ashe dryden

My life for the past 7 months has included near-constant travel. I've been extraordinarily lucky to have been invited to speak at conferences, businesses, and universities all over the world, something I never would have thought I'd be doing even just one year ago. At first I had a lot of anxiety around this  - airports are their own special level of hell, not to mention sleeping in sanitized hotel rooms that are so eerily quiet they seem to be insomnia factories.

Starting today I am spending a good amount of time trying to re-center myself by limiting my obligations to other people and things. I've been rather overwhelmed trying to keep up with 700 people on twitter, a couple hundred emails a day, an ever-growing instapaper reading list, and new conferences/speaking gigs.

I am still travelling full time through mid-November for speaking to meet current obligations, but have decided not to accept any more speaking invitations until at least March. Even then, I won't be traveling to the extent I am now.

Sexism and misogyny isn't something that happens to "other people". I don't know one woman whose life hasn't been affected by it; I don't know a single woman who hasn't changed their behavior or the situations they put themselves in because of it. I don't know anyone that hasn't been friends, partners, or family members with a woman that hasn't worried for her or seen the way her life gets turned upside down by the way society treats her. These aren't "women's issues", they are societal issues.