October 3, 2006 to October 3, 2007 - My 1 year anniversary...

Here it is by the numbers (and p.s., watch for some more posts and status,etc. today)

132 Friends
688 Emails received
833 Emails sent
200+ Videos posted
66 Blog entries
204 Sites bookmarked
50 Books listed
22 Pods a member of
1 Pod cultivator of
195 Posts on Darfur Pod by me
Unknown ~ Posts on other Pods
Unknown ~ Comments on blog entries and videos
200 Ideas listed
50 Photos posted
20 Shouts at me
20+ Shouts back
11 Goals
7,773 Friends blog postings
1000s of Tags added to blogs, videos, bookmarks, books, photos
365+ cans of soda consumed
800+ hours of lost sleep
10+ lbs of weight gained
1000+ salutations of peace
5+ times tried to quite caffeine
200+ times turning off/turning on javascripting
3 days or less not visiting zaadz
1 online progressive dinner attended
24+ stories/poems written in Diving Deeper Pod
Over 105,000 zaadzsters yet to meet

well, unlike poetry slams, of which i am not that familiar with anyway, i will not be scoring or picking a winner or anything.

the basic rules are this -

• post a status message with ss: before it which stands for status slam.
• invite your friends to join the conversation.
• talk about whatever you wish to talk about, but see if you can play off of previous messages or not play off previous messages.
• the status slam will start approximately now ~ 3pm Central US time and go until approximately 3pm Central US time on October 4th.
• write messages, add links, be creative.
• let the words flow.
• all messages have to be in your status list though.  do not do the status slams in your blogs, that is not the point.  you can post a blog message about the status slam event, but otherwise all conversations should be in the status box.
  

at approximately 3pm on October 4th copy and send me all the ss: status slam messages you have on your list and i will attempt to seam them all together into one big list and post it Friday morning October 5th.

on your blogs on October 4th, please support the Free Burma movement - more info here http://coolmel.zaadz.com/blog/2007/10/in_support_of_free_burma

also feel free to talk about Burma in your status posts too!  hope you all come to play...peace

example:
Mike is:
"ss: this is an example status message...i am out and about on zaadz and i am hooked up at the local coffee shop.  i will keep status slamming."
(xx minutes ago)

think of it as free association or collaborative communication or a string of conscious word play or heck, just write something...

There are no unanswerable questions, just a lot of wrong answers.

a message to my friends...

i have been a little checked out (of zaadz) lately...and as my status says - rebuilding.

no, i am not constructing a new house or even remodeling our existing one, but i am trying to step by step rebuild me and parts of my life.  i will still be checking in and back updating the Darfur pod and other things, but it will be a little less frequent for a while.

the first steps i am taking are to reduce the burnout that i have been experiencing and work towards improving my families bottom line (which dove even more just this week with an estimate for $2500 of repairs on our van ~ $1600 of which i have to get done).

i value this site and the friends i have here very much and as i said i will not be far away, just a little distant :)

my first steps have been to work on myself (hmm, seems logical) be the change you want to see ~ guess it can apply personally too.  i have eliminated caffeine, and fast food and i started walking on our treadmill again.  i am also getting an average of 7 hours of sleep a night now! ~ compared to probably an average of 5 or less in the past.

these changes, which i just started a couple weeks ago, have already been making a world of difference in my health and ability to accomplish tasks at home and work.  believe it or not i have actually even craved salad a couple times.  i also highly recommend the site - http://caloriecount.about.com/ for tracking calories, weight and exercise.  it has been a great way for me to see where i need to focus.

i have also greatly reduced my internet usage because i believe i was becoming a little too addicted to being online.  not that some of this time isn't productive and also giving me benefits, but i also was wasting a lot of time (not on zaadz of course :).  i installed the mee timer plugin for Firefox and it keeps track of all the time you spend on every site and you can even group common things - like social networking, email, procrastination, etc.  this timer was also a great way to show me where i wasted time.

so for those of you who have asked, i am doing okay, but i am working on all those things that life likes to throw at you and realized that i needed to set some priorities and release some things that were not as important right now.

i still have the same concerns for issues like Darfur, Burma and peace in our world and i still wish to be a part of and help all my friends and their causes, but first i need to do some rebuilding on myself and look at some other ways that i feel i can make a difference on these important issues.

so a couple weeks have gone by and i am 2.2 lbs lighter (even after having birthday cake on my daughter's birthday), have walked for over 3 hours, burned over 1000 calories and i have spent probably 20 hours per week less - online.

so i will be around and see you all soon.  i keep checking your blog posts when i can and catching email too.  i will update you all on my rebuilding progress as well over the weeks ahead.

peace, love and light to all of you.