Happy New Year!
Hi there, how are you doing? It feels like only yesterday I sent you last month's 11 ! Well, my own report of the recent weeks is going to be brief as I've been sick with something that has kept me home and resting for about 3 weeks. Yikes, don't catch whatever I had/have. I'm not quite out of the woods even though I keep thinking that yesterday was the last day. This all has led to my own personal Albertideation shut down of sorts. Yeah, each time I think I'm better I end up cancelling whatever it was that I was planning. And, this illness has been an excellent teacher, too. Here are a couple things it's got me pondering:

  1. Though I'm often focused on how to bring groups of people together, I may be more interested in cultivating and experiencing more one-on-one time in the future.
  2. It's definitely time to reign in the projects I'm involved in - especially all of the fun ideas that are in various stages of completeness.
  3. It's OK to say "no" and take time for me. I've been watching a close friend who went through cancer a couple times - do this, and now I've got a little practice. During my illness people were reaching out to help me, I just couldn't be with anyone for more than a few minutes at a time. Luckily, that stage has passed, but I'm still not up for that much company right now. Very different from my normal - very social - life.
  4. Way less Facebook time. Here's something I wrote about that a couple days ago:

2 .2.19

Report from Albertfacebookville. Hello, friend. For the past many years I have been a faithful Facebook participant: adding comments; liking things; running a bunch of groups; hosting a ton of pages; and creating things like this   albertideation.com/lists   to help people navigate this space as I used to teach classes on FB (how to use it for various purposes) and social media in general for a living. In recent years I've moved more fully into the email marketing space - visit  albertideation.com/roll  f or more of my thoughts on that. Though I've stopped using FB in a biz sense - I continue to participate in a lot of groups of my marketing peers and many other interest groups, and have been drawing down my own personal use of the FB newsfeed and the randomness of that space when one has 4K friends.

All that to say that I've been sick for the past 10 days and during that time I've reduced by about 95% my FB use and seeing what that's like. I like it. I think, like many, I've grown accustomed to getting some feeling of worth from what I add to the social media space. I'm pretty sure I am generally providing value - networking people together; showing people aspects of the tool that they didn't know about -   Fluff Busting ( FB ) Purity   app - is a must, btw (no ads). Oh, another fun find, recently is finding who lives where via the search bar. Anyway, I'm pulling way back for now. My guess is that no one will really even notice. All those friends from my Habonim past who I've been trying to encourage to be more activisty - go, live your lives! Same to everyone, really.
Lost Wormhole
Here are some things I have coming up that I would like company for . I'd also love to be doing more house concerts - if you'd like to host me, please get in touch !

In early April I'm planning a road trip (possibly via LA) to Kansas City. If you live "along the way" - I'd love to visit and possibly do singalong house concerts on the way there and back. Tentative 4.5-6 in LA. Definite: KC 4.12-15 for a family reunion. Then, back to Portland via undetermined route (open to passengers, too :) Possibly camping...

May 4th - 19th I'll be in the Philly area. I'd love company at our cabin in Sumneytown, PA for my birthday on May 11th . Write me if that sounds doable and I'll send directions. Otherwise, I am open to area visits (NYC!) during that time.

June : 20th-23rd - Summer Solstice Healing Retreat - contact Breitenbush to find out when tickets go on sale. One of my favorite events all year - my 25th time, I think. June 26-July 1st - World Domination Summit in Portland. There will be one more sale of tickets for this coming up. Find out more, here .

July : 10-15 - Oregon Country Faire booth L12 - Wileyware - come see us in our new home! 18th-22nd Northwest String Summit . I'd love camping company for this one.

August 9-12 - Beloved Festival . Join me for year 12! August 25-30th - Summer Music in the Pines (same place as PSGW) open format jam camp! This happens at the same time as Singing Alive , another lovely gathering that I've been attending over the years. I've been leaning more towards activities where I can play my guitar a lot - and this seems like a good camp for me. Join me - it's a blast. August 25th-September 2nd is also Burning Man - so, TBD - if I can get tickets/parking pass, I may go!

Pic below: 2 Feet of Snow in Seattle - recent picture!
2 Feet of Snow in Seattle
Thanks for reading. It's always fun for me to write something which encapsulates my life and thinking at a particular moment in time. There were a couple of really great articles in the NYT's Week in Review section today, btw.


I hope life is treating you well. It looks like the PNW is about to get hit with the most snow we've received in years and years, so we'll see how that goes.

I'm optimistic about 2019. Though I've been sick for a lot of it so far, I have a sense that the blue and pink waves are going to continue to build and real big changes are up ahead for this country. Who knows, perhaps Trexit is not far off. More on that in next month's 11. Lots of love and delicious, warm, cozy soup and cuddles for you!

Love, Albert