Dopp Juice Archive

It started with a conversation about dating. I tried define my dating class to a friend, and quickly came up with a string of words that sortakinda summed it all up: intelligent independent creative queer professional. This class includes me, and I had to acknowledge that we’re sometimes hard to date.

Another friend-in-this-category, sfslim, quickly noted that we’re also a hard class to find. I decided to take this as a challenge, and put out the following request to the Internet:

quick poll: would all the self-identifying “intelligent indie creative queer professionals” pls raise their hand via @ reply, dm, or email? May 19, 2008

I wasn’t really expecting the results. So far, over the course of a day, 25 people have raised their hands. They’ve come through public replies, private direct messages, email, facebook messages, and IM. More than a quarter of them have come from strangers. A handful of them have been unsure if they really fit, so let me describe what I’m talking about here:

Intelligent – Do you notice change? Are you witty? Do you see patterns in what’s going on around you? Do you critically analyze the opinions that come your way and consciously decide which ones to accept? Can you usually find the information you’re looking for on the Internet?

Independent – (I didn’t really mean indie in the label-free musician sense. I was just working with limited character space.) Do you insist on keeping a flexible schedule? Do you create interesting projects to work on? Do you define yourself by your skills and passions instead of by the name of your workplace? Do you enjoy time alone? Do you (at least try to) examine any sentence that includes the word “should” to make sure it’s right for you before accepting it?

Creative – Do you come up with new ideas when you’re in the shower or taking a walk? Do you have a form of self-expression that feels satisfying and allows you to be playful? Do you enjoy brainstorming? Do you like to make things better? Do you value the time you spend thinking and experimenting? Do you believe your perspective matters?

Queer – Does your gender or sexuality just not quite fit the traditional binary categories (man or woman; straight or gay)? Do you feel excited when you see people playing with or challenging those traditional roles? Are you hopeful that things are shifting in a direction that will better encourage you to be yourself? (This category is big and complicated, and I’m not gonna get into its subtleties here. You pretty much get belong as soon as you say you do… even if you’re not fond of the word.)

Professional – Do you make (at least some of) your living doing things you’re personally passionate about? Did you intentionally choose your line of work? Do you bring unique value to your work? Do you feel a sense of ownership and responsibility for your career path? Do you have a strong sense of personal integrity about your work?

These descriptions are my own perspectives, and none of these categories have clear boundaries to them. To me, this combination of traits is gold, and I want to know as many “identity revolutionaries” (to use sfslim’s term) as possible who share them.

I’m not putting out a call for people to date (although, hey, if the shoe fits…). I’m putting out a call for community. Rally up, folks! Tell me where you are! I believe we’re more powerful when we’re connected, and I know we each have a lot of work to do.

As a side note, to answer a question someone asked: No, I’m not going to publish this list anywhere. Many people are raising their hands privately, and it’s not my place to share their identities, even with each other. I believe you have the right to tell and curate your own story.

If you’re part of this fantastic class of people (which I’m now just calling the IICQP folks) and haven’t already raised your hand, please do so. Leave me a comment, send me an email, shoot me a twitter reply, find me on facebook… whatever you prefer.

Just raise your hand.

Edit: As of 9pm 5/20/08, the total number of hand-raisers is 41. Hot damn, people! I love you guys!

Edit: It’s June 9th, and we’re totally up to 53, oh-yes-we-are.

As promised, I hit the Engage.com-sponsored Love 2.0 party last night and asserted my peaceful protests about their website’s rigid category structure. I met the CEO, the Project Manager, the Front End Developer, and the Art Director. They were all very friendly and tolerant toward the tall queer trouble-maker in the black wig, and I was impressed with how amenable they were to my concerns about their dating service.

The question was: Why can’t I be bisexual on your website?

The answers were along these lines (with my reactions in italics)…

• That was a database decision. We made it possible for you to be straight or gay, but bisexuality requires searching the entire database, and that’s a big load on the servers.
  • Good news! Enterprise-level databases and servers are capable of handling full searches now! Really…
• You can! You’re free to switch back and forth! You can be one way one week and another the next!
  • That’s great that you allow people to be fluid about their identities (really, that’s important, and i’m glad you’re doing it). But I’m not excited about dividing my time into “straight weeks” and “gay weeks.” I want to represent myself on your site consistently and honestly, and not have to make a decision on which group of people is allowed to court me at a time.
• We thought about it, and we’d still like to do it, but it’s just going to require so much code to make it work. It’s very complicated.
  • I hear ya. It’s hard. That’s rough. I believe in you, though. You can do whatever you want to do. You have the tools.
• It’s a matter of release dates and product management. We’ve got so much going on, and we’re working on making the site better all the time. We just haven’t been able to get that piece in place.
  • I totally understand. I’m a project manager myself. I know this stuff gets messy. You can’t get it all done at once. So… are you working on it?
    
• I agree, it’s important, and we want to be the kind of site that welcomes everybody. We should have that done by the end of the year, and we hope you’ll come back when the site is more open.
  • Fantastic! Thanks! I’ll keep an eye out for the changes! It’s been great talking to you. I look forward to becoming your biggest fan.
    

Seriously, they’ve been really good about this. I’ve had several follow up email exchanges with the people I met at the party, scheming what an ideal site could function like, and discussing the pros and cons of organizational styles. Their VP also responded to my original email, stating she agrees with my point and that they would do their best to get it right.

I’m excited about Engage because they’re merging new ideas about connections with models people are already comfortable with. By the way they’ve responded to my noise, I can tell they sincerely care about making their community happy. They’ve just got some growing to do.

I love Seth Godin’s post today on Workaholics:

A workaholic lives on fear. It’s fear that drives him to show up all the time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record.

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it’s a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation… because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it’s a lot more fun than watching TV.

I have been trying for years to explain this to friends and family: why I’d rather build a website than read a book or watch TV.

“What do you for fun?”

“I work!”

“No, seriously…”

“No. Seriously.”

I’m not gonna say that I always get it right — the balance between work and self-care — but I will say that it’s an absolute gift to be living in a world where I get paid to do what I already do for fun, and where “going to work” and “doing my hobby” are often the exact same thing.