Subject: Virtual Nervous Breakdown Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 05:56:34 -0600 (CST) My life and my grip on time have gotten out of hand and I need to take control. I have been stuggling for the last few weeks to try to figure out a way to take control and still serve the commitments that I have to various organizations. I have realized that the entire problem is that I have too many commitments, they are all too important to me, and I simply can not serve them all and I can not prioritize among them. So I have to do something hard, I have to do something that may not make sense to everyone, I have to do something that may cause some people to think badly of me. I hope that people will understand. My highest priority right now is working for my "day job". I must work 40 or _more_ hours per week. I have allowed my community activism to interfere with my work for too long and it has completely slowed down the progress of the company I work for. I need to serve my committment to my employer. It has been very difficult for me to choose to work over choosing to help the community. Because of this I am in a situation where I have almost no savings and 3 people who are depending on me to buy a house by August. I need to save a down payment for that house. I need to have the time to shop for that house. I must begin to work normal working hours from my office at OJC. Effective immediately I am essentially backing out of all volunteer and community commitments that I have. There are a few basic vital things that I will continue to do but everything else will have to be taken care of by other people. I have to clear my slate as completely as possible, rest and recuperate for a few months, and then come back into the activist universe slowly and with an eye towards taking care of myself mentally and physically. If I don't take this course of action I will have a nervous breakdown and I will be no good to the community at large anyway. I am hoping that by sending this as a jumbo resignation and soul bearing to everyone I can explain what is going on and why I am doing what I am doing. I am hoping that people will be supportive and help me to do this rather than just being mad. If people _are_ mad I hope they will talk to me about how we can work things out in a way that will make them less mad. Green Party - After we send out the mailing on Saturday morning I will be taking a 2 month leave of absence as Secretary-Treasurer and as general green agitator/organizer. I will attend monthly meetings as a member but I will not take minutes and I will not volunteer for any tasks. I will remain as a contact person for the Al Weiss campaign because my name is printed on thing but I will do no more to coordinate the campaign. I will not right the bylaws for the May general membership meeting, I will not coordinate or agitate the bylaws writing process. Someone else will have to take this up. I will not seek election to any officer office at the May general membership meeting. I'm not going to do any work on the April 12 Nader appearance, though I will probably attend. IMC Tech - I will be taking a 2 month leave of absence as empowered Spoke for imc-tech. I will provide assistence to anyone who is interested in learning how to work with the active software, anyone who wants to program for it, debug it, maintain it, administer it. I will continue to make sure the server is running but I will not do any active upgrading of the code. I will not attend imc-tech meetings regularly. I will not work on building/configuring IMC hardware or installing or debugging windows installs. I will help set up a Linux router/firewall for IP masquerading. I will answer any questions on how anything that I have set up is configured and how to deal with it. I will not be an oncall person for fixing things when they break. I will attend meetings from time to time but they will be prioritized below my primary obligation which is my job. IMC Steering - I will not attend Sunday meetings. IMC Newspaper - I will not be involved in the initial planning of the IMC Newspaper. IMC Performance - I will not organize IMC performances except for possibly when my dad is in town and looking for a place to play. IMC Global - I will be removing myself from all global IMC listservs including imc-tech, imc-communications, and imc-proposals. Quebec City - I will not be attending the protests in Quebec City nor will I be involved in organizing CU people to go to that. Critical Mass - I will ride in critical mass. I will not promote it. Excuse Me Mr. - I can't really back out of this one. I'll continue to do the show as before. Arrrgh - I am going to have to take a spectator seat for this for a while. Folks are welcome to use my computer and I am happy to consult on certain technical aspects but I can not be involved in day to day operations when we get off the ground. WEFT Associates - I will take a 2 month leave of absense from the AEC. If anyone knows of a good replacement for me I will be happy to step down. I will be happy to meet with anyone (including the full AEC) to give a massive brain dump of whatever knowledge I have in my brain that is useful but known only to me. I will finalize and announce the online survey as my final action, I'm sorry I haven't done that yet. Campaigning - I will not work for the Milton Otto or Laura Huth or Danielle Chynoweth or Al Weiss campaigns after Saturday's mailing goes out. I will vote. I will continue to maintain my server and all the websites hosted on it free of charge. I will not edit HTML or maintain individual sites, I will just make sure the server is actually running and I am putting a 1 month freeze on all new hosting. I will continue my financial support of all the organizations I work with. I will reclaim my social life. The only chances I've had to do social things lately have been at the expense of other committments. I have to actively choose to blow off work or volunteer commitments in order to hang out with friends or family. So when I am hanging out I feel constantly guilty. "Chilling out" has to be a higher priority for me for my mental health and for the health of my relationships to my friends and family who I have been neglecting. I will go on bike rides, I will game, I will go to concerts, I will have movie fests, I will invite people over for dinner, I will read books, I will visit my family, I will road trip to chicago more often. I will meet new people. I will spend more time with old friends. I will expand my relationship with budding new friends. I will find a house for myself and the 3 roomates (and possibly others who want to join our quest) who are relying on me for housing next year. I will coordinate and fund the recording of my dad's first real album. This is the one big extra-curricular thing that I am allowing myself. I will from time to time as time allows act as a rank and file activist. If someone needs envelopes stuffed or other such basic things, I will help out. I simply can not do anything that involves coordination. Other people have to do the coordinating (and I promise in a few months I will come back and let someone else take their break...I can't give organizing and agitating up for long). I will meet with anyone any time for the explicit purpose of brain dumping. If there is something that I have been working on that you want to take over but don't have all the tools, I will tell you everything I know so you can take over. I will train anyone to be me that wants to. I want to make the transition to a me-less future as easy as possible for the organizations I am involved with. Please talk to me about how I can help that. I will sleep at least 8 hours a night. I have accumulated so much sleep debt over the last 6 months that I need to sleep _more_ than 8 hours a night as often as possible. I will be back in 2 months: saner, stroner, less depressed, less stressed out, more focused, happier. I know there are people out there who are working a hell of a lot harder than me and getting more done. I'm sorry I can't be them but I'm _really_ losing it and I need to step back before I truly break down. -- Zachary C. Miller - @= - http://wolfgang.groogroo.com/ Write in Alfred Weiss - Green Candidate for Mayor of Urbana http://www.prairienet.org/greens/weiss4mayor.htm