This blog post is brief (about three paragraphs), so breathe that sigh of relief and get through it quickly so you can continue with your day. The title is also misleading, so read on and you'll get that "Ohh, I see what you did there." feeling of having caught on.

     I talk a lot, but up until now I never quite figured out how to turn my words into your actions. I think that was the problem in the first place.
     Here's a fun fact most of you didn't know for sure: I do absolutely everything I ask of you folks boycotting with me. That, plus planning all the new additions to the project, networking with activists and owners of local coffee shops, website maintenance, budgeting (this coming from the girl who just got shoes that weren't two sizes too small and five years old for the first time in years. Feet not hurting is a great, great thing.), buying pre-paid debit cards so I can do online transactions for internet promo, setting up meetings between my friends to get more brains involved than I have in my skull, pages and pages of organization, frequent website editing, coming up with new pages (it's like writing an essay, give or take a page), looking up news articles, watching documentaries, and trying to keep things dynamic and interesting.
     A problem has come up. It's dawned of me as of late that you guys have no idea about this. This makes me, in effect, that wall-of-text wizard I said I wasn't in the very first blog entry. It's time to prove to you that I exist as something beyond the talk.
     How am I going to do that? A picture is worth a thousand words and I have a camera. That's pretty much all I've got, but it's only fair. People I know who have read the website have asked time and time again, why the anonymity? Why not show us who you are? The truth is, it's instinctive. Though I'll gladly step up and do everything necessary for the boycott, I still don't like having the spotlight on me. It's not in my nature. That, however, just bites. Why? Because it's not fair to you. I base this judgment largely on the fact that I wouldn't like being a puppet to some stranger, even a well-intentioned one. Oz turned out to be less than great, right? I'm not sure why I thought this would work if I kept things at arm's length. Hence it being official. I am coming out of the closet, and I hope you guys can accept me for who I am. Haha. I trust you would no matter what closet I happened to jump out of, right?

     I get asked that a lot when it comes to this boycott. Not by people who are in the boycott, of course. People who are involved don't ask because they care, too. If they didn't, they wouldn't be doing all that they do. We may not all share in exact motivations or views on politics and other things people like to go in circles about, but we obviously share in that. There's a certain understanding you have, I think, when you're ready to do something for the sake of not just you but of people you don't personally know. A unity exists in doing things to make a difference that, as I wrote somewhere else on the site, "you may never shake hands with". It takes a lot of guts.

     In truth, I would be surprised if even most of the people who ask why I do what I do are ever going to really look at the website. I think if they did, they wouldn't have as many questions (so often said in utter disrespect). It's kind of a no-brainer that there are going to be people who don't care much for what we're doing. It's also a no-brainer that there are going to be some among those who feel the need to attack it. However, there's something I really don't understand, so let me share it with you.
     What I don't get is that the people who ask and at least pretend that they're asking to get an answer want me to give it to them in no more than two sentences. They don't want me to explain it to them, just tell them. Plain and simple (which it may be, but not if you don't understand it). If I can't do that then I obviously have no idea what I'm doing seems to be the sentiment. Some days I can answer better than others, but I still can't fathom their expectations. Or, for that matter, why they bother asking if they don't care to know.
     The truth is, I never really thought about caring about this. Caring is something that I have always done. When I was two or three years old, I overheard somewhere that kids in Africa were dying because they didn't have water. What did I do with that information?
     I told my friend and next door neighbor Iris, that's what I did. We filled her bathtub, overfilled it, and sent the water cascading (in my mind that's what it was doing. Really it was just a drizzle) over the bathtub and guided it down the stairs. If I could get the water going out the door, we would definitely get the water to kids in Africa because once people saw what we were doing, they would all try to help. Maybe they'd even let us use another tub. (Let me tell you, that's the first time I remember ever really getting in trouble. Oh boy, yeah.)
    There are people who would say that this is equally misguided, but I disagree. I think I had the right idea back then, to be honest. My tactics were wrong (how was I to know that you can't run water over the ocean?) and I've grown up at least a little since then. However, all along I've read books, stories, speeches and webcomics that seem to echo the sentiment that problems could be solved if everyone got involved. The more effort put forth by everyone, the less needed from each individual. Yet, there was a dismay and frustration at people's hesitance to participate in these things I read and heard because the hesitance was present in every situation.
     The chief reason that informed people tell me I'm wasting my time (in fact, the only reason) is that it's just too big. Too impossible. These are some of the most powerful people in the world. There are just too many of bad people out there. That is where I stop them. No, there aren't. It's not that there are too many 'bad people' in the world, there are just too many people who don't bother to be good.
     We are the majority, or rather, we could be. We just need something to restore our faith in, essentially, each other. So here I am, keeping my own going by finding other people who feel the same way. That's why I'm doing it. I'm doing it because it's both extremely important and entirely possible. Nothing that's important is impossible, after all.

     (Well, now you know what we're going to eat.) Oddly enough, the people that I plan to get together with and discuss everything from money for t-shirts and poster-printing to the next general step are almost identical to the people that it's been agreed would band together to survive during any and all apocalyptic situations.
     My friends are as dedicated as it comes, and each and every one of us who plans to get together in the next week over delicious breakfast foods is willing to use their skill set for this boycott that we've become interested and invested in. Their help provides ideas I never thought of that may or may not have been dancing in front of my face. They remind me that people do get involved and I'm not a total oddity (at least, not uniquely so).
     However, this really is about involvement. A handful of people can't do this on their own. They can't get anywhere near it, in fact. As important as the friends willing to discuss it with me are, you match them in your power. I can't recruit enough people to make a difference one by one and can only build so many connections without assistance. I need more than my own energy. Even if I had all the time in the world to do this on my own, it only matters if people really want change. If you really want it, you're willing to sweat a little. The intensity of the workout is up to you, but you've got to get your heart pumping faster. Don't let some kid like me show you up.


     On another note, as the number of people who like the page grows, trolls and otherwise irrelevant posts have begun cropping up on the Facebook page. The page is there for people who have joined the boycott so we can connect and be constructive. Although I've tried to make that clear, there are always going to be the people who don't even finish reading the little box below the profile picture before liking the page.
     To avoid having to spend excessive amounts of time taking off posts, I'm taking the page out of logic's book and changing the posting permissions. Now admins will be the only ones who can write on the page, preventing posts regarding how Coca-Cola is too good to give up. That's cool and all (sort of, I mean, you're perfectly titled to your own opinion), but it's also wasting our time.
     Because of this change, it's time that the "Discussions" tab on the Facebook page was brought to life. Actually, it was time no matter what.   I've been asked some very good questions and will continue to make sure they get addressed as best they can be. Whatever our differences, we're all in the cause together. The page is supposed to be a constructive environment to talk about the boycott, and I'll strive to make it such a place. Use it to toss around ideas large or small, just make sure the conversation is relevant. If it's not, we admins are watching carefully. Tsk.

     Not everybody in the world is lucky enough to have a passion or get passionate about something. Those who are lucky enough know that it's an incredibly gratifying, mind-bogglingly excruciating experience that is entirely worth it. However, when you pour your heart and soul into something you usually lose a little blood, and eventually the blood loss effects your brain.
     Whatever it is creeps into your mind constantly, even when you wish it weren't there. In fact, it's like a shadow: there are times when it's not as pronounced, but it's almost always at your heels. It's not as if you're always thinking about the next step in the process or a new way to improve it, either. No, often times you're second-guessing your last step or wondering if your mistakes began at the beginning, when you thought you could do whatever it is you decided to undertake.  Feelings of inadequacy hunt you down, and every hurtle you come to seems increasingly impossible to clear. Indeed, seemingly endless periods of time can be spent in a dark, incense-smoke filled bedroom with a comforter pulled over your head in eighty or ninety degree weather, Beethoven playing unnecessarily loud from your laptop speakers as you lay, immobilized by angst, crying black blood. Fact: passion invented melodrama.

So, why on Earth am I explaining this?
Because it's all been nixed.

     Yesterday, the boycott's face book page saw a twenty member spike. Today, eight more people have already joined. Why is that such a big freakin' deal? For one, it was the biggest one-day increase yet. For another (or two, or however you follow up on reason one), they weren't people I had gone to myself. Aside from an exception here and there, that had  been the case with the biggest increases: I had struck up discussion with people I believed in to have hearts and minds wide enough to get involved in something bigger than they are. Suddenly, I'm seeing some real progress, whose hand I didn't have to hold for each baby step. This is actually getting somewhere.
     However, the real reason is one I haven't mentioned yet. It's in something that happened today that I'm sure couldn't have been expected to be as significant to me as it was. Or bring me to tears slightly, for that matter.
     Considering the size of the boycott at this point there's a chance that you don't know me well, or even know me at all. I only cry every couple of years, and usually in the wake of the death of someone very near to me. I was punished for crying as a kid, and unfortunately haven't yet outgrown the mindset that crying is not okay. It's okay for other people to cry, just not something I allow myself to do.
     About an hour ago, I checked my updates on Facebook and saw that my friend had tagged me in one of his posts. Being ever-entertained by the commentary that friend makes, I clicked on the link to the post. It was a status update, and in it there was a link to a web-comic that he encouraged everyone to take a couple of minutes to read. He also said that it reminded him of me. Curious, I clicked the link.

     It was the story of Sophia Scholl, a member of the White Rose who was executed along with her companions-in-dissent during Nazi Germany. It was also the story of Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary who knew nothing of the reality of the Third Reich, though the knowledge was within her grasp had she chosen looked for it.
     Somewhere along the line, I felt like crying. It's not as if I'd never had the impulse before (or as if I'd never read literature about the Holocaust), but this was the first time I made no attempt to stop it. Here I was, reading about someone who was barely six years older than myself and had given her life to fight one of the horrendous crimes in history that her fellow German Traudl Junge had chosen not to see. I had reminded someone of that story. Though it was most certainly a comment made in passing, it was also one of the most meaningful things I've ever been told. I've chosen to let it be so, because the line in the story remains. Now, I have something to live up to. Though we are not in a situation in which our names will be remembered as those of martyrs, we have just as much power to make a difference.


The URL to the comic is http://www.viruscomix.com/page474.html. I encourage everyone to spend a few minutes of their day considering which side of the line they stand on, and committing to live what they believe.