Shelter

2012-01-28T16:41:00.001-06:00

If I could meet up with myself as a teenager, I would simply say, "Right now you have a limited view of what it means to be alive. But. You have all the parts needed to begin piecing it all together."

Failure in the Midst of Best Efforts

2012-01-23T17:42:00.000-06:00

I'm writing this journal because I was recently told that people like me don't tend to spend enough time with ourselves as our selves deserve. By writing, it is a sign to myself that it is okay to feel. Note that I also believe it is okay to beat anyone up that feels that it is okay to make fun of me for feeling...

When I'm doing the best I can, it's hard for me to be satisfied with anything less than complete success. If I were one of those horses in one of those movies, I'd be the one that would eventually die of a bursting heart because I wouldn't stop running. I haven't always been this way.

In school and activities outside of school, I did as much as I could to enjoy some success, but I never let it overlap the quality of life I felt I had committed to enjoy. If I felt overburdened by classwork, I would just skip (or fake being sick). If I felt tired and worn down, I would spend a day recouping. Work doesn't offer such leniency.

Or maybe work DOES offer such leniency, but I choose not to indulge. I don't indulge because I know how I feel about people that half-ass their work...

Let's take a brief detour in this conversation because, if you know me, I can sense that you might see some hypocrisy here. Keyboard-clicker in an office with endless work and personal anonymity amidst the corporate machine does not translate in my mind as "vocational work". To some people it is. Theirs is a personality different than mine. If I'm not doing work that I consider in my mind to be impacting or meaningful, I will eventually settle in to becoming a complete slack-ass.

So yeah, I know how I feel about people that half-ass their work and let it slide onto someone else. I know how I feel about people that don't take pride in what it is they do. That feeling is what compels me forward. It's what makes me hesitant to even take time off to see a doctor if I feel sick. I don't want anyone to ever say that they got stuck in the mud because I didn't work hard enough...

But they do anyways.

No matter how hard I work, how much I get done, there's always something or someone waiting around the corner to confront me, waiting to exclaim that "You don't do enough!". It could be a client who slipped between the cracks of various other major deals. It could be an employee who feels that I threw them into a scenario that they weren't prepared to handle. It could be that I've forgotten to return a phone call, an e-mail, I didn't go to this party, I didn't compliment that person...

I feel it all. I don't know what to do with it. I can't figure out how to keep my humanity and wave the thoughts of failure on. That's the essence of it. I fail everyone every day of my life and I feel each failure until I am paralyzed by them. The only way I've been able to evade those feelings is at the sacrifice of my personal commitment to humanity, the Golden Rule.

How does one cope with failure without winding up alienated for being cold?

Apocalypse Some Other Time... Perhaps

2011-12-08T17:42:00.001-06:00

Lots of apocalyptic dreams lately. There was one night where I was also evidently overcome by how hard of workers squirrels are and how they deserve respect. I was informed that I spoke very loudly and adamantly about this most important issue. I don't remember any of that though. Most of my dreams are just vivid and apocalyptic.

It could be the stress of work or maybe video games. Perhaps it could be the actual apocalypse. Regardless, the dreams are more fascinating than frightening. I've always been somewhat enthused by humanity's interest in the apocalypse - the end of times. I have a feeling it's more of a "first world problem", or rather "obsession", than anything else. It's as if our inner evolutionary animal is inside of us just twiddling its thumbs, bored out of its mind by the consistency of being fed delicious foods, the luxuries of climate control, the phenomenon of Netflix, effortless survival... The majority of my developed being is about as well maintained within modern civilization as is the typewriter that my company still has all shrink wrapped in storage. So anything with zombies or potentially hazardous asteroids is like throwing the dogs some scraps.

Oh! I happened to have mentioned "First World Problems. If you haven't seen the meme, then here you go.

You can get more of a taste here, if you're in to that sort of thing...

My Music

2011-11-16T19:27:00.001-06:00

I don't like the sound of a guitar on its own anymore. When I pick one up and I hear it, it sounds so confining. What I envy now is the piano. I write music in my head to the sounds of a piano, but I don't play, so I don't actually write. The music emanates as if yelling into a fog.

Music and I have taken a prolonged break. Here in Nashville, even among my close friends, what you love about music will stand trial if the topic comes up... or the wrong song on your playlist interrupts a conversation in your car. I'm quick at the "How did that get on there!?" response. It's very important to be able to explain your musical preference here in music city. That's why I'm a closet music lover. I like what I like because it's more than just what I hear. Music isn't about the melody, rhythm, or harmony alone. It's also about where you were physically and figuratively in your life when you first heard it. It's about what you were feeling at that time. Those memories get intertwined into the music, and every time that song plays, those memories come out of that box and flutter around in your mind's eye. All that to say, I like some peculiar music. The reasons are as intellectually debatable as the feelings themselves.

I do still keep my mouth shut. I feel as though my tastes and intelligence will inevitably be reflected upon poorly. My intellectual circle looks down on people who "like the wrong things". Condescension is the mirror by which intellectualism is able to appreciate itself.

I would be a hypocrite if I didn't have yearnings towards those tendencies myself. It feels good to banter about the obvious flaws of various popular art forms. I've sat in crowds and jeered softly at artists who were killing themselves on stage. I can't stomach Christian music or pop music of most kinds. But music makes people feel, and the debate of the validity of feelings is capable of pulling us onto grounds that I don't feel comfortable treading on.

There's nothing wrong with opinion though. It's just not useful as a weapon. You can't militantly define yourself against other people by what you like because you're simply playing with figures of majority vs minority. If you love baseball with other baseball players, you will feel validated. If you love baseball during the world cup and you are in Europe, you might be killed.

Much the same, and dare I say it, if you love Nickleback and you are at a Nickleback concert, you will have validation all around you. If you feel as I do about Nickleback, you might be a bit perplexed to meet an actual fan. In my world they are only dreamt of, like unicorns or El Chupacabra.

What I think I am expressing is my reason for having quite music. It used to be a form of validation. I didn't have much else going on in my life that I could express to culture and have any sense of value reflected back to me. But when I sang and played guitar, women noticed me and guys thought I was cool.

In Nashville all of that got flipped to reverse. It's not a form of validation here, but of scrutiny. You evoke judgement on yourself if you take up an instrument. I can't necessarily say that's a terrible thing. It's the crucible through which great musicians are made. I have simply assessed my own skills and desires and did not find them to be strong enough to persist in music.

That being said, I'm about to go to a bar and sing with a talented musician, which is validating. It's validating to support someone who I view as skilled. My value is equated with theirs or they wouldn't risk having me accompany them.

Done.

Why Should I Act That Way?

2011-11-10T16:13:00.001-06:00

I didn't want to hog any sort of personal space on Facebook to continue my thoughts on this topic, so I copied it to my blog... The place where I can use aaaaalllll the space I want without stepping on any toes. You have been warned. Here we go.

Jeremy's Profile · Jeremy's Wall

Jeremy Stephens
I feel like the foundation of Christianity (or any religion) is asking, "Why?" Seems like so much emphasis is placed on how Christians should act, but the underlying question of "Why should I act that way?" is not addressed enough. Being able to answer that question to myself has been extremely important for me. The answer "Because it's the right thing to do" is not good enough, at least not for me. I've had to find another answer.

· · 7 hours ago ·

David Taylor and Christopher Giorgio H. Kemp like this.
- Jeremy Stephens I think any answer that relies on human "goodness" isn't really good enough. For me, the answer is kind of selfish. But I'm okay with that.
  7 hours ago ·
- Jeremy Stephens ‎"Because Christ died for me" and "God loves me" is obviously part of it, but not the whole thing.
  6 hours ago ·
- David Taylor
  Agreed: religion is merely a particular set of answers to the fundamental questions about our existence that everyone on the planet asks (or should ask) themselves: Who am I? Why am I here? What is right and wrong? What is the basis of our knowledge of our answers? What happens when I die? Just to name a scant few...
  
  All that to say, I'm with you. Christianity is not primarily about "what I do." The "doing" is an outgrowth of "who am I"... or more correctly, who I've become because of what God has done. I'm a big fan of asking the right questions. :) And this is why Christianity wins the day for me: the foundation isn't ultimately dependent on accomplishing something or acting a certain way or jumping through the right rituals. It's about receiving a gift.
  6 hours ago · · 2
- Justin Blake
  I think we are compelled to do the right thing because of empathy, a useful trait for social creatures. I think the story of Jesus challenges us to push this instinctual feeling (love your neighbor) even further (love your enemy).
  
  I also wanted to say that I really appreciate your outlook on all this. For so many Christians, it seems to be a religion about converting other people to your way of thinking. I like the way you see it, as more of a look inside yourself for what is true and right, and figuring out the "why?".
  5 hours ago ·
- Nathan Crandell That's true. I see the most impacting form of evangelism taking place not as an outward practice, but as a proportionate byproduct of seeking the answers to those questions in your daily life.
  4 hours ago ·
- David Taylor
  I do agree that we are created with empathy for the suffering of our fellow man. However, I would argue that determining whether something is "right" or "wrong" is more than avoiding suffering. It needs to be based more than a "feeling." Or another way to think of it, what obligation do we have to pay attention to that feeling of empathy.
  
  I certainly agree that Jesus calls us to a different way of life modeled after his self-giving love. But if we take the story as a whole, there is more than just a moral examples. After all, the world is full of good moral examples from all sorts of religions but society, on the whole, does little more than give them a nod and some lip-service and go on living the same way as before! Jesus' own account points to something bigger than a moral example. In his case, it has to do with revealing the kind of God who created the universe.
  
  I think there are plenty of Christians who come off pushy, judgmental and fail to love as Jesus loves. I do not excuse behavior that treats other disrespectfully, regardless what you’re selling. Personally, I'm a proponent of relational evangelism: loving and respecting people where they live (whether they believe as I do or not) as a testimony to the kind of life that Jesus calls us to live before God and with others. But the fact is, everyone has a worldview and they hold to that worldview because they think it is the most accurate representation of the way reality really is. Christians are no different. I fear that, because some "squeaky wheels" (that get press because they help the media sell air-time) are perceived as the voice of all Christians everywhere, when in reality, most are simply attempting to remain obedient to the way they understand reality to be (including moral reality). So when atheists (or insert whatever worldview you want) shouts down Christians for thinking that reality is a certain way, they do so from the premise that reality is a certain way! It has been my experience that most people are really having conversations with a caricature or extreme versions of Christian faith (i.e., an perceived idea) and not talking with the living-breathing person right in front of them.
  
  I'm a big fan of asking the big questions and I fear many Christians have forgotten how to think critically about their faith. However, I don't want to overemphasize the questions either, lest faith be reduced to an overly individualistic enterprise. In other words, why have "faith" in a God if you have all the answers? Why bother serving your neighbor if the act of asking the question is the goal?
  4 hours ago ·
- Justin Blake In response to it needing to be "more than a feeling": Accepting that something is moral or immoral because of what a supernatural entity says, despite how I might personally feel about it, is scary to me.
  3 hours ago ·
- David Taylor I hear what you're saying. It all depends on the deity in question. And we've already said Jesus comes off with an ethic worth taking seriously, which to me means he is worth considering. What is really at the heart of such unease is whether us humans can accurately know (and if so, trust!) what behavior this deity expects. That's the million-dollar (epistemological) question.
  about an hour ago ·
- David Taylor And let me say, even as one who trusts the deity in question, it can still be scary! But real trust is scary sometimes.
  about an hour ago ·
- Justin Blake Relevant/Interesting: http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_zak_trust_morality_and_oxytocin.html
  35 minutes ago ·

- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  So here's my take on it. What I find to be the most "scary" with regards to deities and daily living is the interpretation of the Bible. The Bible is the basis for all of Christian belief. Without it we should acknowledge that there would be even less order, as ALL moral and ethical fiber would be built on individual feeling.
  As for me? I both love and despise a standard. I love a standard when I'm immersed in chaos or if I don't want to have to think about what I'm doing. Give me a standard to lean against so I can make it through the day. I drive my car with a sense of peace because I know that there is a standard set of rules that controls other drivers on the road...
  I loath a standard, on the other hand, because it removes creativity. It takes a potentially wide frame of perspective and shrinks it down. Sure, you can still be creative within that frame, but never-the-less, the frame is reduced. This is why I think Christian music (and country music), in particular, is incredibly boring. You can only write within a certain frame with a certain angle of emotions with a very limited message.
  But say you want to lean on the Bible as a standard. I think the Bible is a great document, but what gives it its authority? I say that because I feel like it's a paradox. The Bible has authority because it says it has authority. This isn't necessarily an issue if you're not into the whole "Bible is the inerrant word of God" angle, but if you are - and I know a lot of you are - then that's a serious hang up for me.
  
  "So..." you might say, "Try it out then! Try reading the Bible and tell me if you don't think it makes sense!"
  
  Agreed. There are several parts of it that make sense, but if we were to throw a line into the water to gauge the consistency of the sense perceived by the general populous, we might find that we end up with only a small percentage of the Bible that truly "makes sense". The rest of it spins of into hundreds of denominations, each so certain of their interpretation that they would become politically active and attempt to exercise their perspective of scripture over the majority. This is the result of Protestantism.
  
  On the reverse side, we have Catholicism. One ordained person informs the masses of what the scriptures actually say. No interpretation necessary, just blind obedience. To Protestants, this concept is terrifying. What happened with that system? Well, it led to indulgences, icons, idol worship, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and all sorts of historical warm-fuzzies which climaxed for the religion under Mr. "Nail it to the door" Martin Luther himself.
  
  Here was a guy that felt confined by the size of the frame that the Catholic church had built around life. He wasn't sure if they were exactly accurate. He cracked open a Bible and saw a completely different story happening inside. This moved him so much so that he stood up to the church, keeping well in mind that it could result in his excommunication and death, and he said "No more!"
  
  Enter stage left - America...
  
  Don't like the small restrictive and kinda scary frame that the Catholic church has set up in Europe? Move to America. You can practice the Christian religion as free as you want there. Now let's establish the Puritan guidelines. Don't do x, don't say x, don't drink x, don't eat x, don't wear x, don't associate yourself with x, and especially don't x her x without first being x'ed. Why? Because the Bible says so. Who interpreted it? The educated preacher.
  
  Well, lets start educating people then. Lets start public universities so that everyone can learn how to read the Bible. Deal? Deal. Done.
  
  Awwww, dang-it! Education starts making people think outside of the parameters of traditional Christianity. People start observing science. The world might not have been created in 7 days because of what we know about the speed of light and carbon dating? Homosexuals might be "born that way"? Blaspheme!
  
  And here we are today, more or less. I often feel that we have traded in the one Pope in exchange for millions of them. We all have the power to interpret, and we all do. What is the basis for our interpretations? What moves us to our first step into faith? What are we trying to accomplish with the praise and worship band every Sunday morning? Feelings. Our individual feelings.
  
  Science doesn't work that way. My feelings aren't what hold me to the ground. My feelings don't interpret the speed of light. My feelings don't determine 1+1=2. Science is no feeling. It is tested fact. Faith is almost entirely feeling. And that is terrifying.

Farewell to Family

2011-10-18T23:29:00.000-05:00

I lost a very special friend today. I was 14 years old when I picked her out of a litter, but it didn't begin there. It began a year prior when I wanted a dog more than anything in the world. I don't think I've ever been committed to any one thing more than I was to getting a dog. My parents told me I had a year to figure out what type of dog we would get and how to train it.

So a year later I was still dedicated and so we went to pick her up, a pure breed golden retriever. The farm was out a ways from town close to a big communications tower in the middle of a field. I remember that much. I remember the rule, too. Don't pick the pup that runs up to you first, and don't pick the one that doesn't check you out. By following that rule, we picked a pup and named her Casey.

I set up her kennel in the living room down stairs. It was summer, so I was ready for the sleepless nights, and they were just that. I slept next to the kennel and every few hours she would wake up and whimper. So I'd get up and take her out, down the front steps. I would place her in the lambs ear patch and wait for her to use the bathroom. Most of the time she didn't go, but the purpose was to build habit, and to build bond. I remember one night I fell asleep with her on my stomach. She ended up crawling up my shirt and suckling on my nipple while I was asleep. Obviously everyone else in the house found humor in that.

Oddly enough, her hair never grew out after the first 4 months, as golden retriever pups usually do. We got a call from the breeders who informed us that the neighbor's yellow lab was the father and that we could return Casey for a new litter that was just recently born or we could get our money back. Obviously we didn't sent Casey back. She was already part of the family.

She was a smart dog, and full of energy, but soft at heart. She just wanted to please. Whenever we would come home, she would get so excited. She would whack her tail to the point of pain on the walls and furniture, hardly able to contain her excitement. She would always bring us something, too. She loved blankets or a bone or sometimes she would try to fit all of her toys in her mouth and bring them to us.

When she did go out side, she loved to roll around in the grass, and she loved to sit under the dogwood tree and take naps. She never needed a leash when we went on walks, though we used one for formality sake...

I remember when she was about 4 years old, she went to the vet in very serious condition. The only time she received a table scrap, it turned out to be bad meat. She almost died. I remember being so sad and worried that she was alone and that she might die in the night and I wouldn't be able to be there with her... but she survived. Many happy years to follow.

When I went to college it was hard, but she was always the first in line to greet me whenever I came home. She would go hysterical, whimper like crazy, and push her head into my knees as hard as she could, she was so excited.

Grace got married and had kids. Casey was good to both of them. She tended to tolerate them as toddlers, but I think she really felt like they were her pups.

A couple of years ago she developed a tumor. My parents had it removed, but it seemed to come back. She got arthritis, and she started losing hair... She was still just as gentle and happy as ever though. Even when I came home late at night, she would come to me all stiff legged, squinting her eyes, smiling in that dog way, and wagging her tail. Then she would simply go back to bed.

Today on October 18th 2011, I lost my very close friend. She was put down. Her organs were failing and she couldn't move anymore. I wasn't there with her when it happened, but my dad and brother were. I knew it wouldn't be long with the cancer and all, but it was still a huge blow...

At this point, I'm simply remembering. There's a lot of tears that go with the territory of recalling 14 years of companionship. That's the price. Her memory will always be treasured deep in my heart.

Unnatural

2011-10-03T19:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend about the strangeness of the likelihood of surviving 100 more years from today. With medical advancement, that's not beyond reason, assuming that we reach a point of medical singularity that mirrors that of current technological trends in general. Bioengineering is reaching new heights. We can have pumps replace our hearts. We can grow new organs from stem cells. The brain is the last missing element, but the race to map it is well under way.

I don't put a lot of chips in the pile of "never going to understand x". I think my generation in particular must be comfortably familiar with aspects of life changing at a moment's notice. When I was born, the world was moving away from typewriters and grabbing on to PCs. The internet was making its commercial debut in late elementary school. In high school, it wasn't often that you would find teenagers running around with cell phones. By college, we all had cell phones with color displays. How wild! ... The world was getting used to the idea of digital music downloads and digital piracy. Not long after that, I began burning fewer and fewer CDs and began uploading days worth of music to my mp3 player. By my junior year in college, a website called "Facebook" hit the scene. Wasn't sure how well it would do in comparison to Myspace, but it sure beat building my own website from html code my freshman year. A year out of college, I had a phone that could log onto facebook, manage my banking, play days worth of mp3s, download and upload data, find my location from a satellite, take pictures, record videos, and serve as numerous other tools. Tomorrow, the next big thing will come out. Medicine is a bit slower, yes, but it's still moving forward. Only a matter of time now before it ignites and shoots skyward, yes?

A lot to think about.

But it inspired me to have a dream that I wasn't comfortable with. It's a little "out there" I realize, but I did reap real emotions from the concept of medical singularity. One of my friends died. It was terrible. We were all very sad. But a few weeks later he was back, walking among us, and seeming as if nothing ever happened. He couldn't understand everyone's reaction. Why was everyone so surprised to see him?

"I saw you die!"
"I didn't die. I've been here the whole time!"
"What do you mean? I saw it happen. You can't tell me that it didn't happen."

Later on, I found that it was true. He did die. But his parents were so distraught that they gathered together as much money as they could to pay for an experimental cloning of their son. All the data was collected on the memories and experience. The body was examined for mind memory. It was read and compiled into a digital format. DNA was taken and injected into a stem cell that was forced into accelerated growth. At maturity of the physical frame, the mind data was injected into the brain. The renewed form of the person was then taken to their bed to lie dormant until the next morning.

They did this with the dead and the disabled. They would take the disabled and alter their forms but leave their memory intact. They would take the elderly and upload them into fresh young and more perfect forms of themselves. It was largely money driven.

I remember feeling confused and opposed. The problem was that these people really were dying. The new version was someone else made exactly like them, but with their own identity. It was a trick. You might seem like you were going to attain immortality, but really it would only be perceived that you were by everyone else around you...

Then I woke up. Felt like I had a bad dream even though I was seeing people that I loved that didn't seem to die. Just didn't feel natural.

Religio Politico Manifesto

2011-10-02T12:58:00.003-05:00

About every four years, we get a strong focus of media attention (obviously) to presidential candidate campaign trails. Who will be the choice contender against the incumbent? What will the platforms be? In other words, it's the season for acidic buildup in the stomach which, in turn, eats at the lining of stomach and intestinal walls. Yes, aren't we all so excited to hear what they come up with this year?

My old Civics teacher in high school used to say "The grossest things to watch being made? Politics and sausage." I couldn't agree more. I just can't get behind the excitement of it because it involves too many negative aspects of our humanity. Necessary? Yes, though quite unpleasant. So don't mind me as I tend to keep my opinions to myself -- except for here. I'll lay it down a couple of times between now and the new presidential term just because if you're reading, it's strictly optional. You're not overhearing me in a restaurant, and you're not watching me stand on a corner to picket. I have views, but I hold them close to my chest.

I guess I'm a "demoblican" if I had to choose. There's really no political party that represents my ideals that stands a chance of winning an election, so I have to watch carefully and move accordingly... Last election I didn't vote. I didn't know enough about my ideals to make a clear call. I caught a lot of shit for that, but I'm still proud of my response. Any action in an election is a voice. My voice was speaking of an equal dissatisfaction with both candidates and overall hopelessness for my country. I don't believe in our system as it currently stands. Now I sit on the middle of the fence with my ass, but both my legs are swinging on the side of liberalism.

When I admit that, I grow incredibly defensive. My blood starts to boil and my heart begins to race. Why? Because I grew up in a part of the country where you are condemned as a liberal by holy justice. My favorite quote comes from my middle school US Government teacher, Mr. Barrows.

-Mr. Barrows: "Any Godly person should be a Republican."
-student: "What if my parents are registered Democrats?"
-Mr. Barrows: "Then we should pray for them."

I remember that we paused, even as children, to see if he was serious or not. He was. As harsh as that seems, that short dialogue is exactly the tone of small-town Southern US.

Religious conservatives terrify me. I've never felt stronger hate from a direction of those claiming to represent a loving God. If that offends you, that's not my fault. Me and millions of other people just like me are simply mirroring what we see. If we're getting it wrong, prove us wrong with action. Your words at this point are lacking value.

Where I grew up, it always seemed to be "Prophet" vs. "Anti-Christ", not Republican vs. Democrat. My parents were republicans, but they didn't seem quite that extreme. I don't think I ever heard them mention a fear that Bill Clinton was the anti-christ and George Bush was the great prophet. That's not to say I didn't hear it from plenty of other people though. It makes me feel sick to think about it.

Why do I feel so strongly about it? I think it's because I do agree with certain conservative angles. I believe in hard work as the product of good things and that every healthy and capable person should be contributing. I believe that government assistance is necessary, but that it should be incredibly difficult to procure. I disagreed with the bailouts. I think the government should stay small. I also believe that we should protect immigration, but we should not nurture illegal immigration.

My liberal-side feels strongly about the limitations of government to make decisions regarding marriage between two people. The fact that this is even a political issue is strange to me. It's a religious issue, and I don't believe the church should have to marry anyone that they don't want to. Civil unions? Any and all, so long as we don't see any more of those gross pedophilia polygamist farms crop up in Utah.

I want the government to prevent corporations from being granted the status of a citizen (too late). By that right, the simple individuals are no longer citizens, but cells serving a function within a citizen. Really it seems more like feudalism. Also, I think that a good corporation has to function like a sociopath, and I would like to live in a world where bowing to a sociopath is not completely necessary. Americans should have the right to nurture and grow companies that stand a chance to compete without being crushed by patent litigation, the new loophole for monopolies. So yeah, all these tax loopholes for companies that just outsource their shit to other countries? That shit has to stop.

On that note, I want the wealthy to be equal citizens. They benefit from the system, so they should have to pay the system with an equal percentage as the poor.

Science is also important. Stop cutting the funds! Don't you see that we're falling behind? What do we need to do here? Start another war with the Russians? Man, that seemed to do the trick last time. But nah, we'll just leave all the smart stuff to other countries while we excel at couch jockeying and internet porn.

-------------------------------------------

So those are my political views. My religious views are as follows:

-------------------------------------------

Conservative Christian politics terrify me. There is a huge disconnect here that cocks millions of heads on edge when we look at a figure like Jesus and then look at the Christian masses and their political yearnings. Here is the platform as I have experienced it.

-Pro-life: check
-Pro-death penalty: check
-Anti-gay: check
-Pro-war: check
-Religious equality: As long as that religion is Christianity, check.
-Hard on the poor: check
-Nice to rich white poeple: check

I try really hard to see Jesus in any of that, and aside from pro-life, I just can't. In fact, it's really funny to me to see such a strong drive for pro-life share the stage with pro-death penalty.

I see conservatives and I see paranoia. I see a group that is constantly afraid that they are going to lose thier power. They stockpile guns, food, water, and board up their social windows, only communing with each other. Outreach, looks more like sliding a plate through a sliding shutter on a steel door than it does a relationship. Close, but not so close as to really feel the other person. Wouldn't want that. That might make you ask questions about your God.

Your God. Pretty stand-up guy, but he doesn't look like you. That's been an interesting concept to me. Did you know that people who study the stock market notoriously lose more money in investments than people who don't? Sometimes I feel like people who don't study God often times have a clearer picture of who He is than those who do. I think more of it is hardwired into us than we are given credit. The simple fact that you refer to yourself as "like Him" is a clear indicator that you know very little about him. An affiliation doesn't make you "like him". It would be better to ditch the name and just know each other by action and deed. The world is fully informed at this point as to what "Christian" means, and I regret to inform the community that the definition is determined by association, not by original implication. Non-believers issued that name in the first place. I'd like to think it was because people were actually modeling Christ. Now it's just a cool club to be in and network through.

Politically I think that God is more used than followed by Christians. God is used to protect what Christian Americans already have. Protects the status, the power, the safety, the future. As far as I can see in the new covenant between man and God, none of those issues are really front-page. Funny how they ended up that way and all of the important and uncomfortable responsibilities get dodged as a result of "efforts needed elsewhere".

I write all of these things to the voices and discussions of my past, discussions and voices that I used to share and be filled with fire by. I regret that to the point of nausea, and I mourn for the fearful.

2011-09-22T22:12:00.002-05:00

Another wonderful example of how the scientific process works. They are prepared to dislodge an entire belief structure upon the uncovering of new evidence. If that is a picture of arrogance and close-mindedness, then I'm good at math.

Knights Templar

2011-09-12T15:50:00.003-05:00

Last Friday I was listening to a cross examination of a recent discovery in Africa of an apparent fossilized human relative that predates a more primitive form of man (homo habilis), but looks to be somewhat more human in form. They were deliberating the relevance of the fossil, debating the accuracy and whether or not the theories were sound. That's the way science works. Severe scrutiny. It was a wonderful debate and I should like to think that we will probably hear more about the issue as it sifts through the scrutiny and plops out on the other end as some sort of definitive discovery.

I feel comfortable with that system. It constantly checks itself over and over to verify itself as true. Long-lasting theories can be broadsided by new discoveries at any moment, but time declares the core theories as something we regard as "true".

Science is a process. It is not an outright declared knowledge, but an approach to existence with humility, an acceptance of not knowing but with a thirst to discover. It springboards off of old discoveries to make new ones. We couldn't have just happened upon the internet without having first mastered the simplicities of resistors and conductors, studies which some people devoted their entire lives to and are now simply a 1% aspect of a much bigger picture.

"Evidence" is a word thrown around a lot. Evidence is what is used to commit something as a potential truth, a theory. It is scrutinized by the scientific community as a sort of crucible through which, if it is able to pass, it is accepted as law, though by no means permanent. There is a lot of money invested in both discovering and disproving theories of all shapes and sizes. For instance, as complex as we behold the universe to be, we have not yet discovered the working components of gravity. We think it has something to do with magnets. We know that it affect the perception of time and that it effects matter in a particular way. Hell. We even know how to make it happen. We just don't know why. There's a lot of money in it for the guy/girl/team that could figure that one out.

But then take this recent discovery of Sediba which provides us with a new glimpse of human development. The science team which discovered the previous front-runner of "first human ancestor", homo habilis, desperately wants to hold the title, but what about the evidence? Where does that lead us? Well, it might rearrange our entire time frame of existence. A more advanced looking biped was around 77,000 years longer than a lesser developed creature that we thought we came from. What a crazy list of new possibilities!

This also provides room for speculation.

But my entire childhood education framed out a basic function for such ideas. They're outright wrong. There are dream weavers out there trying to deceive us from the truth of creation in a 7-10k year old-or-so 7 day time frame. They want this because they don't want to be accountable to a God they know exists in their very marrow. We are the Knights Templar dedicated to the opposition of this preposterous idea of "evolution". I didn't come from no monkey!

How do you handle a viewpoint like that? And it's not just a sparsely believed concept. A frighteningly large percent of the population feels this way. If the evidence leads us to a Garden of Eden, an Adam and Eve, and a time frame of a few thousand years ago, then wouldn't that be amazing!? Wouldn't we WANT that!? Yes. But it's not a scientist's job to collect data and fit it to form around a preconceived notion, even if it is accepted as truth at one point in time.

"God" can also never be a scientist's final answer on an issue. That's not what scientists are out looking for. They're looking for how and why. If someone threw a baseball through your window, you wouldn't sit still and conclude that God did it. There would be nothing wrong with that conclusion theologically speaking, but what your scientific mind has informed you of is that the kids playing street ball outside more than likely hit that ball with a force and trajectory that shattered the window and placed the ball in a static state on your living room floor. If God conducted any of those actions, where would he have begun without altering the complete course of the universe all for the sake of breaking the window and bringing you to practice patience? Would he have interfered with the wind? Would he have interrupted a synapse in the brain of the kid hitting the ball, the kid pitching the ball? Would he have foreseen such issues when the concept of baseball was first being thought up? What about when glass was discovered? If he had such control, could he not have done something to deter it from happening? And if he could... what about all of the atrocities in history?

We get into murky water here when trying to discern the mind of God. I think neither the scientist nor the theologian wishes to make any kind of certain statement on such issues. But all that to say that God is not the helpful answer we are looking for when trying to find a cure for AIDS or cancer or clean energy. I'm not here to say that he isn't behind any of it, though I feel that science has shown me that either God is behind all things (good and bad) or he is completely hands off. We're dealing with very specific intertwined time-space-mater mathematical formulas when dealing with the world. To have them supernaturally and inexplicably altered at any point in time would have ripple effects of devastating magnitude.

If science and religion can ever mend the gap between them, there can be no more denial of possibility, and there can be no more persecution of hope.

"We must not, then, as Christians,assume an attitude of antagonism toward the truths of reason, or thetruths of philosophy, or the truths of science, or the truths ofhistory, or the truths of criticism. As children of light, we must becareful to keep ourselves open to every ray of light. Let us, then,cultivate an attitude of courage as over against investigations of theday. None should be more zealous in them than we. None should be morequick to discern truth in every field, more hospitable to receive it,more loyal to follow it, whithersoever it leads."
~Benjamin Warfield

Convergeance

2011-09-03T14:13:00.000-05:00

I've been attempting to express for a couple of years now my observations and feelings on the intense discourse between religion and science. Doctor Francis Colins, the leader of the human genome project, has been a strong advocate of bringing these two seemingly opposite forces together. In his book "The Language of God" he discusses his findings as a scientist and his unwavering faith in the midst of that process. I was intrigued but a bit underwhelmed by his logic. The formula still largely stands true to me that men of science make poor clergy, and the pious make poor scientists.

I do agree from a distance that one shouldn't have to choose between science and religion. All quantum physics asside, I don't believe that two opposing truths can exist in the same space (time being inconsequential to Truth). I find truth to be as compelling as matter, if not more-so, and as we all learned in elementary school, "Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time." Any confusion on that part is on our end, our perception. We may not understand fully the truth which occupies the space of our existence, but that has nothing to do with the truth we find. Instead, it has to do with our ability to ask the right questions and to observe the evidence which leads us to the right answers. Everything is before us. Every answer. It is our own limitation which hides meaning and understanding, and a deep intrinsic yearning that compels us to keep searching.

But what we disagree on is where discovery will lead us. Take the nature of God, for instance. Christianity is firmly founded on one basic principle. At one point, we fell from God's grace in an act of defiance at which point the purpose of Christ was set into motion. Someone needed to save us from our inherent sin.

Now observe this article...

How does that strike you? It would have made me feel threatened a few years back. Not anymore. I acknowledge what the Southern Baptist preacher acknowledged in the interview. "When you take away the concept of original sin from man, you have a problem." Yes. YOU have a problem. If the truth of our development as a species actually coincides with the evolutionary evidences we have from such projects as tracing our genome through the animal kingdom, discoveries convincing enough to capture the certainties of Dr. Colins, then there is a big problem. Sin turns out to be inherent, yes. It is Darwinian evolution, and it has always been a part of us. It is the reason why any of us are here at all. It ensures our survival to compete, take, and propogate. There was no "fall" from a utopian existence. It has always been ameba eat ameba. Or atleast that is what evidence is showing.

How does the faith community respond to such a possibility? With immediate unthoughtful shouts of objection. Every conversation I have ever had with a person of faith over such issues inevitably ends in an argument of reasonable doubt. That is what faith is based on these days, reasonable doubt.

"You don't know."
"Science has been wrong before."
"There's a possibility that they're overlooking something."

I find, ironically enough, that many of the people making these arguments were baffled at how OJ Simpson was acquitted. Put their view of God on trial, though, and the glove MUST FIT.

I'm not debating the existence of God. I'm debating the reasoning of who he is and what we know of him. I'm acknowledging our tendency as a Christian society to celebrate science's ability to land us on the moon and cure cancer, but if those formulas continue in a direction that challenges what the ancient texts tell us about God's nature, then we are outraged. How can this be? If evidence yields something to be true, and we deny it, are we not denying a truth of what we have come to know about God? Yes. We seem more interested in protecting our emotions and traditions than we are about learning the truth at all.

"It's not important. Knowing these things aren't important to how I live my life."

Maybe so. But it is important for many other people in relation to how they live their life. If evolutionary process helps us understand social hierarchy, helps us recognize animalistic patterns and thus, be less condemning of them in interest of the individual's humanity, if we can be of greater service to ourselves by acknowledging the truth of where we actually came from... Then what are we accomplishing?

Concluding with a quote from my favorite modern play, "Arcadia".

"Oh, you're going to zap me with penicillin and pesticides. Spare me that and I'll spare you the bomb and aerosols. But don't confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There's no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle's cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars - big bangs, black holes - who gives a shit? How did you people con us out of all that status? All that money?"
- Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

Madness

2011-08-01T18:06:00.000-05:00

Work has been bleeding through the natural defenses. I can't sleep without dreaming about it, literally every night. I can't get away. I was hoping having a couple of days off would help, and they did somewhat, but the dreams only incorporated small functions of the job instead of the entire thing. I've been on that site for 8 months. That's a few months shy of the amount of time I spent at service source. I'm tired. I want to be on a different job. I don't want to have all of the responsibility all the time without the title and pay I feel that I deserve.

But I am well taken care of at the moment. I can relax about bills and the future. I just find that I can't actually enjoy much of anything right now. I guess it's been a little over a month where I don't feel that I've actually enjoyed anything I've put my time and my mind to. That's not to say that nothing has been good. It's mostly good. I just feel detached and numb. I don't have the brain waves left after work to lend to anything else, not even my own sense of enjoyment. It feels akin to winter depression except not debilitating. Quite the contrary. I'm tight and efficient at work. My mind is all over the job, every aspect of it. It's when I get home that the problems start. I can seemingly let go, but it's still in my subconscious. I'm hoping that the upcoming vacation will be enough to wipe me clean. I'm hoping that no one bothers me with work related calls (though I know that will happen), and I hope that I can get my spark back. There's no other reason why I shouldn't have the life that comes so naturally to me.

In other news, it's sad that as adults we lose the thickness of our skins. I think our college years are prime, but then we start to figure out who we are, and we cut ties with a lot of people that, for a long time, never really bothered us.

And then suddenly an eruption occurs. Either our friendships hinder our personal growth, or a major offense is committed that can't be ignored. Either way, our circle of relationships seems to dwindle and become less deep and risky. We lose our thick skin, our ability to brush things off our shoulders. I have. I don't want to spend time around judges. I don't want to spend time around intellectuals. I don't want to spend time with cultural conservatives. I tolerate it less and less every year. All of those things make me feel sad. All of those things feel wasteful to me.

Then again, maybe sometimes we are mistaken. Maybe we do a lot more assuming as adults than we did as children. Assumptions are a complex process, but they aren't always useful. Perhaps we're just to tired to keep trying? Perhaps we struggle enough elsewhere to have to then struggle in the midst of all interaction? I don't really know. I just know that as you get older, seemingly good things start to fade away and are replaced by familiarity and safety.

At least, that's my take on it.

Who is Fit?

2011-07-11T22:39:00.000-05:00

I was surprised when my friend Patrick was enthralled to purchase an Indiana Jones hat and wear it proudly when we took our Sophomore trip to Disney World as a group. He always looked up and related to Indiana Jones. I looked at Patrick and didn't see even the slightest resemblance of the hero. He was (but no longer is) portly. He was rosy cheeked and bashful. But he related in a character that exhibited admirable traits. He found in himself likenesses.

I think to myself now, in a somewhat foggy mindset... Which one of us would find another worthy of wearing the hat of Indiana Jones... But how many of us dreamt of wearing it ourselves?

Making the Best of a Monday

2011-07-11T21:20:00.000-05:00

Sitting in my living room after a long day. Bethany sits to my right, Jason sits to my left. We've just partaken in a drink I would like to refer to as "The Black Hole". Earlier this week I created a drink that I call the "CME" or "Corona Mass Ejection" named after a dream I had about Coronal Mass Ejections. I love cosmology, btw.

So "The Black Hole" is a margarita style drink that takes after the CME. The CME is a Corona opened up, having the empty space between the cap and the beer filled up with silver tequila, the usual limb, and a pinch of salt. The salt causes the fusion. You jam your thumb in, turn the bottle upside-down, and let it all mix together. Anyone who has ever drank a proper Corona is familiar with this process. The salt causes a chemical reaction releasing gas into the bottle, all building up around your thumb. When you let your thumb out of the bottle, there is an ejection, a spray of the drink, out the top. This is relatively unavoidable.

So the variation of "The Black Hole"? Take a bag of ice, a blender, some margarita mix, tequila, blue bols curacao, and some Corona. Mix everything together in the blender except for the Corona. Save that for when you've poured each drink. Add the Corona as needed to top off each beverage. This should result in a turquoise-colored drink that will both refresh and relax you, easing the Monday off of your shoulders.

We are drinking black holes while watching "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusades". Argue with me about the validity of this experience and I won't argue back. I'll just gaze at you as if I were looking at an illiterate person attempting to read the headlines of a very important day.

And finally I will say this. It is a sad world that we live in where when truth is expressed from us, it is used as a weapon against us. We draw it out of one another with eager eyes, ultimately using it to prop up our own sense of justice. There is, however, a grand amount of compassion to be found, but not from the sources that claim to have coined the market. No. Much like we have learned from corporate advertising and experience, just because a mega-chain is successful and recognized doesn't mean we can't get a better burger from a hole-in-the-wall.

Notes About the Past

2011-07-09T13:39:00.000-05:00

There are a few memories that popped into my brain at random this week that I wish to document before they get covered up again. My brain sometimes feels like that warehouse at the end of "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark". There's so much in there, and probably this one little burned out employee on a fork lift. He shows up at about 7 in the morning every day to find a list of boxes to resort. "Move this box from here over to here."

Every now and then, he uncovers a box that was put there on accident, an old memory collecting dust. This discovery manifests itself in my day-to-day by causing me to stop for a brief moment with a blank expression on my face as if I were staring through the ceiling. It is a temporary dwelling and then a continuation of the task at hand.

Here are a few that came to mind this week.

One of my middle school friends and I, BJ Huffman, went to Grandfather Mountain with his mom and maybe her boyfriend at the time? I'm not sure. BJ was introducing me to Metallica. He was also telling me about seeing UFOs. He was very adamant it. At the park we ran across the rope swing bridge, found a plaque that announced our being a mile above sea level, saw some bald eagles, golden eagles, some bears, and that's about it.

I'm not sure what ever happened to BJ. He was troubled as a kid. In retrospect, I'm sure it had to do with broken family problems, problems that I had no ability to relate with at the time. But that's not what he needed. I'm sure his mom had me come over from time to time because it eased his mind and helped him have fun. I was always very open and perhaps a bit too naive to be concerned about the inner turmoil of other kids my age. This was probably best. Sometimes we just need to spend time with someone who we can have fun with and not have them hone in on our pain. In that way, we can take short vacations from that pain...

I'm realizing a pattern. Most of my good friends were of similar backgrounds. Alan Parker had both of his parents. I think his mom was an alcoholic though. His dad was usually away on business, but he earned enough to provide a big expensive house to live in and a few SUVs in the garage. I remember that garage. The sound it made when it opened, the smell of the house. Dot, the Dalmatian, who was kind of a dumb dog, but still, boys love dogs. He had a pool and a pinball machine, among many other forms of entertainment. They would always have me go on vacation with them as a sort of playmate for Alan. He was an only child. At their beach house, we would take jet skis out on our own into the sound. I realize now how dangerous that was, and I definitely wouldn't let my kids do that, but I appreciated the freedom. Every time I got dropped off back at home my mom would as Mrs. Parker how I was. "Good as gold!" she would always reply.

Malachi was my friend just before Alan. He was from a broken home as well. He lived with his mom a few blocks from behind my house. She was white, but had them through a black man that I never met nor heard of often. I think he was in jail at the time. Malachi was tormented, but again, I didn't understand torment at the time. I was mostly just happy, just wanted to have fun with people. I remember the first day of school Malachi was carried in to the classroom by his mother and the principal. He was screaming and writhing in their arms. I don't know how exactly we became friends, but we did. They actually used me as bait several times to convince him to come to school. One time they let me leave school to go and find him and bring him back. I don't think they asked for my mother's permission to do that.

Corey and I met while sledding down the road in front of my house one year. I remember feeling a little bit racist towards him at first, but that all vanished when we ended up having a blast sledding together. Video games were of common interest, of course, and we would spend a lot of time going from his cousin's house to my house. He and his mother lived in the projects across town. I think his dad was in jail or maybe just left them. I don't know what ever happened to Corey. I remember seeing Malachi at the mall once though. He was with his crew, he hid behind an angry expression, trying to pass off a "hard" look. That reminded me of the first time I got in a fight. He won. It was over a snake I found and gave to him. I wanted it back to show some other friends and he flipped his shit. He probably had some rightfully founded attachment issues. We watched a lot of Ninja Turtles together and made a lot of forts in the woods. He earned the right to be in pain today, but it changes the way I see "tough guys" walking in groups down the street. First off, yes, they are generally very dangerous, but it's overcompensation. They're hiding a lot of pain that they just don't know what to do with.

I had a very interesting childhood with lots of interesting friends. In a lot of ways I look up to my child self. Maybe that's why I'm so reluctant to let go of that spirit in me. I find that most people are very limited in the types of people they would call "friend". Many of those folks to this day get frustrated with me because my definition is more broad than theirs. They think it's because I'm simple-minded. Maybe so, but I'd rather it be that way.

Not Really Singularity, but still...

2011-07-02T11:26:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty hard in love with technology. It's not so much the current gadgetry that impresses me, but the potential for what gadgetry could accomplish, where it will go next. I love guessing, and I love the news of advancement. I typically have two big sources that I check, sometimes having to sift through hear-say, but Dvice and Popsci are generally pretty informative on the cutting-edge.

I recently watched a documentary featuring Ray Kurzweil, a technology guru who tends to make accurate predictions about technological trends. It's called "Transcendent Man" and you can see it on Netflix streaming if it interests you.

It was interesting, hopeful, and also a bit far fetched. Kurzweil discusses the technology theory of singularity. Singularity, at least when referring to tech, is the rate of human technological advancement over time, which appears to be following a trend of exponential increase. This all seems rather unbelievable to people because it's scary, but this isn't conspiracy theory garbage, and I think older generations are actually more capable of seeing it than we are because we were actually born in the upswing. Think about it. Lets not talk about the time which humanity has been a presence on earth. It's a point of contention that isn't really necessary to prove the point. Let's just say that man has been around for a long time in ratio to one human life. This is our "x" value.

They have speculated that the first tool man created was actually probably from a woman, a mother, to be precise. She took an animal skin, wrapped it up, and turned it into a pack to carry her child across the planes. That is technology. It's our ability to manipulate our surroundings to suit our needs. It's what sets us apart from most animals. This is our "y" value.

So when you look at the timeline over our advancement and you observe how long we were in the stone age before we hit the bronze, iron, steel, alloy ages, and all that occurred therein, and you come to the 19th century, you see that the quality of life was much the same, the limitations of travel, agriculture, life expectancy, all the same over thousands of years. Suddenly we learn to manipulate electricity, suddenly we develop combustible engines.

Basically, in under 100 years we go from wagons and the pony express to nuclear power, landing on the moon, and the internet. This is the exponential upswing, the singularity, that Kurzweil has observed and made future predictions on. We have surpassed our own expectations even in my lifetime as to what we might accomplish.

What appears to be on the horizon? A longer lifespan as we meld our bodies with developed mechanics. Think that's a crazy idea? Tuff. It's already been done. Just this year we have developed a method to apply reprogrammed DNA to tumors in rats, and in all cases the cancer was nullified. A man also had his heart replaces with a completely mechanical pump instead of a fleshly heart. Turns out, the only reason our heart beats is for the sake of the heart. The other organs, including the brain, don't really care AND blood pressure is more easily maintained. Also recently, a man attached a computer system to his own nervous system. He then VPN'd into a prosthetic limb on the other side of the country and controlled it with his thoughts. His brain also received feedback from the sensations picked up from that device. Pretty incredible.

So it's not really smart to say, unless absolutely certain, that technology can't go to certain heights, because again, no one saw the smartphone coming. No one saw the internet. Quantum processors? What's that? Exactly.

My only beef with the theory of singularity, that technology will increase faster than we are capable of learning, is this... It doesn't take into consideration how industry works. There is an opposing force on advancement. Manufacturing, shipping, business transaction, communication, sales, etc. We can only move as fast as we can. I think we will continue to advance, probably even at a faster pace than we already are, but I agree with Wired Magazine when they say that Kurzweil might have a few personal investments involved in his latest prediction of singularity, immortality, and the like. The right pieces of the puzzle just don't exist yet.

Enough to Realize

2011-06-27T18:05:00.000-05:00

I actually didn't get super stressed out today, even though I had complete right to. I don't know why all of those emotions didn't harbor themselves in my chest like they usually do, but they didn't. That's not to say that everything at work went swimmingly, because they didn't, but it's enough for me to realize that I'm going to read this journal entry again in a few years and I'm not going to see it as the marking point for my career demise, but a point in which I learned to carry myself with better business posture. Believe it or not, this situation is giving me exactly what I wanted out of it. It just feels a little worse sometimes than I imagined it would.

All in Good Time

2011-06-26T13:52:00.000-05:00

There was a stage of life where I felt really intrigued by the concept of nesting, but that desire has subsided, oddly enough, with age. I figure I'll have the rest of my life to nest. Right now I should enjoy having roommates and cheap rent. I guess I do have some nice things though. I have a big TV, a surround sound system, pretty much every element of a solid bachelor pad, crudely thrown together. This is what I want for now.

Some day I probably will want a house, but the thought of more debt stacked on my shoulders just doesn't feel good to me, not to mention at my current salary, a mortgage would throw me back to those days where I was scrappily living paycheck to paycheck. I also can't bring myself to the idea of being enslaved to any house less than the perfect house I have in my mind, and that house just so happens to cost about $300k here in greater Nashville. To put things in perspective, houses like that, built in a decent area, are smaller than my parents' house which, as I hear, cost them about $50k only 30 years back. Damn inflation.

But I sometimes meditate on the college years where I was making less than $8k a year, and was surviving off of ramen noodles, eggs, and an occasional treat of frozen pizza. I don't want to go back there at all, but it showed me that I could survive in the lowest conditions. Perhaps it even lowered my standards somewhat. Right now we're three guys to a two-guy house, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. All I care about is good chemistry, which we have, and the ability to find quiet if I need it, which is also accessible.

Yep. Things are good. This is a good year for me. I've got just enough stress to keep forward motion, but I'm able to enjoy the now. Even being able to say that is an improvement for me.

Therapy

2011-06-22T00:01:00.000-05:00

As an ENFP I really have to learn to STOP looking around waiting to get permission to do something, and just DO SOMETHING.

I've been actively pursuing my own method of PTSD therapy lately by reintroducing myself to my motorcycle. I can remember why I liked it so much. Such a wonderful feelings of freedom, cool air washing over the skin, and the sensation of flight all come intermittently between sharp memories of fear. Much like the beginning of a daydream, I'll be riding along and suddenly imagination presents me with the perception of my back tire sliding out from under the bike. Time slows down, not increasing my ability to react, but just my ability to experience every moment of the fall.

I can see a still frame of the aggregate of the road before I hit. Though my eyes close just before impact, my vision is filled with a flash of electric white, accompanied with a ringing in my ears from the initial jolt. I can feel every grain of grit on my skin, through my cloths. The grating sound of metal scrapes across the road, my body twisting and turning until both the bike and I stop. I can almost feel the chemicals release in my brain, the sudden chilling burst of adrenaline shooting into my blood that masks the pain of torn skin and broken bones, but also brings with it a nauseated sensation and a cloudiness of mind. That moment could have lasted minutes or hours just the same.

This is one of those times where I don't really care much for advice or encouragement over what to do with these emotions. I just want to sort them out in my own time and do with them what I will.

Here's another interesting fact. When I have a beer and a coffee in quick succession, I get crabby. I'm so irritable and jumpy over sounds and movements right now. Bad decision on my part though, I know.

As soon as this job at the Frist House ends, I'll get a vacation that I desperately need. I'm trying with every fiber of my being to learn how to let the job be a job and not the determining factor of my happiness, but as a perfectionist that is easier said than done, and it's really hard to say. I want to feel confident but it always seems out of my reach because I'm always landing on a detail that is out of line. This or that needs to be corrected, improved upon. I never see my successes, just my shortcomings. I see a success when the job is done and appreciated.

In the span of life, this is all just a brief moment. When I'm older I will realize that more. I hope experience yields me the ability to not have to be so attached to each moment, but to allow the sum of experience to set the definition of quality.

Life Convergence

2011-06-12T23:53:00.000-05:00

When I don't write as much, it's because I don't know what to say. I might not know what to say because I'm not as lonely as I used to be. Bethany listens and responds, which is better than the internet, which only listens.

There is still an essence in writing that is important to maintain for one's clarity. It's the only real preservative that I have. Pictures speak a thousand words, but words say more than we might give them credit for, comments that a picture might leave out.

But I've fallen a bit rusty for one reason or ten others. I usually think of very impacting ideas that I wish to explore and communicate all through the day, but by the time I get off work, I feel that my deeper mind has been robbed by the requirements of the day.

Note that I still haven't quite mastered stress management, and by "haven't quite mastered" I actually mean to say "haven't really begun to master".

Every plateau of life brings with it its own unique set of problems. As a young adult, I haven't quite managed to grapple the complexities of the newest forms of adversity. I am daily reminded of my place in this world, and daily I am filled with discontent at the idea of staying in that place.

I want to find my people inside my career. I want to find things to do that excite my joy receptors. I want to be of clear enough mind to realize that I should cherish this present moment, that I have health and youth and not to waste that with frugality and over-planning.

But I also want a secure future. There is so much I want out of life that I fear I may never have. There just isn't enough time. Maybe if I were to be a bit more thrifty, I could establish a life which could limit the constriction brought about by the rule which states that I am only one person in a fixed place in time.

I want to make people proud of me, sure. But I also want to make myself proud of me, which is much harder to do. See, I spend the most time with my inner thoughts. I know exactly how harsh of a critic I can be. I could go and get my masters from some prestigious school, pull in a few hundred k a year, live a life devoted to the game, and perhaps give people a stronger sense of satisfaction in brining my name up in conversations of who-knows-who. That's not me though. That's not what would make me proud of myself. Honestly, I don't know what would just yet.

I do know that, especially after having researched starting a business, I want to be able to set up a secure enough life to where if my kids or grandkids wanted to start a business, I could co-sign for them and not have to stress about the possibility of them defaulting. I want to have money to do things like throw parties for my friends and legitimately tell them "Don't worry about it! Just come!"

Mostly though, in any and all of these cases, I don't want to lose myself in the means.

New Plots Schemes

2011-06-05T17:12:00.000-05:00

I feel like I'm ready to take risk and do something potentially substantial with my time and efforts. I know I'm the king of crazy schemes that never develop into anything, and we'll see if this is one of those times or not, but I've got friends who are interested as well. It might happen.

At the very least, I've begun doing the research. I've got the mind for it. The challenges all seem fun to me, but I need to spend some time learning the rules of the game. This has been a great resource for said information.

There is the obvious news; this gets complicated... quickly. We're working on developing our dream into a tangible plan. We're researching licensing, startup costs, location, target market. It's going to be a "Brick and Mortar" operation, so obviously startup cost is going to be higher, and so will the risk.

But it takes risk. Most people who have found success have had to face risk and fail repeatedly... so here we go, right?

We've all got a solid life-plan, we know our business model, now we just have to design a business proposal. "Just" write a business proposal... Riiiiiight. We're going to try to "bootstrap" it; a key word I learned today that means "pooling together your own resources to finance your business". We need to develop something that can sustain itself long enough to interest ideally an angel investor, or a bank, or maybe a venture capitalist...

Image or Health

2011-05-17T17:24:00.000-05:00

I've never been able to talk about my body image stuff. People get nasty with me when I mention my weight or my body fat percentages. I know I'm more lean than the average American, but I am who I am, I'm not you, and you're not me. If you have body image issues, they are yours. Mine are mine. But since this is a one way discussion, I'm going to talk about my issues. The internet has to listen.

I feel an ever growing need to exercise harder. I think the "ever growing" part of it is my stomach. The days of my youth are over and I am now going to have to work for my health. I think last year did me in. between the stresses of surgery, car accidents, and sitting on my ass 10 hours a day, I managed to put on 15 lbs. Let me break it down in math.

When I was a freshman in high school I weighed 125 lbs. It's bad when a guy could fit a dress size that would make most girls jealous. I wanted to work out so I could change that, so I did. I could bench press a wopping 85 lbs at the time. When I was a senior, I weighed 135 lbs and was able to bench press my body weight. Not bad. When I was a senior in college, I weighed 140 and was still able to bench press my body weight. Pretty good.

So in eight years I managed to put on 15 lbs. Part of that was adolescence. But in just one year, last year in fact, I managed to put on 10 lbs alone. I put on 5 lbs over three years after college, and 10 lbs last year. Grand total now? 155.

I wish I could say it was muscle, but it's not. I'm getting "old man" body now. Boo.

If I ever did have a body image issue, it was always how gangly I was. I hated seeing pictures of myself. But I did something about it. I took weight training all through high school and part of college, I disciplined myself. But to my dismay I found that I couldn't be the big bulky guy that my subconscious wished I could be. I could never play football. I had to accept my structure.

I eventually did. About the time I got to college, I learned that there's a type of guy for every type of girl, just so long as he is confident. He doesn't have to be bulky, though he might. He also doesn't have to trick you into thinking he's sensitive by playing the guitar (which, in retrospect, is probably the only reason I ever played the guitar). So I learned confidence over time. Some of that was given to me by disciplining myself in the gym, and some of it was given to me by just seeing things differently. I deserve to be here just as much as anyone else. I deserve to be loved well.

But body image isn't as big of a deal for me now, though I know I wouldn't have this extra jelly if I was more productive with my time. After all, I like working out. It soothes my brain. It's about health and preservation now. I am for the first time in life, starting to feel the effects of unhealthy choices. So I am starting to think about what I eat, because if I don't, I feel it. I'm in need of cardio, because I get out of breath walking up stairs and hills. Aikido won't solve all of these problems, so I need to consider taking time out of my week to perhaps jog, maybe do some pushups. I don't think I want to afford another gym membership that I inevitably cancel.

Life is good though. I had a great weekend, and this week hasn't been bad either. We've got a new project coming up at work. I'm excited to make more money, but the hours involved will be a bit tiring.

No Need for Proof

2011-05-04T23:29:00.000-05:00

This week has been a blur. I've felt moments when I've blinked that my mind simultaneously turned off with the light in my eyes. It's startling when that happens while driving. But somehow I've been making it through.

I've been giving a lot of thought recently to my view of myself as a man. I don't really think about it that much anymore except for instances like this, when I'm thinking about it from a purely topical perspective. I used to obsess about being manly as a teenager. I think I was afraid that because girls didn't notice me as much as I thought they should have, then that must have meant that I wasn't much of a man. I've never been very brawny, and I can't grow a beard.

I used to do challenging things for the sake of proving something to myself. Sometimes I would be all alone and I would take it upon myself to do something difficult, just to make sure the right mixture of blood and testosterone were flowing through my veins. As a kid, I was heavy into bikes. would go into the woods and create dirt ramps to jump off of. I remember one time I was trying to show off to some teenage kids down the street sitting on their porch. I rode down the hill as fast as I could, once with no hands, once while popping a wheelie, and the final time I attempted to do... well... something that would only make sense to someone with no grasp of physics what-so-ever. I ended up with a few bandages needless to say.

I did Taekwondo for several years. I was pretty competitive, and one year I brought home a 1st place national championship trophy for sparring. Got bored doing that when I found out that girls didn't think it was cool.

As I grew older, I was heavy into guitar and wanting to start a rock band. I was also a lifeguard, and not one of those sissy country club lifeguards, but a city pool guard. I ended up with 22 saves, a spinal injury, and a few death threats after five years of guarding that pool. I sometimes still have dreams about it. Those were good and bad days, often in the same day.

I did a little world travel. Went to Mexico on a trip once. Dug a 4'x4'x6' outhouse while I was there. I can taste the air when I think about it. We were so dirty. No showers for a week while working in that dusty Mexican desert.

Never went back to Mexico, but I did end up going to Guatemala several times to do relief work with my church. I got e-coli and came seemingly close to death one year. Never did well with dairy foods after that, though you wouldn't know it because I love dairy and I refuse to let it get the best of me. I enjoyed Guatemala though. We rode everywhere in the backs of pickup trucks, slept under the stars sometimes, did construction and medical work, and I had a spot on a hill where I would play music by myself while looking at the night sky. There was also that one time where we killed a scorpion with bug spray. My body just got creepy-crawly thinking about it. I HATE scorpions.

Later Guatemala trips turned to Ghana, West Africa trips. Went there twice. Their scorpions were bigger. On one of the trips, a buddy of mine and I went into a flooded river to search for a dead body of someone who evidently fell in while trying to wade across. We didn't find anyone, though all the villagers thought we were nuts. We weren't nuts, just ill informed that the river had crocodiles in it. That same night our bus got stuck in the jungle and we slept there. It was long night.

In high school, I didn't play sports. That wasn't for lack of trying. I did eventually end up placing states on the swim team, but who cares about swimming? That made it even more outrageous to all the jocks in school when I ended up dating the most attractive girl in my high school. That's not speculative. That's fact. Guys would ask me what she saw in me and I would just shrug and say something weird, as I was and am prone to do. Turned out, she and I had nothing in common, still don't, come to think of it.

College was a four-year summer camp. There was rough-housing, poor hygiene, late nights, and copious blatant nudity. I went camping a few times by myself. One was during an ice storm. Stupid more than manly, really. There's a certain amount of self-inflicted suffering that I can accept before I redefine the experience as "stupidity". The threshold is rather high, but it does exist.

After college I started working with my hands... I know. All that money for a degree, and I go and use my hands. Secret is, working with power tools pays more, and the job security is tight too. So I got used to working with all sorts of rough leathery characters. I don't feel threatened in that environment at all. I think that this is where I learned that the appropriate application of lumber, paper towels, and electrical tape, can save you on medical bills. I'm still proud of how I healed up my thumb injury. No stitches for this guy.

I've been in 2 pretty noticeable motorcycle accidents, one of which shattered my right hand. I think that put the fear of God in me alright. That rushed cold water in your blood, the pulsating sensation that you get when you're really banged up. I was searching my body for severe damage while passers by stopped to ask me if they needed to call an ambulance. I think I picked up a little case of PTSD from last year in general...

But all this I was thinking about on my way to the job site this morning. When I walk up that hill and put on my hard hat, no one sees that in me. No one sees any of those things. I don't even see them in myself half the time. I think all that adventure dulled my view of life in general. Traveling the world got less exotic. The experience got less emotional and more matter-of-fact. I don't think about proving myself as a man anymore because that's only something that boys do in retrospect. I do, however, wonder when the moment was that I finally stopped caring about proof. What finally tipped the scales?

Gosh. I Quit!

2011-05-02T00:34:00.000-05:00

I hereby denounce all affiliation I once had with Republican ideals and conservative thinking. Let me go on to say why, even though I hear all the guns in the crowd being loaded and cock. Fear. It's all fear. I can't see a single principle, save Pro Life, which rests on any platform other than maintaining power, no matter what the cost. Every conservative I've spoken to is afraid that the world is going to end, they're going to be put out on the streets, some other country is going to invade. Let's all stockpile weapons and water!

What's more? I'm tired of hiding! I'm tired of pretending that these ideals are even the SLIGHTEST bit in line with Christianity! It is TOTALLY opposite of anything Jesus lived for, and it is 100% what Jesus died for! That's not what life is about! It's also not about hating gays! I've actually thought we should protect THEM from the institution of marriage! It's not exactly the pure virgin we'd like to think of it as, is it? What's the divorce rate now? Let's take the plank out of that eye, before we pull the splinter out of that nice gay couple's commitment interests.

Where are the conservative peace makers? Why does that always seem to get left out? No. It got misplaced with "Blessed are the lawmakers" "Blessed are the judges" "Blessed are those who vanquish their enemies" "Blessed are the wealthy".

I was very disappointed in my country today when I saw the great joy we took over the death of our enemy. The America I once had a shred of pride in at least had the decency to handle victory with poise and grace. Am I sad that Osama is dead? Not entirely. I am sad that justice came to that measure. He was not to survive by our law. He was too dangerous, and his list of crimes, too great. But do we dance over it? I feel that such a response is a very old way of thinking that wouldn't last long in the wake of open eyes, an empathic mind, and some form of an education.

Come to think of it, I also don't hear to many references from the New Testament from Christians who side with most conservative issues. A good bit of that ammo comes from the old covenant, but that was before Christ died and changed the rules, yes? So yes, I'm a liberal. A Democrat? Maybe not. But a liberal, yes.

That may offend the rich, but at least it doesn't foot the poor with the bill.