connecting*the*dots

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I don’t exactly know what gear I’m moving into, but I’m definitely popping the RPM’s as I write this.

My day-to-day has evolved from a free fall of focus two years ago to a full-time operation running dotmatrix, collaborating with more than a handful of clients with unique and challenging work, assisting with the planning of this year’s ConvergeSouth and attempting to get The People, Yes off the ground.

In between those extremes of exploration and consternation, I found myself using this spot for sharing, pimping, contextualizing, opining, pointing and anything else under the sun I found valuable and interesting.

Well, it’s about time I get focused.

Yeah, I had a similar “state of the blogger” moment a few months back, but this time I’m a bit more motivated to down-shift into documenting my various efforts, especially along the lines of The People, Yes.

I refuse to become myopic or dry — graffiti, lyrics, images, poetry; all have a place — but I am making a turn, hopefully for the better.

Hold on, please.

Someone needs to stick to geek publishing.

I am not angry; I am anger.
I am not dangerous; I am danger.
I am abominable stress, eliotic, relentless.
I’m a breath of vengeance.
I’m a death sentence.
I’m forsaking repentance,
to the beast in his hench men.

Armed forces and policemen
that survived off of oils and prisons until there cup runneth over with lost souls.
That wear over-sized caps like blind-folds
Shiny necklaces like lassoes
Draggin’ them into black-holes
And I may have to holla out to Fidel Castro
To get my other brothers outta Guantanimo

And the innocence on death row?
It’s probably in the same proportion to criminals in black robes
That smack gavels
That crack domes
That smack gavels
That smash homes

Justice is somewhere between reading sad poems and 40 oz of gasoline crashing through windows
It is between plans and action
It is between writing letters to congressmen and clocking the captain
It is between raising legal defense funds and putting a gun to the bailiff and taking the judge captive
It is between prayer and fasting
Between burning and blasting
Freedom is between the mind and the soul
Between the lock and the load
Between the zeal of the young and the patience of the old
Freedom is between a finger and the trigger
It is between the page and the pen
It is between the grenade and the pin
Between righteous and keeping one in the chamber

So what can they do with a cat with a heart like Turner
A mind like Douglass
A mouth like Malcolm
And a voice like Chris?!

That is why I am not dangerous; I am danger
I am not angry, I am anger
I am abominable, stress, Eliotic relentless
I’m a death sentence
For the beast and his henchmen
Politicians and big businessmen
I’m a teenage Palestinian
Opening fire at an Israeli checkpoint, point blank, check-mate, now what?!
I’m a rape victim with a gun cocked to his cock, cock BANG! Bangkok! Now what?!
I am sitting Bull with Colonel Custard’s scalp in my hands
I am Sincay with a slave trader’s blood on my hands
I am Jonathan Jackson and a gun to my man
I am David with a slingshot and a rock
And if David lived today, he’d have a Molotov cocktail and a Glock
So down with Goliath, I say down with Goliath

But we must learn, know, write, read
We must kick, bite, yell, scream
We must pray, fast, live, dream, fight, kill and die free!

UPDATE: Thanks to StaceyZ for a handful of transcription corrections.

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Sorry for the bit of drama in my last few posts, but as I stared at the ceiling the other night — not able to sleep because of the sheer amount of stuff going on in my life — I came to the instant realization that I needed to simplify a bit, you know, wrangle my schedule back to being my own.

The crazyness never should have progressed to this point; I know better.

When describing elements of good design to clients, I use the term “reduction,” more often than not to make clear that an additive approach to design — whether it be loading up the interface with features or extreme typographic combinations — is bound to fail, or in the very least, produce a garbled result.

Low and behold, when designer-boy paused to self-reflect the other night — rather, when my brain put me on repeat, caught up in a whirling broken record of commitment-paralysis — I clearly saw that my life was chock full of projects and passions with not many getting the attention they individually deserve.

Especially, my most important passion.

So when I crept out of bed the other night, I attempted to express what I was feeling — that I needed to reduce — without being too wordy. A couple of posts later, my brain felt as though my short-term destiny had been altered by just enough degrees to graciously allow the cycling of rapid thoughts to end and let me drift off to sleep.

Well, based on the comments, email and calls I’ve received from friends, family and distant readers, I figured that I need to provide a bit more insight as to where I am and why blogging has become so much of a drain.

Ridiculous Information Retrieval And Digestion Patterns

I spend an awful lot of time tracking blogs and sites of interest — upwards of 110 to 130 feeds at any given time — covering numerous industries, local and world politics, friends around the globe, etc. Many of my posts over the last six-months have amounted to short quotes from people talking about issues that I find interesting; I used the WP asides feature to drop these quick thoughts (or “pointers”) as an effort to push information out quickly, instead of sitting on it to form a larger essay post down the line. That was a smart solution to upping my output and reducing post paralysis, but I quickly became the idiot who’s addicted to checking Bloglines every 15 minutes for more material.

After pausing from blogging for just a few days, I’ve been able to treat Bloglines like my backup email account — checking once in the morning and once in the evening. I don’t know if it’ll last, but so far so good.

Forgetting Why I Blog

I’ve been writing on the web, one way or another, since 1997. Up until June of 2005, I never even glanced at web analytics — my personal state of mind was always my indicator of happiness or success. Shit, I’ve changed my domain name so many times in the past to reflect personal shifts in mood or focus (digitalportfolio, squareone, apperceptive), I never even paused to consider that my writing/poetry/blogging was being read by anyone with any degree of consistency. Well, in this age of Mint, Feedburner, Technorati, etc., I’ve come to understand that I am being read.

I rather enjoy the benefits of having a readership — hearing from old friends and meeting new ones through conversations found in comment threads, trackback pings, industry conferences or local meetups — but not when content production begins to replace blogging at my pace. Up until last week, I thought I had been publishing at my own pace, even though I knew that I was spending way too much time in the blogging process. After a bit of self-reflection, I’m not so sure that’s the case.

Moving Forward

My life is currently chock full of responsibility and not enough time in the day. I’m working with five different clients on a variety of projects, building my first non-profit and design consultancy, living with the love of my life and trying to keep up with my little bro back up in Jersey. Not one of them has been receiving enough attention from me. Throw in my friends & family and trying to get back in shape, and, well, I think you’re starting to feel me. Blogging is important, but it can’t be my central focus.

So where do I take my blogging from here?

• My Technorati profile reads: connecting*the*dots attempts to frame the convergence of political, technological and cultural memes through pointed essays and captured moments of communication across the web. It’s time to change up the editorial premise and make it much more geared towards my life. I’ll probably remove the name of the blog all together at some point.
• I’m going back to dropping poetry and writing longer essays when the mood strikes — getting away from keeping up with an intra-day, consecutive posting streak.
• John Ford and I are working on developing a collaborative blog project at dotmatrixproject.com. I’ll probably use this spot as the publishing interface for those design/tech posts, as John is working on code to scrape dotmatrixproject tagged posts from a universe of indexed sites and add them to dotmatrixproject as authored posts.
• I’ll continue to post perspective on items that outrage or move me — whether it be in the form of a video, a pointer, or an essay — but I’m going to pick my spots moving forward. Feel free to keep sending me items of interest; the random email pointers I’ve received from readers over the last year has made blogging extremely rewarding

So yeah, that’s the plan more or less; less posts, but with more personal and professional meaning and published on my schedule.

I do hope that you’ll keep your subscription as I attempt this transition. While I won’t be presenting as much info anymore, I’d like to believe that what I do publish will be worth the wait.

We’ll see.

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