… you’re one of the “syndicated” readers I have who are (know it or not) experiencing the wonder of RSS during my yearlong sabbatical from social networking. Despite the fact that you are on Facebook (or wherever else, but that’s the one that leaps to mind), I am not. I left an automatic setting to seed my random rantings there from my actual blog, where I broadcast unabated. I’m in your living room/phone/cubicle without ever leaving wherever I am. Cool.

That said, I am also aware of conversations happening around these writings, conversations that I am not taking a part in. Why? Well, as you could find out easily if Ping.fm’s shortcut URLs lasted longer than Lindsay Lohan’s sobriety, I’m still in my year-long self-imposed exile from social networking and, to be honest, I’ve learned some things.

• I miss Twitter. A lot. I’ve come to get a gang of news from the 126 subscriptions in my Google Reader feed (which feeds my linkroll on the web and on my mobile site) but the immediacy of Twitter, the pithy interactions with my people like Ja Bir or my wife or Craig or Ritch or Encyclopedia Black or Chinedum even Tax Hitler (also known as “Senor Sidekick”) … I won’t lie, I miss it.
• I don’t miss Facebook. At all. Facebook’s mobile site went through more alterations than Heidi Montag (yes, I’m keeping up with even celebrity gossip … kind of ), taking away the most useful functionality points (remember press “4″ for new notifications?) while becoming more of a beyotch about privacy and generally annoying me even without my presence. Moreover, I’ve seen and participated in some of the dumbest conversations (Roman Polanski leaps to mind) on Facebook, stuff that I’d have been embarrassed to be seen in were it Usenet or some more civilized locale. I won’t abandon the site when I come back, but it won’t be my “home” online.
• Laugh if you want … I kind of miss MySpace. The same people were closer, had less fleeting interactions, had less privacy worries while having more of a public platform. I’m just saying.
• I don’t need to have a conversation on LinkedIn unless it’s about money. I love that.
• No, I don’t miss Friendster or wish I’d have enhanced myself on Bebo, Hi5 or anywhere else “ghetto” like that.

More lessons learned when I get back, I’d wager. I just wanted to apologize if you’re trying to interact with me and it seems like I’m ignoring you. I’m not really there, you see. I’m just a pigment of your emancipation. Or a fragment of your intoxication. Something like that. Work it out for yourself, I’ll be back in four more months to discuss it.

Playing (Music): “Dynamite” remix by Taio Cruz feat. Jennifer Lopez

I don’t wanna dwell on the end of things too much, but I’ve gotta close down the past before I can go back home to the future.

The following text is from an email sent to Rumond Taylor, Ritch Hall 2 and Chinedum Richard Ofoegbu …

Hey, everybody.

You’re fired.

I hate to say this, but based on what appear to be irrefutable facts, in my life as well as yours, I don’t believe that any of us have the stamina to participate in the program I originally envisioned. It’s just not in us. To be seven months behind on a fairly insular assignment with no remote display of trying to get it done (or even, in the case of Ritch’s video-game playing tweets, interest, given the hot potato assignment he caught and never submitted anything for), combined with my impending scion … it’s just too much. We can’t get it together.

Which is not, by itself, a bad thing. We’re living our lives. We’re handling things. We’re paying bills and trying to keep significant others happy and breathing as Black men in a world seeking our destruction. I am not writing this with a whiff of anger or disappointment — it simply is what it is, and I’m as guilty as anybody of de-prioritizing this work, and even more stupidly, trying to do it in public before I had the machinery in a well-oiled state.

Which is not to say the lessons are over. I will be reformatting the website (and keeping all your work online, so worry not about losing the reference should you wanna have that) into a sheer blog, where I’ll combine my regular blog fu about a wide variety of topics (currently slated: technical, futurism, random, writing and a few more I don’t remember) with an interspersing of the lessons I planned to teach you, complete with exercises. Who’ll do ‘em? No idea, and even less concern. If you’d like me to look over your stuff, or post it, sure, no problem. I’ll surely post links to any of your work I see, as well as maintain the Pipes feed (while probably taking myself out of it, as I think I hogged it up anyway).

But The Hundred and Four as we currently know it is dead, and that’s just the way the cookie gets stomped on and completely obliterated. You owe me nothing, and we’re all good.

I hope to see more of each of your writing, outside of my own umbrella (ella, ella, ey, ey, ey). Shade and sweet water, travelers. We will speak again.

So there’s that. In case you missed it.