Oh, and I had to mention to Martin Jensen that I'm out of my Triptophan fog. Mostly due to his nudging. Thanks for bringing me around, Martin. On his fulcrum blog, Martin shares those amazing moments of the first snowfall. Nice.

jeez, get me started and you can't shut me up, huh? I really like Hernani's observation about the thinning borders between work and liesure: "We work as we play the video game." That's true for me, especially, as I live in a constant hyperlinked state of mother/wife/worker/blogger. I raise our daughter at home (four years and counting) while at the same time working full-time (and then some) from home for a pretty big PR company. At the same time, I juggle free moments between my husband and my blogging, and somehow that doesn't seem quite fair to my husband or my blogs. But right now, it's my reality.

So for me, especially, the connected world of the Internet is erasing the lines between work and home, between creative expression and ABCs, between online earth mother and offline wife-lover. And when the stars are aligned, it all works like magic--like a good search on google when you find JUST what you were looking for. And when the karma's bad, it all goes awry at once, like when the laptop dies, my daughter decides to etch her name into the baby grand, I piss my husband off, and I'm late finishing a really sucky article on something I still don't understand for a client that wouldn't know gonzo if it bit them in the tush.

So I'm not sure if the end result of all of this will be a collision of online and offline worlds, or a merging of our connected and unconnected states of being. I think for the near term, for us all, it will be an odd mix of collision and integration. And I wonder what it will be like for my daughter and hers. And sometimes, I wonder what she'll think when she's sitting there while her children etch their names into some family heirloom as she searches me up on google, finds this blog, joins in the discussion, and the whole thing comes full circle.

We indeed live in an amazing time.

night, -j.

Required listening for all RGE bloggers--Locke on the Todd Mundt show. Definitely the most in-depth gonzo interview we've heard yet, as Chris educates on what gonzo is, why gonzo is *not* personalization, and why companies should embrace micromarkets and online communities (among other things). He hardly swore at all. I think he sent a stand in.

Mike, great stuff and food for thought. As I return from a week on the gulf (Pensacola Beach), I'm deep in a quandry about what I want, how I feel, where I'm going, what I've been doing. My recent deprture from Atlanta amazed me. How easy it was to leave the laptop and the blogging behind. After a few zings of panic on the drive down (jeez, what am i gonna do without my laptop? I'm sure there's an Internet cafe somewhere on pensacola beach. I'll just get online there. don't worry, it'll be okay), I totally and completely forgot I was connected to anything but the heated beachside pool. All of the connected online world--so much a part of my daily experience--completely disappeared, and I didn't give it a second thought for five days, until we were about two hours outside of Atlanta. (Unlike my offline "work" responsibilities, which I didn't think about until *after* I got home.)

So what were my thoughts once I hit the 75/85 connector? "Wow, I wonder what's up on RGE? Wonder what everyone's been talking about. It'll be nice to talk to everyone again. I wonder if I have any EGR sends. I wonder if that stinking editor has gotten back to me about my article abstract (not)." Short and simple, I had something to look forward to. A reason to come home. Blogging gives me a reason to get up (a reason to stay up), a reason to connect, and someone(s) to connect with.

For Mike's "what's the purpose" questions, I weigh in this way:

To make the world a better place: not really, because I don't want that responsibility. too tired.
Deeper relations with others: kind of--others like me anyway. not the other kind of others though.
New avenue for expression: yes, my voice has been sequestered too long.
Honor, recongition: guilty with explanation--I think "acceptance" is a bigger need for me than honor or recognition. At least that's what my shrink says.
Rich and famous: well, shit, it sure would be nice if this blogging paid off eventually. I think, regardless of whether or not you blog for the hope of money, blogging or some Progeny of blogging will one day pay off for us, especially as more and more smart people are "involuntarily separated" from their jobs and take up arms against the corporate model.
Entertainment: it's fun, yes, but it's a lot of work too, isn't it? so more than entertainment, I'd say for the artistic, creative joy of it all.

So that's where I'm at, as I struggle to lift the fog of vacation and come to terms with the idea of once again being land locked.

More later. sorry i'm so down. keep up the good fight. -j.

Mike, I do think it is a new consumer form of entertainment. :-) However we are living in the knowledge age, aren´t we? The hacker ethic claims that our life is closer to Sunday than to Friday.

The trend is to dismantle the border between the working time and leisure. We work as we play the video game. It´s all together now!!!

I recently blogged some entries on truth and purpose in blogging that may be of some interest.

One of the questions I have is "What are our individual and collective purposes as bloggers, internauts and gonzomaniacs?"

Do we want to make the world a better place?
Do we want to form new and possibly deeper relations with our fellow Earthlinks?
Do we need a new avenue to express ourselves to satisfy an innate human need?
Is it honor and recognition that we crave?
How about great riches, financial independence, to make a living, or some extra pocket change?
Or maybe we are just wasting our time with another consuming form of entertainment?

Some of the above questions are purely personal decisions while others would probably benefit from some discussion.

We are breaking the wall... the firewall. That´s an hard job to make the corporations understand the simplicity of the Gonzo model. The Internet is media; the micromarkets are the audience and the people, not the corporations itselves, has the right to the voice.

Is there anybody out there?
Pink Floyd, The Wall