Right now, I'm not. It's been a few days, so the hard part should be over. But it's the routine stuff that's hard to change. I miss the excuse for a walk. The multi-tasking when walking the dogs. The reward for a task well done. The selfish pleasure of taking a few minutes out of every day to do something just for me.

The strangest part is, for the last few days, I've had this constant nagging feeling that I've forgotten something. I'm sitting on the couch wondering, what was it? I took out the trash, moved the car, paid the bills. What did I forget?

It's every nicotine-addled cell in my body crying out for a fix. It's my dopamine-starved brain, pinching me in the back of the neck, yelling, "Hey stupid! Go do that thing! You know the one."

I'm not willing to say I'll never smoke again. But, for now, I've had enough. And I've quit enough times to know that this feeling will pass. New routines will develop. And, for a while, I might be able to live up to everyone's expectations of me.

Subscriptions cost $24.99 for six issues a year in the US. It's a little more pricey for international shipping, but we've made it as affordable as possible. (Pesky shipping!) In addition to the basic 1-year subscription, we're also offering two other packages that include a gift box filled with goodies: a copy of Issue 7, some stickers, and an awesome JPG pocket ultra-pod.

I've been using my JPG tripod for a couple weeks and it's great. It stands up to my heavy gear like a champ, and still folds up small enough to fit in my camera bag. We think these gift boxes are a great deal, and the perfect gift for the photographer in your life ... especially if that's you!

Oh, and one more thing: As a special thank-you for all my peeps, here's a $5-off coupon. Subscribe with this link and it's just 19.99 (in the US). That's how much a single issue used to cost. Cool, huh?

Our little magazine is all growed up. Sniff.

After I finished writing the book, back in 2001, I wrote a little story about what it was like. It was published online in a couple places, both of which are dead and gone now. (No wonder I feel like the last man standing all the time.)

So on the occasion of my book's passing from one medium to another, I'm reprinting this little How To here. If you've ever considered writing a book, I hope it helps you in your long, masochistic journey.

It's already started. What's the difference between NBC and Joe Everynerd on MySpace or YouTube? They're all just usernames - each with an equal chance of getting seen. The traditional roles of content creator and consumer have been irrevocably blurred.

Magazines, on the other hand, still have very high walls between their writers and readers. The writers and editors enjoy the illusion that they do something no one else can. The readers, then, have only one job: to consume the product.

But if the internet has taught us anything, it's that the world is full of people who know a lot more than you do about something.

Continued at the 8020 blog. »

She probably said the same thing when she was homeless in Siberia. In winter.

I think, for her, to complain is to invite disaster. The same goes for happy, too. Never brag, or consider yourself lucky, because then it'll go away. It's superstitious, sure, but grandma Powazek has been right more than she's been wrong. I trust her.

That's why, when I think about how great things are going right now, with the company and the magazine and the wife and basically everything, it fills me with equal parts excitement and dread. Maybe it's the grandma in me, but I just don't want to think about how lucky I am right now, for fear it will all go poof.

So, me? I can't complain.

And submissions are now open for the first theme in Issue 8: Tourist. Let's see your best travel shot!

Jason Calacanis is the P.T. Barnum of the weblog world. Barnum took a hirsute woman and turned her into The Bearded Lady. Calacanis took something as banal as paying writers to write and turned it into An Issue That Must Be Discussed. And I'm glad, because it is.

If you don't know the story, here's a recap. Calacanis sold Weblogs Inc, a network of topical blogs, to AOL for a staggering amount of money. Then he was put in charge of netscape.com, another AOL purchase, which was once the most visited site on the web but had since been micromanaged into a wasted wreck of pointless marketing nonsense. Calacanis announced that he was simply going to clone the tech news darling Digg. And then he did.

The new Netscape differentiated itself from Digg in three key ways: It was uglier, it worked against its own bottoms-up process by pegging stories approved by staffers at the top of the page, and they started paying the top contributors.

Wanna follow along? I'm going to try to post updates to Twitter and photos to Flickr in a kind of realtime travelogue experiment.

Everything is new. You can now create a membership and upload your photos. Members can directly create the magazine by submitting their work, and voting for other members' submissions. And then there's the magazine itself: bigger, fatter, less expensive, more often, and, soon, subscribeable.

I feel like what I imagine fathers feel like: Proud, happy, exhausted, and in desperate need of a nap and a shower.

But enough about me. Go see the new baby.

Heather and I are in Chicago for a family visit. We're all gathered at a nice restaurant for dinner - Heather's sister Claire, Claire's husband Owen, and their two boys: Eamon, 6, and Hugh, 2. Dinner is lovely, and the paper tablecloth is gradually covered in spent tic-tac-toe grids, doodles, and food scraps.

I've noticed, in the short time I've spent with parents, that they basically do not eat when their kids do. They eat in the spare moments in between questions and/or tantrums, and then chow down on fast forward just before the staff comes to clear the dishes.

A couple months ago, Heather and I went camping with some friends. One morning, we emerged from our tent, bleary eyed. There were a number of dogs camping with us, too, and one of them came trotting over to me, happy as can be.

And I did what I always do. I reached out with both hands and gave him a nice hello rub. Slowly, in my early morning haze, it occurred to me. Something smelled bad. Really bad. I looked down at the happy dog and something in his eyes said to me, "Yeah, I met a skunk. Kicked his ass."

I brought my hands to my face and gave them a good sniff. The smell was intense. Skunk smell is bad from afar. But up close, it's like pure essence of death.

And my first thought, of course, was: I've gotta share this with Heather!

"Hey, baby." I said, walking to her, arms outstretched. "Smell this!"

And as she was bent over, hands on her knees, gagging and on the verge of vomiting, I knew I'd found my penguin.

Last night I fired a gun for the first time. My friend Ford grew up around guns in Nevada, so they were always a normal thing. Me, growing up outside Los Angeles with semi-hippy parents, I wasn't even allowed a cap gun.

Inspired by Shabbat Salons, comedian Heather Gold brings the talk show format into the 21st century. Her live talk show mixes thinkers, entertainers, doers and the audience with humor, curiosity and yes, a little soul.

This Friday's show is all about "Intimacy" and features comedian and survivor's rights activist Betsy Salkind, author/spoken word artist Michelle Tea, and yours truly, talking up digital intimacy.

It all happens the JCCSF, 3200 California Street, from 8:00-9:30pm. Hope to see you there!

UPDATE: It went great! Heather posted a great wrap-up.