meandering wildlyjohnath in blog form

This is not a drill.

For 11 months of every year, we all live our lives integrated– embedded, if you will– with our fellow citizens, hewing to their customs; blending in. For 11 months of the year we rarely even speak of the movement. But not this month.

It’s time for NSID operatives to go live.

First, remember our history. In 2007 I first spoke publicly of the cause, and in 2008 our numbers exploded. No Shaving In December has participants on at least 4 continents, participants of both sexes, and participants of all ages and stations in life. In fact, a recent survey I just made up confirms that every LinkedIn user is, at most, 3 hops away from an NSID participant.

Second, remember our cause. NSID’s not a political movement. It’s a silly, awesome getting-together of people who sort of like to see how they look when they stop shaving for a month. It’s permission to try something different and in that sense, our cause is freedom. Look at the flickr pool; it’s incredible. I love looking at these people I know to be cleanshaven getting all rustic and funky. How could you not want to be a part of this?

Third, remember your strength. Your job too important or high-visibility to stop shaving for a month? Bullshit – John Lilly did interviews with the LA Times mid-NSID like a champ. Your face doesn’t grow a proper beard? Hogwash – Claire‘s been doing NSID 3 years running, and Gavin soldiers through “patchiness issues” because his follicles don’t tell him how to live his life, he tells them how to live theirs.

No shaving. 31 days. We tweet using the #nsid hashtag, we document our progress in the flickr pool, and we aggregate it on noshavingindecember.org. I’m proud of all of you – I love this time of year. Are you in?
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I don’t often get personal in this blog.  Mostly I talk about Firefox things, security things, or how to make reasonably awesome bread.  I don’t want to inundate my reader(s) with too much sap; surely the blogosphere has enough emo in it already.

This is different though, because I’m talking about something really important. Not just to me, but to people everywhere who think ideas like “freedom” and “adventure” are more than just words.  People who think that it is the duty of a responsible citizenry to resist injustice, and to throw off the shackles of polite society when they reach too far into our world, when they transgress too much.

Last year, I introduced people to this struggle, and the response was overwhelming.  This year, we aim to do more.  To reach more people. To change more lives.

We need you to be a part of it.

Tomorrow is the first day of December.  If you are someone who lives with the hegemony of social pressure, someone who is compelled to hold knives against your own flesh defying every instinct evolution has given you: NSID is your emancipation.  We don’t care if you’re male or female, young or old, unix-hacker bearded or barely able to grow hair, NSID is your chance to stand with friends and get shaggy.

Join the flickr pool, post updated pictures, fill the #nsid twitter stream, blog the news out to the masses.  Be part of the revolution.

And don’t worry, in January you can shave it all off again.  It stops itching around the 8 or 9th day.

[UPDATE: NSID now has a tracking page: noshavingindecember.org (Good idea, Humph!)]