and left on Friday evening, emotionally destroyed and needing to get off the playa. I decided to finish out my week on the playa. On Wednesday, two of my dearest girlfriends came over and dreaded my hair. On Thursday, i dropped my car off at the shop and picked up a rental, determined not to playafy my car and deal with more breakdowns in Sparks. Ironically, they were out of compacts, economies, standards, intermediates, etc. so they gave me a luxury sedan that looked like a Jaguar. I felt like a pimp. On Friday, i went to the Exploratorium for a great meeting on education and then picked up a bunch of coax cable for friends on the playa and headed east.

I arrived on the playa, dropped off the coax and other supplies that people were craving and wandered into the night. I saw friends, i danced, i checked out cool art projects. More importantly, i saw the best temple i’ve ever seen. Last year’s temple was a joke to me – it felt anything but spiritual. But this year, oh this year. I danced through the night of the Burn, finding new muscles and loving every moment of it. I found peace from last year staring at the burn of the temple. And then there was clean-up. I spent all day Sunday and all morning Monday cleaning up the camp – pulling rebar, lifting boxes, tearing down the shade structure. I spent an hour searching for a member of our camp who failed to show up after the temple burn. And then the drive home. Gotta love when Denny’s is full of playa.

It’s hard to share what Burning Man meant to me this year, but it was very personal and i’m so glad that i went. Of course, i had forgotten that my flight to the east coast was on Tuesday so i was quite startled when Orbitz called to remind me. And now i’m off on the east coast with some friends in an interesting intellectual conversation.

In the discussions on the Friendster firing, someone noted that i do not blog about my work. I found my nose crinkling and i thought i should explore that.

In the last 7 years, i have never signed an agreement with any company or organization that forbids me to blog. Or at least, i do not believe that i have. That said, i have often opted not to blog about the work that i do for companies.

I take contracting gigs in part for the money but in part for the intellectual exercise. I usually respect the companies that i work for and realize that they are working in a competitive market and have hired me to solve a set number of problems, not simply broadcast their strengths and weaknesses to the public.

There are two types of blog posts i typically make about products: rants and theoretical considerations. I still post the theoretical considerations because it’s often possible to generalize them beyond a particular product.

The ranting is usually what i stop doing. Rants provide two roles for me. First, they let me vent my frustration. Second, they give me the false hope that i might affect the product somehow remotely. (Note: Friendster paid absolutely no attention to my critiques, thereby dashing this hope.)

When i work at a company, they give me mechanisms to rant and additional insider knowledge to rant with. Why should i bother to rant to a public unknown audience when i can go straight to the creator’s cube and chew their ear off? The advantage of the public option is to see if others (dis)agree. But seriously, the cube method is far more effective. I think it’s great that people seem to find value from my blog/rants, but the most noticeable impact to me has always been 1-1 anyone.

Once i’ve gotten out a rant, i feel no desire to actually re-articulate it for the public. Note: this is why my publication rate has dropped dramatically as my blogging rate has increased… warning for the other academics out there.

Pay me to speak and i’ll happily craft a theoretical and critical analysis of whatever. But when it comes to blogging, i have no desire to be expected to comment on my work or whatever the latest trend is out there. Nor am i ever remotely amused when people write me emails asking me to comment on their product on my blog or provide free consulting about how to fix some theoretical snaffoo.

I hate being expected to do things because i’ve done them before. Expectations kill the passion. This blog has been the product of passion for 7 years. I can be convinced to operate without passion when other needs are met (like rent money), but it’s not really my preferred way of living.

I almost stopped blogging a few months back because i was tired of the expectations. Seriously, if i could give any feedback to readers, it would be lay off, chill the fuck out and don’t expect/demand things from the writers you’re reading. For me (and many of my friends), blogging is an exercise of love, not an effort to meet an audience’s needs. Having to face expectations every time i go to my blog makes me feel absolutely disgusting, like i’ve become some sort of blogging whore.

School started today. I feel like a giddy girl. I did my hair, i got all dressed up. Yeah yeah, i know that it’s my 21st year of first day, but still. I am such a sucker for the back-to-school rush. There’s something critically crucial about it as a time marker.

One thing is missing though. For the last ?11? years, i’ve travelled back from somewhere to begin school, had a long road trip, returned for some adventure or otherwise had a symbolic break between summer and the school year. I went to work on Monday. I went to school on Tuesday. Felt weird.

So… i decided to go to Burning Man. I’ve already given away all of my gear since i didn’t intend to go but a nice angel bestowed upon me a ticket and i figured that i can survive anything for 3 days as long as i have water and beef jerky. More than anything, i’ll get a mini-road trip, some good dancing and a climate change. That’ll make school feel more real.

Of course, i’m *STOKED* about this semester. I’m taking this wacky “Sociology for Geeks” class that Yuri and i have been plotting. Marx, Engels, Weber, Durkheim… Classics. I’m taking a class on Performance Theory and Method in the Performing Arts department. And i’m taking Lakoff’s seminar on language and politics. That one is particularly strange since there are like 16 of us taking it and 60+ people auditing it. But it’s definitely the time to take the class… and how cool is it to have the NYTimes be required reading?

Anyhow, more will invariably come about this semester. In the meantime, i’m going to do some cleansing activities like take the kittens to the vet, the car to the shop and the danah to the desert.