civic diary – Page 4 – Steven Savage

Civic Diary 10/18/2016

October 18, 2016 by Steven Savage

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Jesus it’s been a month since the last Civic Diary? My whole once-a-week experiment truly has not gone well. The last 3 months have been nuts with work, reorgs, and lots of illness. I’ve been sick four times, my roommate three, friends and co workers quite a bit – short form is it seems that kids dragging diseases around produced an unholy synergy. Oh, and allergy season.

So all those plans? Yeah. I gave up and just donated money to the Clinton campaign. If I’m going to be miserable and watch my schedule constantly change then at least I can do is put my cash where my yap is and do some good that way. I certainly understand now why people sometimes just donate, life gets in the way.

That’s my plan for the rest of the election at any rate, since things are saner, but my chance to do GOTV myself is diminishing. I’m going to keep this in mind in the future.

(Part of me wonders if I’d be so calm if Clinton wasn’t so far ahead.)

Also I’ve been bad about contacting my representatives. That’s on me – I set an alert and promptly ignored it.

However I still plan to be more civicly engaged, which comes down to:

Still plan to get involved with a local branch of a political party. Only in this case it’ll probably be post-election.
Gonna remember this “donate” thing more than just presidential elections.
Still following the news like a fiend. In fact, more on that later.
Still planning to look into a city council advisory position next year.
Assessing my choices and schedules to free up some more time for civic engagement or anything else. I’ve realized I get into ruts and will do things automatically.

But a few realizations:

First of all, our news media is awful. I’m wondering if my focus as a civic geek should be on that. I’ve signed up for action alerts from Media Matters For America which I’ve found very useful. That’s an issue with civic engagement, there’s so much to do.

Secondly, related to this, misinformation is incredibly high. I’m seeing why I need to practice debating, engaging on media, etc. Not for the all-to-common showing off, but just to promote intelligent discussion.

Third never forget that civic engagement is on all levels. Despite the crazy of late, despite the illness, I took time to do non-political civic engagement – speaking, helping our friends, etc. As nuts as it was I kept engaged.

Fourth, seriously, if you are civicly engaged go easy on people who aren’t. My attempts to do it have been far below my expectations.

Well except for the illnesses going around work is saner and life is saner. So my quest continues – being a good civic geek.

– Steve

Civic Diary: 9/5/2016

September 5, 2016 by Steven Savage

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Been awhile on one of these hasn’t it? Nope, haven’t forgotten, but it’s been a crazy few weeks. Work, book launch, friends had problems, more work,a class. It honestly got on top of me.

This also means my civic engagement has been low – right when I wanted to get more involved, after going through some pretty crazy adventures finding out just how I could be.

No excuses, I had to prioritize and was exhausted. But there’s lessons in this.

Civic Diary Lessons: Priority.

I actually am a pretty planned guy- shocking, I know. I usually have plans, however rough, about 12-15 months out. My months also include general plans (do X on Y days). So how did all of this get on top of me to the point where I’m just now getting to my GOTV plans?

Simple. I didn’t really plan.

When you’re organized you can decide to do something but not look ahead on everything else. You’ve got a plan right? It’s not hard to introduce one new thing?

Actually, it is. It’s easy to say “a few hours here or there” or “I’m not doing anything that Saturday” and miss the much larger context. Could you be interrupted? Will you have the energy to do your “new thing?” What will your psychological state be?

When you got a plan, you don’t just swap something in. You don’t think you’re so organized you can make time. You make a new plan.

Sure I had one – a vauge one – but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t paced. It didn’t acknowledge realities.

It’s probably as I’m experimenting with larger civic engagement. But lesson learned – civic engagement is something that I need to do as part of the rest of my plans. Set aside time, know my limits. Do more when I can, less when other things call.

A good lesson for you too. Also, maybe start small – I think I overdid it.

Other Activities On The Civic Front

So where am I otherwise:

I found you can do GOTV online. Planning to do that, and maybe a meetup later.
Longer-term still looking at being involved in communications. But that is for – yes – an actual plan. As in I can figure it out after the Election.
News-wise the news media has been erratic to dismal this election, so I’ve taken a bigger interest in media watchdogs. Signed up for some action alerts to help me stay on top of things.
I haven’t written my reps on much lately. I’m setting my alert on that to weekly.
Donate. Because seriously, money matters.

That’s it for me. Hopefully I’ll have more useful insights next week now that I’m getting back in the swing of things.

– Steve

Civic Diary 8/8/2016

August 8, 2016 by Steven Savage

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Another brutal week – busy at work and got sick on top of that. The illness meant . . . I ended up missing that big political meeting I’d been looking forward to. But still keeping at it. So here’s what’s been up.

Once I realized I was ill, I signed up for a GOTV event I’d been looking at anyway, and informed one of my contacts about my situation. The event I signed up for is at a political headquarters I’ve visited anyway, so it gives me some foundation. I found it by simply paying attention to my political emails and finding my candidate (Hillary, as you may guess) was having a GOTV event. Never discount candidate sites.
There’s also a local club I’m part of, so I’ll try to work that into my regular schedule.
I’m rolling the GOTV event into another social event as I found someone I know was going anyway. That’s something I never considered, and now the idea opens up a lot of possibilities – it’s probably more fun and builds better connections.
I’ve donated of course. Money always helps, of course.
Still haven’t written my reps lately, which I noticed is a bad habit I’m getting into – I read the news but I respond less. Maybe you can get too busy looking at the news and too little responsiveness.
As for the news, just damn, there’s so much to keep track of lately. I’m going to need to dial it back on my news obsession.

– Steve