Friday, March 14, 2008

Ups & Downs of Computers, Activism, and Life.

Sorry about the hiatus in posting.

How many hard drive failures is normal for a laptop user who works on her laptop for hours every day? I've either had logic board or hard drive failures (not just crashes) every few months for the last several years. I'm on a Mac. I try not to be paranoid, but.... I'm beginning to be suspicious. Of what I'm not sure and I don't live my life walking around in a general state of paranoia... but I , and some CODEPINK friends, do tend to have our hard drives fail within a week or so of major national level actions. It could be coincidence, but the probabilities are slim. In any case I have a new hard drive and am raring to go.

Thank the Great Pink Goddess in the sky that my laptop is new and under warranty. Thank the GPG that Macs exist. Thank the GPG for my resilient nature. Thank the GPG for all the women who compose the contemporary peace net that shifts to compensate for the fluidity of women's actions that compose the net.

Been doing less and less local activism and trying to find the perfect balance that allows me to operate in a non-frantic manner and write about the things that are truly meaningful to me. I also work toward finding a significant position as I re-enter the job market with a "real" job.

I do not regret a minute of the last many years of effort I have directed toward peace. I'm into the 6th very active year of making positive protests for peace (pro + test = for + statements) as it was in February of 2003 that I honored the call for women to join together to march together in public affirmation of American women's desire that their children not be used to make war upon any people and to direct every resource possible, including our children's efforts, into making peace. That simple act of finding a pink item of clothing to wear and taking the Metro into D.C. to join together in protest with other individual women as a visual cue in a huge march and to then march again with thousands of pink clad individuals (women and men) a couple weeks later in an affirmation of values of peace and positive action under a pink banner forever changed my life. I will never be able to leave the peace movement. It is now part of me.

Efforts change over the years though and I find that now I have to dedicate a much greater portion of my time to paid work. Six years is a long time to donate most of your services to a cause. While I have focused on my child and my parent through this time period I no longer have to dedicate myself so fully to family and work in my peace work around that. My daughter is in college now and I will have time to write and work in the evenings and weekends via social networking technologies, so you won't see a real change in my blogging, but the framework for me will be very different.

If you think you know of worthwhile job in the Tucson area that calls for someone with my skills, please do consider linking me up with it.

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