by Whatsblem the Pro

For a lot of people, Burning Man is a once-a-year thing. They spend more or less time getting ready for and/or recovering from their trip to the desert, but it’s still essentially a vacation for them, a get-away, a short break from their ‘real’ lives. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course.

Some of those people are simply unaffected; they’ve been there, they’ve seen what goes on and maybe even participated, but they don’t necessarily define themselves as ‘burners’ and don’t spend an inordinate amount of time thinking or talking about Burning Man (yes, such people do exist). It’s kind of a dead giveaway, though, when you hear people rhapsodizing about the single week they spend at the event as though it is what defines them as people above all else, and yet also represents the entirety of their contact with and participation in burner culture. It seems like the more entranced you are with the Ten Principles, or the more enchanted you are by something like an unexpected whiff of dust while poking around in the garage, the more likely you are to be someone who thinks that Burning Man is just a short-term thing that happens once a year.

We’re not trying to be burnier-than-thou about it, or put anyone down, but Burning-Man-the-event is only the tip of the iceberg; no matter where in the world you are, there are opportunities not too far away for you to get together with other like-minded people and be that amazing all year long. . . which, really, can be even better than the annual party at Black Rock.

You don’t have to be at Burning Man to burn, and you don’t have to quit your job or give all your clothes to charity to burn all year ’round. You don’t need a ticket, or permission from anyone. All you need is the will and whatever leisure time you can free up, and you can transform your life and the lives of others for (what we fondly regard as) the better.

Today, the Org put their new Regionals web site up, where you can get contact information to help you hook up with your tribe wherever you are. The new site is located at http://regionals.burningman.com. The old site will be made available soon at http://crabgrass.burningman.com, which is probably a good thing, as nearly fifty Regionals have yet to copy their data from the old site to the new.

If you don’t see the new site when you visit http://regionals.burningman.com, you may need to clear your cache, or restart your browser. The new site may not be available to you yet; DNS changes do take time to propagate throughout the world, but within 48 hours of this writing the change should be global.

The Org’s web development team asks that you “keep an eye out for bad links from the old site,” and drops a tantalizing hint: “There’s an easter egg. . . on the Second Life page.”

So what are you waiting for? Why are you still here? Go get connected! Find some people doing something great in your area, and arrange to spend some time with them. Be awesome, help out where you can, and don’t worry about what you’re getting out of it. . . generally speaking, you’ll find that you get a lot out of it without having to look to your own interests much.

Almost everywhere, anyway — Image: regionals.burningman.com

UPDATE: For those of you who just want to go to the party, the new Burning Man Survival Guide for 2013 was just published minutes ago!