Keep on skanking

Hey hey. 2007 is moving on already, and I've been busy doing things I want to blog about and not having time to write (actually I've got two quite long drafts from the last week, but haven't been able to finish them).

At the same time, I'm managing to get a bit of consistency back with my posting, and this seems to be rewarded with more hits and more returning visitors: nothing amazing, but gratifying just the same, and also some positive comments. In return I feel like I need to be keeping people satisfied with new content...

Skanking means moving to me, but with a bit of flava. I'm looking forward to getting back to dancing next week, and our teacher always wants us to ‘ben' up’: keep on moving, but not in too straight a line, not with a straight back at all...

This blog is about dancing a similar bent-back dance, while circling vaguely and persistently around a centre known as advocacy. In some ways this crazy bent up dance of advocacy keeps on tempting me in different directions. I'm thinking at the moment of trying to sort this out and create some alternative spaces that would be more appropiate for those sorts of thoughts, other kinds of dances. One of these alternative spaces at the moment would be more experimental and philosophical (based on visctrix.net), and one would be more strict, accessible and sensible (the advocacy community site).

Hopefully that will leave this for more focusing on advocacy in a quirky and independent way. I've had a good conversation tonight about upsetting people: my friend thought that although she loves me, maybe I upset people unnecessarily. In the end we agreed that there are some people who I should be free to go on upsetting: this is partly the necessary sacrifice (for me) to be able to work successfully with and gain the trust and understanding of vulnerable people and others I already know and work with; and it's partly to avoid the grey area where I could try not to offend anyone and end up completely bland and with nothing interesting to say.

So I think this blog will stay a personal space for me to try some challenging ideas and remain philosophical, but I'll try to be a bit more focused on advocacy in the future. I would also like to make it a more integral part of my work and be able to devote some core time to it instead of mainly writing late at night when I'm tired. That should also give me more chance to write responses to publications of various types (not just the videos I mentioned in my plans for 2007). Finally for now, this will be more of a sounding board for ideas that may be written more carefully and inclusively in other places.

I hope this makes sense... the key is to keep posting I guess, but in the meantime any comments or thoughts or any sort of feedback will be appreciated :-)