I’m sure you’re all familiar with the passion quilt meme by now. I was tagged by my new friend, Stephanie Zimmerman.

I hope it speaks for itself.

Think about how the message might have implications for libraries as well.

Original photo by CreativeSam can be found here. I find the frame with apparent copyright indication confusing given the Attribution-Non Commercial Creative Commons license indicated on the Flickr page. I’m going with it.

I may as well tag some peeps, so let’s do these five (with apologies if you’ve already been tagged and to the dozens of people that I could have tagged here):

Sarah Cohen
Dave Free
Chadwick Seagraves
Iris Jastram
Joshua M. Neff

I’ll admit to a certain amount of fanboy giddiness when people that I respect outside of the library blogosphere (and even oftentimes within it) notice what I’m doing. I was pretty excited when Jason Calacanis twittered/tumbld about his consumption of Uncontrolled Vocabulary, specifically the episode where we discussed Mahalo. And, from what I can tell, just about anything Jason mentions becomes a page on Mahalo.

Today, I got to revisit that same sense of giddiness upon discovering that Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.TV discussed Uncontrolled Vocabulary in her presentation to the Texas Library Association. It sounds like her experience was something of a disaster, so I particularly appreciate that she managed to fit the show into her session and the notes for the presentation.

So thanks, Cali. Go check out GeekBrief.TV, if you haven’t already. It’s a tightly-produced three to five minute videocast, released four times a week, covering “news about technology, consumer electronics, and Web 2.0 projects.” You may as well start with GBTV #346, where Cali makes her apology to the Texas Library Association.

I had to face a tough realization yesterday: My Twitterstream has grown too large for me to possibly stay afloat in it. At the time of writing this post, I’m following 121 Twitter accounts. It takes far too much of my mental energy to stay on top of the conversations that are taking place.

And, unfortunately for my readily engaged mind, those conversations are interesting. Twitter is another one of those creations that has proven to be a major time-suck for me. My experience with it echoes, in noteworthy ways, my Second Life experience. I would lose hours upon hours in Second Life and have no idea where all the time went.

Looking back, I recognize that most of that time was spent engaging in near-synchronous conversation. Like normal conversation, only slower.

Twitter is really the same thing, except, for me, the conversation is happening amongst 121 people, each of whom is also talking to all of the people in their unique network. It’s a busy conversation that keeps going 24 hours a day, peaking during business hours and early evening in the US, exactly when I need to be focused on other things.

I eventually made the decision to step away from Second Life. I’ve never been good at doing something partway and Second Life required a substantial commitment to be meaningful. I’ve only been back infrequently since and it’s never had the same pull that it did initially, when I felt truly connected to what was going on there.

The amount of commitment that Twitter has drawn from me suggests that the time has come for me to make a similarly aggressive move there.

Stepping away from Twitter will have consequences. I’ll miss conversations of which I would like to be a part. I’ll be less connected to many of the people I think of as my friends in the professional sphere. I’ll miss many of the things that the people I trust find interesting (but not interesting enough to write full blog posts about them). In short, I’ll be out of the loop. But what I gain back is more important: I recover a big chunk of my own head space.

Of course, there are other ways of managing the Twitter experience. Many other Twitterers are able to find balance in a way that I’m not sure is possible with the way I currently use Twitter. For example, I don’t have to follow everyone who follows me, but I’m naturally interested in people who are interested in me. A nice notion, but it doesn’t scale well.

I don’t actually have to pay attention to other people’s updates at all. I could still push my updates out to whomever was inclined to listen. And maybe that’s what I’ll do in the long run, but I’m not presently comfortable with the notion. It’s a far cry from the Twitter presence I’ve established.

I certainly invite your suggestions. Tell me your strategy for managing the Twitter stream in the comments for this post. I’m more than willing to reconsider my approach and, in many ways, I’d like to find some sort of compromise between the dueling sides of my brain.

Either way, I’ll likely pop into Twitter occasionally, out of curiosity. I suspect that I’ll feel sufficiently removed from the conversation such that I won’t find nearly the same enjoyment in it that I do now. And that will reinforce my decision to have stepped away. But we’ll see.

There is another post in all of this about managing the growth of one’s social network. I have seven Twitter follower requests for people I don’t know. But I’ll write about that on a different day. If you want to join my social network, find me on Facebook. Oh, and when you do, start a conversation, won’t you? I like my connections to include some actual connectivity.

Last night, during the taping of episode 35 of Uncontrolled Vocabulary, Michael Sauers discussed his unhappiness with libraries that introduce additional barriers to internet access for non-residents. First-time caller David Rothman encapsulated those thoughts with the terms “media equity” and “library reciprocity.” After the show was finished taping, he implored Michael to write further about it. And Michael has obliged.

Thanks to David for joining the conversation last night and to Michael for keeping it going on his blog.

Andrea Mercado points us in the direction of Books for Ears, a site devoted to audio book reviews. This is something I’ve always felt there was a need for and even considered doing something about, when I was more of an audio book consumer. (I can no longer handle the sustained consumption of complex texts. Or so I’m told.)

But I’d always imagined it as an audio program, a natural interlude in the book listener’s audio stream. So Jeanne, when you decide to go that route, let’s talk.

And while you’re here, I may as well point you in the direction of Uncontrolled Vocabulary #32, entitled “Cranky people make good audio.” The discussion really gets going when we turn to the topic of sex offenders and Internet predators. Enjoy!

Walt’s comments on Liblog Mortality reminded me that I have a blog that surprisingly few people have unsubscribed from in the past two months. Thanks for sticking around.

I’m sure you spent absolutely no time wondering where I went, which is good, but I’ll tell you anyway. I’ve been in the midst of a substantial reorganization of my life’s priorities in an effort to become an overall healthier person. I’m working on being a better, more attentive and involved daddy and husband. I’m working on not spending all of my time staring at a screen. And of late, I’m working on being a better guardian of my temple, so to speak. Better diet, less snacking, more exercise, that kind of thing.

It all started with the new job. IT is a new world to me and I found myself still preoccupied with its complexity when I came home. No time for blogging/podcasting when I could be doing all the little organizational things that one can’t get done during the work day. And more significantly, the preoccupation was negatively affecting my family.

So change was needed, and quickly. First, I removed all self-imposed pressure to produce, whether that was in the form of blogging, podcasting, public speaking or otherwise. I then made two tough decisions:

1. Pass the Carnival torch.
2. Pass the podcasting torch.

The Carnival torch was passed formally to my buddy Chadwick (thanks again). The podcasting side was a little more behind-the-scenes. In part, I simply stopped producing. But I also redirected all requests for consulting or speaking to other qualified individuals. It was a difficult decision to abandon the niche that I’d carved out for myself, but quite frankly, I was growing tired of the topic anyway. [This is not unusual for me, as I constantly crave new avenues to focus my energies on.]

As part of reducing my information intake and self-imposed pressure to “keep up,” I reduced the number of feeds in my Bloglines (current count is 128) and cut out many of the podcasts that I was listening to, including most of the library-related content. Again, tough decisions, but better for my overall state of mind.

I also made a commitment to myself to not do any non-critical working from home. [Note: This has been only somewhat successful, as I really like to keep on top of my Inbox.]

So is it working? Absolutely. I feel more involved with my family and less obsessed with work and career, which really makes me more focused and effective during my working hours.

Satisfied that these approaches have improved my mental health, I’m turning my attention to physical health. I’m horribly overweight and my love of sweets has been a lifelong battle that I’ve never chosen to fight. Until now.

Getting up at 5:45 every workday to hop on the elliptical trainer is tough, but necessary at this juncture. Walking away from the box of Russell Stover chocolates that stares at me in the office is even tougher. But I’m enjoying the battle and I know the long-term goals are worthwhile.

Anyway, thanks for indulging me, both in my extended absence and in my present logorrhea. I hope all is well with you and yours in this new year.

Because this is what library conferences are really all about: Xlerator!

I’m playing around with Wallop, which works like a Flash-based MySpace. It’s mildly amusing and is certainly more attractive visually than the typical MySpace page. Two big advantages over MySpace, if both features bear out in the long run: unlimited storage for photos and music (how is that possible?) and no advertising. The revenue model is based on people creating Flash “mods” that they can sell to each other with Wallop getting a percentage of the transaction. Techcrunch discussed the site at further length a few days ago.

I can invite a few people, so if you want in, put a valid email address into the contact form. First come, first serve.

Just read on Lifehacker that Skype is offering its SkypeOut service, which allows you to make VoIP calls to a landline, free of charge until the end of 2006. Sadly, the offer is only good for calls placed and received in the USA or Canada, but for those folks this is fabulous news and a great excuse to check out Skype, if you haven’t already.

Another good reason is the new SkypeCast feature, which is currently in the preview stage. SkypeCasts are big hosted, public conference calls of up to 100 people that anyone with the Skype client can host for free. You can host SkypeCasts on any topic, but they are public calls, so they will be directory-listed and open to anyone. As host, you can choose open discussion or a one-way broadcast (with the ability to “pass the mic” to others), which opens up a variety of ways to do teleconferencing on the cheap. I’ve had good experiences with SkypeCasts so far and hope to see some librarians take advantage.