Dopp Juice Archive

Actually, I can already tell you what crazy thing I’ve done since the breakup. I bought a Treo. Did I need a new phone? Yes. My old one dropped dead. Did I have a compelling reason to buy a PDA? Yes. I want to use Chinese Dictionary software for looking up characters, and I’ve been lacking a central system of organization. Will it be worth the extra $15/mo to have unlimited web access and be able to take and send pictures with this gadget? That’s to be determined. But I bet it will help me blog better and more often. I have 30 days to bring this bank-account-reduction back to the Sprint store. I can at least have some fun with it in the meantime.

How do you reemerge from a cocoon you had no intention of being sucked into? There are no apologies to be made. No excuses to drum up. Just a mild embarassment that you’ve allowed yourself to be immersed in life for a little while. So what happened? Why did I disappear from the web? Well, my boyfriend and I broke up. “Broke up” is a horrible term for this situation because it carries a trite junior high school connotation. But if I were to say, “the intense relationship that has carried me for two years and that I believed would last forever has fallen to pieces in the palm of my hand,” you’d call me dramatic. So let’s just leave it as a breakup. I’ve been inundated with heavy conversations for the past month, I haven’t slept more than a few hours for the past few days, and quite frankly I’m a little concerned about getting through the semester. So lets change the tone to something lighter. The Top Ten Things I’ve Done After a Breakup (in random order)

1. Shaved my head.
2. Changed schools.
3. Went skydiving.
4. Dyed my bangs fire engine red.
5. Seduced a gay man.
6. Went into therapy.
7. Started a magazine.
8. Changed jobs.
9. Flew to China.
10. Tried to drive to the Grand Canyon from NH to “get some air.”

Stay tuned for what will happen after this one. In the meantime, how about I get back to my old self and fill your RSS readers with useful web tips and crazy San Francisco anecdotes? Can you handle that?

After a small website-fix gig in downtown SF, I donned my free black T-shirt and showed up to the Craiglist Foundation Nonprofit Bootcamp for a volunteer shift. The place was hoppin’. So much energized networking in one place — I could have stuffed a mattress with all the business cards floating around!My assignment was to oversee a couple of sessions in one of the conference rooms. Basically, I stood at the doors, handed out surveys, did a head count, and the collected surveys at the end. Aside from being on my feet for seven hours in Birkenstocks, it was a lot of fun. It’s inspiring to see hundreds of nonprofit leaders in a room, sharing ideas and feeding off each others’ positive energy. The last session I oversaw featured none other than Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.org. The visionary who started the stone rolling. The celebrity behind the site. Needless to say, the session was packed. The topic was interesting, too — how to build community online (and offline). It started the wheels turning in my head again about The Writ.Some Interesting Craig Lore…

• For an April Fool’s joke one year, the Craigslist team announced that Craig doesn’t exist. Many believed it.
• Craig’s official title is “Customer Service Representative.” He prefers to not be taken seriously.
• Despite the fact that he’s helped millions of people find jobs, housing, new office furniture, and sex partners, Craig is the shy, understated, computer-geek type. He doesn’t command the stage with the charisma you’d expect from a world-dominating force. But that’s probably for the best.
• While Craig was in the press room at the conference, one of his many doting assistants asked what they could do for him before he went on stage in 7 minutes. He said, “I’d like a lobster.” She got all flustered and started to go get one before he let on that he was joking.
• Craig is short. He’s been known to find shorter people to stand next to when being filmed or photographed.

All the more reason to love the man. Thanks for saving the human race from itself, Craig!