I love milestones. Times of year that mark change and give you a chance to pause and reset. I think that’s part of why I had such a hard time living in California during college, and why I appreciated the seasons so much when I moved back east. They provide a very natural rhythm. The time between Christmas and New Years is one of my favorite transition times. I love the fact that nearly everyone is on vacation, so everything slows down. In the past I have usually stayed at work during that week and used the time to catch up on everything. With new years, I love the opportunity to pause, take stock of everything, get organized, and get ready to hit the ground running in the new year. For me, this is my “spring cleaning”, more than anything I do in the spring. Here’s what I’m working towards this week to get cleaned up and ready for 2013:
Resetting email. I got crushed on email in the last month, and have a lot of open threads (I apologize to anyone I owe an email to). I am working towards inbox zero by New Years.
Rebooting my blog — as of yesterday, I’ve merged my blog and my tumblog into one. I’ve moved my blog archives dating back to 2006 to the Wayback Archive, and am doing everything on Tumblr now. Fewer things; more focus.
Mundane things around the house — Yesterday Cescalouise and I cleaned out our basement, and I organized my mess of a closet. Both feel super good to have done, and help create an overall sense of healthiness.
Going to get a haircut :)
And as always happens, I’m using this time to get inspired about 2013. I’ve been collecting some quotes that are getting me fired up.
For the past few weeks, I've been involved with a community effort to draft a declaration of freedom for the Internet. On Monday, it went live on the web, and is starting to get discussed. It's been an amazing, fascinating and inspiring year in the internet community. Today, the Verge has a nicely-produced writeup on the Declaration of Internet Freedom which also gets into the story of the last year of internet politics, including the SOPA/PIPA fight. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the Internet plays as an election issue this fall, and how we as a community can work to carry our energy and momentum into the next US congress and administration, as well as on the global front. For me personally, it's been an absolute thrill ride, as I've jumped with both feet into an area of policy, politics and advocacy that is both very close to my heart and also very new to me, in the details. More than anything I've been so honored and excited to be working with an incredible group of people on such an interesting and important set of issues. I feel very lucky. On the one hand it feels presumptuous and self-indulgent to speak about Interent freedom in the same breath as other independence and rights movements from our history. On the other hand, I believe that we are on the leading edge of one of the biggest global changes we've ever seen, and there are serious issues of freedom and control at stake. My friend Brad likes to say that the shift to the world of connected humanity and free information is bigger than the industrial revolution -- rather, it's more like the shift from hunter/gatherer to agrarian society in terms of the fundamental changes in how we understand how we relate to our good and to one another. So while the current debate is still more on the side of nerd politics than pop culture, I think that will continue to change. And it will be important for more of us to think about the values and power structures that are built into the technologies we use every day. I think the Internet Declaration is a good start. I don't expect it to be the end -- rather, I like it very much as a point of departure for discussion. The day the Declaration was released, this "fork" was published by the folks at TechFreedom, which is worth a read. And the version I posted on github already has 15 forks including a translation to Polish. (you've gotta believe that the founders would have used github if they had had the chance). So, happy Independence Day. Here's to freedom and new frontiers.
Two weeks ago, we were joined by the newest member of the fam: Brieza. Brieza weighed in at a respectable 8 lbs 9 oz and has been busy sleeping away her days since. So far, having 2 kids hasn't been as overwhelming as some people suggested it might be, but I'm sure we're just still in the newborn honeymoon phase -- apparently they start crying more and sleeping less at about two weeks. Theo is super psyched to have a baby sister, and Frannie and I couldn't be happier to have another member on our team.
