On Saturday,
I wrote about the intense soul-searching that took place during my plane ride
back to Berkeley:

I pondered and prayed a lot on the plane -- because there was much to ponder
and pray about. In the months to come, I hope to share some of what I thought
about. As I become more and more into blogging, one of the filters I apply
in guiding my reflection is whether and how I might write about that matter.
Using such a filter may seem strange (especially to non-bloggers and non-writers)
-- but it's a handy filter for me. My mind is typically racing in too many
different directions, leading to diffuseness of thought and action. Writing
with enough clarity and background to make my thoughts and feelings comprehensible
to anyone who cannot read my mind limits me in a good way.

I'm purposefully trying to come back to the seven pages of notes I compiled
last weekend. Saturday wasn't the first time I brainstormed ideas, questions,
feelings one after the other. However, I rarely came back to what I wrote --
hence not focusing myself on some key matters. I want to change that behavior.

There was a lot of shorthand in the notes, phrases loaded with meaning waiting
to be unpacked and elucidated. So let me dive in today and see how far I get.
Expect for me to come back to this thread of blogging.

For the last six or seven years, since coming across Stephen Covey's First
Things First, I conceptualized my life in terms of about 7-10 "life
roles" that I play. (I'd like to dig up the book, find a rigorous reference
for the concept -- maybe in some other post). I won't attempt a definition here
but rather write specifically about the roles that I list for myself (as a way
of explaining myself but also to illustrate the concept). In some ways, the
notion of "life roles" should be obvious. However, it hadn't been
obvious to me and its introduction to me changed an important set of mental
boxes I used to organize my life. These days, I wonder a lot about the limitations
of this conceptual framework, the ways it might be holding me back. That's not
to deny the framework's usefulness, however.

Enough generalities for now. Here is my list of current roles:

1. follower of God/disciple of Jesus
2. son and brother (member of my family)
3. friend
4. member of the Lorina House community (my living arrangement)
5. technology architect for the Interactive University Project (work)
6. member and elder of the First Presbyterian Church Berkeley; member of the
   Justice Task Force at FPCB; board member of Radix and member of the New College
   Berkeley community; former Westminster House board member (Christian community
   life)
7. TeleCare volunteer
8. intellectual/writer/educator/artist/creative person/Bach lover/restless
   person/encyclopedist
9. "saw-sharpener"

So there....I feel a bit exposed laying out such a list. (There are plenty
of problems with this list, some of which I see but many I'm sure that are hidden
from me but obvious to my readers!) And this list certainly cries out for explanation
(probably lots of it for those of you who would care to hear it). But I think
that from how I've already blogged and from what I will want to write, you'll
start to see the connections between the various, seemingly random, pieces of
writing to the larger framework of how I order different parts of my life.

From David Mamet's adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (p. 71) -- Astrov says to Vanya:

Oh stop it! (Pause.) Listen to me. People who live after us. In one hundred or in two hundred years, you know? Do you know what they'll feel? They will despise us for our stupid and insipid lives. And perhaps they will know how to be happy. We, however, but for you and I, there is but one hope. And that hope is this. That when we are dead, lying in our graves, visions may visit us, and that they are of peace. Oh, yes. My friend, we've said, in this district we find but two decent cultivated men. And we spoke of ourselves. But the last decade has undone us. Life has sucked us in--this foul, Philistine life--and has corrupted us. What a shocking surprise; we've turned out like the rest! But we have changed the subject. Give me what you took.

Snow is mostly a distant memory. But I daydream often about winter nights in Timmins, when the mercury drops way below zero. There is no snow falling from the sky but there is a lot of it under my feet. It crunches as I trudge down the street, around the block, sometimes on my way to a destination, other times just out for a walk. The smoke rises gently from neighbourhood houses, people gathered warmly around a television. It's hockey night in Canada, and most minds are focused on the match. I don't play hockey myself -- the snow is much more interesting. Snow is where I find peace. Even if the wind howls and my face grimaces in response, I find myself in that pure white. Of course there is joy as I come back in, my glasses fogging up. The snow does not go away though.

As I share more and more of myself on the Web, I often wonder about the wisdom of being open in this forum. Is it ironic that I should be so concerned about projects like Total Information Awareness (TIA) when I'm basically feeding information about myself to the open Web that TIA would probably not be able to find on its own? How can I get upset at advertisers, telemarketers, and the like who pay good money to learn about my buying habits when I write on the Web about books I read, talk about where I live, gadgets I have bought, magazines that I look at, friends I have -- perhaps a more vivid description of my life than my credit card statement? And who knows what a future employer or prospective date think about me after reading my blog? What I consider honesty, they might consider self-indulgence.

More questions than answers at this point. Some things that I think might be pieces of the puzzle are: notions of the transparent society (time to read the book?), in which there can be "freedom through accountability"; images of heaven in which we will all be transparently known (to God and to others) -- nothing that we have done or said will be secret any longer (Luke 12:2-3); openess as a way of encouraging others to be likewise (or not!)

Trackback has been implemented for Manila -- but I'm still trying to get it to work. This entry is to see whether I can get trackback communication going both ways between my two blogs. If I can, then cross-referencing will be much easier to manage.

After I skimmed Krista's Visceral Appeal of Public Transit...? , I gave her a call -- I had been away for couple of weeks but had been following her blog from afar. We talked about various issues about blogging, and I encouraged her (as I hope to here) to keep up the writing. Although I won't be able to respond thoughtfully to everything she's writing, I'm reading her blog. Much of what she is sharing might not elicit an immediate response; some piece might judge lodge in my mind until weeks or months later only to come together with a disparate observation or idea. But what Krista is writing will help us immersed in our car-dependence to see into the personal angle of living in a different and free way.

I do, however, want to jot a make a few points in response to Krista's post -- some of which arose during my own bike ride to and from church today. First, a quote from Krista:

The fact is, public transit actually does appeal to me on a visceral level (as do bicycling and walking)--and that's something that I wish I could convey better to others. The absolute luxury of having someone else deal with the driving and traffic (not to mention maintenance and liability) while I read, write, sleep, pay bills, or talk to a friend--sometimes seems like a kind of miracle. My survival instinct also kicks in here--I feel a lot safer in a train, on a track, than amidst hundreds of unpredictable independently moving high-speed vehicles (not to mention my own car's mechanical unpredictability)--and statistics bear out this instinct. The exhiliration of riding a bicycle, the relaxed pace of walking--these things also appeal to me on a deep emotional and physical level.

Today is another glorious summer day in Berkeley, an absolutely lovely time to bike. As I pedaled my way home today, felt the soft breeze on my face, watched a young couple holding hands on the street, I wondered whether I had ever seen TV commercials that tried to capture what I was feeling right then. Perhaps car fanatics will disagree -- but I find biking a much more connecting experience than driving -- joining me to the elements and to other human beings. All those car ads (I have in mind images of a SUV serenely rounding the bend on a country road, absolutely alone) seem much more farfetched than an ad I can imagine celebrating the joy of cycling. (Imagine this: Happy cyclist in moderate physical condition with broad smile, soaking in the sunshine, pedling past gardens, trees, other happy people, little contented children -- bonded together in a great human community. Cuts to cyclist arriving at home, "glowing" from the ride and from the knowledge that he or she has not only gotten good exercise without adding any noxious fumes to the air. OK -- I would make a terrible ad man....) Why aren't there more ads that touch on the visceral appeal of cycling? (How does BART advertise? Does Critical Mass advertise? How?)

And we haven't even talked about walking yet....

Lloyd on google ads in Phil's blog:

So it's a terrible conundrum, my friend. You are in need of funds for your life as a college undergrad, and yet... if what you've done becomes the start of a trend in weblogging space, then it'll ruin weblogging for me (and perhaps others) in a fundamental way. All of us are assaulted on every side by ads and commercials already, that I think it's important to keep some space sacrosanct. For me, that would be weblogs.

Or maybe I'm being awfully curmudgeonly in this regard. Why shouldn't commercialism penetrate every inch of virtual real estate on the internet and on the web? I feel like I'm sticking my neck out on a silly ideal and at the same time trying to walk through quicksand here.

I don't have as strong of a negative feeling against ads in blogs as Lloyd does. The fact that Lloyd reacted strongly against the ads does make me wonder whether I've acquiesced when I should not have to the commercialization of our lives. I'm not inclined to stick ads on my own blogs or websites (though if I ever use the Amazon associates functionality to let people buy books on my blog -- something I've thought about doing -- then my site will also be explicitly commercial). Then again, I wasn't planning to make money blogging. Now, that doesn't mean that blogging might not have longer range economic benefits for me -- by enhancing my reputation, by getting my name out there, by getting me my next job. Those prospects have certainly crossed my mind. Hence, because we're thoroughly economic beings, I suppose I just think of myself as a sophisticated navigator of the medium -- and just overlook ads (or click on them, knowing full well that by doing so, I'm participating in some economic exchange. I also don't feel the obligation to click on links just to help out students (but then again, they're not my students....).

All this sounds fine and well until the thought crossed my mind: how would I feel if I started to wear logos and banners paid for on my sports jacket the next time I give a talk at a national forum? It's certainly done right now, and I would be a bit taken aback if speakers somehow started doing that. One might ask, "well, why not? Professional athletes wear logos all the time...." So what's the difference between my being upset at an academic speaker saying "hey, I'm sponsored by XYZ Computing" and Phil's google ads? (I'm sure there is a difference but I can't tease it out yet....)

I still hope to make it to the 10:45 service of First Presbyterian Church on time....If I don't make it on time, it will not have been the first time that I'm late on the account of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier or Mass in B Minor or one of his cantatas. I know that corporate worship is important, and all of my upbringing should keep me from being late. Nevertheless....

I flew in from Toronto last night to a lovely summer evening at SFO. My absence of two weeks feels longer than that -- which I take as a wonderful sign of some rest at least. I probably don't know what real rest means -- but at least being in three different cities that are not where I normally live (Montreal, Cambridge/Boston, Toronto) helps get me out of my rut.

I pondered and prayed a lot on the plane -- because there was much to ponder and pray about. In the months to come, I hope to share some of what I thought about. As I become more and more into blogging, one of the filters I apply in guiding my reflection is whether and how I might write about that matter. Using such a filter may seem strange (especially to non-bloggers and non-writers) -- but it's a handy filter for me. My mind is typically racing in too many different directions, leading to diffuseness of thought and action. Writing with enough clarity and background to make my thoughts and feelings comprehensible to anyone who cannot read my mind limits me in a good way.

Let me give an example of this filter in action. I was up before 6am this morning because I'm still on east coast time. A sweet way to get back into my Berkeley life is my morning breakfast ritual. Having been away for two weeks meant that my current periodicals pile now contains one issue of The New York Review of Books, two issues of The Times Literary Supplement, two issues of The New Yorker, and the latest issue of Books and Culture -- not to mention today's San Francisco Chronicle. The suspicion that I have been subscribing to too many magazines came to the forefront this morning as I wondered how taking a few hours to read all this stuff was going to help me. Undoubtedly it would be a pleasurable experience for me, lots of mind candy, lots of provocative ideas, great prose, etc. At this point, I don't want to stop reading these and other sources -- otherwise, I won't be in dialog with others. At the same time, I don't want to spend too much of my time just trying to absorb the unabsorbable mass of media (good and bad) out there. How to strike the balance?

OK -- this has been a long-winded way to say "hi, I'm back." In a few more minutes, I must be off to make calls at one of my favorite organizations, Alta Bates TeleCare, something I will write about at length "any time now".

Ginny made the following observation several weeks ago :

Here you bring up a question I've wondered about for a long time: why, at best, my journal-keeping workshops draw only one-third men, when on the evaluation everyone writes that yes, they'd recommend the workshop to men as well as women. I've thought about starting a blog but then wondered to what extent I'd want to "go public" with what's on my mind. This is always a concern of women in my workshop (say, even about reading aloud something they've written). But aren't most bloggers men? I've read only a few, but I now have Rebecca Blood's book. (So many books, so little time.)

I don't know whether more bloggers are men....I suspect so since I guess that most bloggers are those who have easy access to networked computers -- and aren't there more men than women who fit this description? A relevant article is Lisa Guernsey's "Telling All Online: It's a Man's World (Isn't It?)" in the NY Times (November 28, 2002, Thursday, Late Edition - Final; Section G; Page 1; Column 1; Circuits), which is archived on Lisa Rein's blog.

My personal experience with blogging has not made think that blogging is a male-dominated medium. Of course, maybe what I really mean is that it is not any more male-dominated than other forms of media, and that I have encountered very significant female voices in the blogging world -- first and foremost in my own immediate blogging community and then also in the blogosphere at large. I hadn't heard any comments from women bloggers about particularly gender differences in blogging -- but then again, I might not have been listening carefully (or I may not have been privileged to hear them).

I'm very curious to hear the perspective of other bloggers, especially women on this topic.

BTW, a piece on writing differences between men and women (as uncovered by computer analysis and manifest in the use of pronouns) that Catherine found has possible ties here.