Category: life

becoming

I often tell myself that I should write a book, but no sooner than I pursue the idea do I get stuck on what kind of book I would write, or what the book would be about. If I wrote a fiction book within my current trend, it would be laden with metaphor, held down by some message I wished to share through the voice of my characters. If I wrote something non-fiction, it would be abstract, too disconnected from reality, yet likely uneducated in its performance and unaware of existing material of its kind.

Thus, my laziness would no doubt propel me towards fiction. Fiction is a very enabling genre. It has a readership that may or may not be looking for what is being offered, and may go through the entire story unaware of what’s really being said, but core ideas live on in the form of the characters and plot. Vocabulary and etymology need not be recalled to retain the truth that is being conveyed. Then again, thinking like this makes me feel as though I’m speaking only to be heard, for the love of the sound of my own voice.

Which is the problem with a lot of my current writing. Many of these blog posts are fueled simply by the fact that I like the way they sound, and I can’t really determine if they hold water until they sit in public space for a while. I don’t like quite a lot of what I write, but that disdain generally comes after the fact, and I generally press the submit button with a somewhat satisfied, occasionally smug feeling of accomplishment. Over time, I’ve learned a lot about what I don’t like and what’s worth saying, even without the sparse commentary that comes by here anymore. Blogging, however, doesn’t push me to finish or perfect anything. A post will almost always remain untouched once it’s been up for a day. It will rarely ever be added on to, slimmed down, or altered, so as to preserve its purity (or lack thereof). The power of blogging is in its chronology, really. A post sits at a place in time, starting out new and becoming stale very rapidly. Books, on the other hand, are meant to be timeless. Which is why the thought of writing one is so appealing.

There is great irony, however, in my impatience. I can barely sit down and read more than twenty pages at a time. I read some Flannery O’Conner earlier, and I keep looking at The Brothers Karamazov with guilt, as well as a collection of Greek and Roman literature. With a dead computer, I have plenty of time to tackle all of these, but my patience is the limiting factor.

ascendence

Greatness is a thing I have craved for as long as I can recall. I remember the first video game character I saw, and immediately thought “I wish I were like him”. I remember the first TV character I saw, and immediately thought “I want to be like him”. I remember the first man I met that I thought “I would give anything to be like him”. As a child, it was easy to believe in my own potential.

There has been a continuing correlation between my age and my growing disillusionment with my ideal. As time rolls on, the more estranged I feel from that possibility, yet the greater I feel the need to become that elusive man that wanders the halls of my memory, and my imagination.

I have lost him.

I must find him, and become him, before I myself am lost.

salvation

Does purpose come from meaning?

Or does meaning come from purpose?

Meaning: the personal force that encompasses that which we love and hate. A meaningful event is such because it holds power to influence that which we care about. Meaning is an attribute of external objects.

Purpose: the intended direction of personal action. The driving force behind everything we do. Purpose is an attribute of internal choices.

My gut wants to say that the reality could be both – but I am having trouble reconciling the problems. I do, however, see clearly the conundrum of my faith, in this context.

God gives me purpose, but not meaning. The world gives me meaning, but not purpose.

I love dearly that purpose that God has shown me, but I fail to see how it is worthy with how meaningless it feels so far. The world, likewise, is showing me what it is to be human, what it means to be this incredible structure that I am – but the world has yet to show me anything beyond self-destruction in its ways, defeating the very purpose of life.

Watching Iron Man made me think a bit about what modern guys idealize. Tony Stark achieved his lifestyle through intellectual mastery – with his mental faculties, he obtained fame, fortune, and sex, the pinnacle of what the world considers valuable goals. But these forces are so fleeting – so ultimately meaningless. They are their own meaning. Pleasure for the sake of pleasure.

Which brings me to question the power of purpose in faith. Is it all just purpose for the sake of purpose, just as the world is meaning for the sake of meaning?

I crave, I crave, I crave!

absolutely not

“Yeah, I was at a study center for philosophy, basically.”
“Philosophy? I love philosophy. Just the other day, a couple guys were talking about string theory – man, that stuff is fascinating, all those dimensions and stuff? Really intrigues me.”

Sometimes I get the feeling that people just don’t want to know any more than they already do.

meta

Tis time for some explanations, I do think.

I have struggled, since my return, with the reality I experienced in Europe. It was a reality like none I’ve ever known before, and it has crushed my soul to think that I cannot experience that reality here, at home. It was the nearest to perfection that I’ve witnessed, the closest to joy, the kind of life that I have longed for since I ever began longing. It is an immense feeling to know that there are answers for my desires, but the weight of that feeling is matched only by the distance of that answer in my own reality.

L’Abri (French for ‘shelter’) was a place of origins which I did not (and do not) find desirable. Founded during the heights of modernism by a Christian presuppositionalist apologetic about fifty years ago, it started as a place for people to come and challenge the intellectual and moral integrity of Christianity. While elements of that remain, it is now more the response to postmodernism, a community which lives as the response to modern pluralism, moral relativism, neo-fundamentalism, and the many isms that permeate the world’s breadth and depth of idealogies and creeds.

L’Abri is first, and foremost, a community. Run by a set of workers living in an ancient manor house, students come from around the world (Brazil, South Korea, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, and more) to live within this community. The workers, too, were quite diverse – England, Canada, South Africa, Sweden, and Hungary were represented. Likewise, every aspect of the political spectrum was present, as well as in the theological and dogmatic spheres. The only real commonality lay in everyone’s desire to find answers to the hardest questions they could think up.

Six days of the week, lunch was held with one of the workers, either in their own homes or somewhere about the manor. At these lunches, one discussion was maintained, sparked by a question of one person’s desire. Questions such as:

How could a good God allow any evil into his creation?
How could a good God create a place like hell, and threaten to send so much of his creation there?
How is it possible to believe in an invisible, untouchable entity, let alone have a relationship with him?
What is Beauty?
What is the difference between Truth and fact?
What does love have to do with sex?
Why are stories of demons so much more common in (modern) Eastern culture, but so devoid in the West?

The discussions that ensued were almost universally impassioned, and it was up to the workers to ensure that the arguments actually went somewhere. It didn’t stop at lunch, though; discussion would start while a few people were in the library, and students that had arrived to L’Abri but five minutes earlier would jump right in without anyone blinking an eye. At tea breaks, the discussions kept going. They went all the way to the pub, and back. It was a place of intense intellectual and moral challenge.

The social aspect was equally incredible. I can’t describe how valued I felt, even as the youngest person there. The relationships I made there were shockingly raw. People would enter in and bare their souls as if it were as natural as a handshake. Love, dare I say, reigned supreme. Yet, that did not prevent honesty or criticism – few thoughts went unchallenged. That complete security and intense challenge went hand in hand, almost.

Having left, I am lost as to what to do in a reality that does not match this.

This is, I think, why one worker implored me to come back. He knew I needed more time.

Which is why I’m going back!

Entitlement

Young IT employees pose a challenge to many managers who say the Millennial generation holds employers up to unrealistic expectations and makes unreasonable demands for their services.

daftShadow>:
You may have little patience for people who demand more than they are worth; but this generation has absolutely no patience for companies unwilling to engage them at market value.

It’s simple economics. If a key employee thinks that he is worth $X salary, you evaluate whether or not he’s worth it. If he is, you pay it. If not worth it, you don’t. That’s it. These people are not quitting to go work at McDonalds, they are finding other work that pays them what they want.

The ‘retention’ problem is not because this generation wants the kitchen sink; it’s because these companies don’t have any money to buy kitchens.

Hao Wu:
How often do we here, “If you don’t like your job – QUIT already!”

So we do just that, and the six and seven-figure salaries in management still feel violated.

I say f- them. Either pay more, or quit complaining about our right to leave.

cayenne8:
I dunno…I have to say “Welcome to the real world”.

We’ve done our young people a disservice the past few decades….in schools and society, we’ve taken away anything that might hurt little Timmy’s self esteem…..everyone gets an award for ‘trying’, and everyone is taught they are all equal and will be treated that way.

Parents who work too much….have tried making up for it…by giving their kids what they want. It leads to people coming out of this sheltered environment, and being shocked that they don’t walk right into a job making the $$ their parents did….not instantly being a manager…and [shudder] having to work their way up from the bottom.

I’ll admit…my generation (early X) had a great deal of this too…but, not quite as bad as it seems the youth coming into the workforce now have.

I’m not saying it is all of them…but, this attitude does seem to be rising. Unless you can start your own business….you’re gonna have to learn that there is the golden rule…whoever has the gold, makes the rules. If you wanna work and make it…well, you’re gonna have to sacrifice and work hard for awhile, pay your dues as they used to say.

raehl:
30-50 years ago, if you went to college, chances are your parents were blue collar people who worked their asses off to save enough money to give you that opportunity, and you probably had to work your ass off to get more money and scholarships to make it. Yeah, there were a few kids of rich parents, but they were the minority.

Now we have a LOT more people in middle-class office jobs. They don’t have to pull double-shifts to get their kids into college. And their kids don’t have to work their asses off for it – they can just get financial aid and student loans, WITHOUT having to join the army for 6 years. Yeah, there are still kids out there who work their asses off to get into and through school, but they’re in the minority.

30 years ago most kids who graduated college were thankful they didn’t have grease under their fingernails when they came home from work like their parents did. Nowadays, more of the kids who graduate college are from families who never had to worry about anything. If your parents always had enough money, why wouldn’t you?

DoofusOfDeath:
“I say f- them. Either pay more, or quit complaining about our right to leave.”

There’s more to it than that. Someone just out of college may say, regarding his first 2-3 jobs, “This sucks! I’m not getting the {respect | money | office | projects} I deserve! F*** this. Bye.” But that person mistakenly thinks that he’s getting a worse-than-standard deal. So out of ignorance, he leaves a perfectly good job, chasing the mythical perfect job.

It’s that pointless churn that I think employers might reasonably be frustrated by. (Of course, those employees might find that they can do less work and get paid more by working in marketing. In that case, the employers are themselves getting a bitter dose of reality.)

aussersstene:
They’ve been promised the world by well-meaning educators, parents, and public figures for most of their youthful lives.

College is your ticket out of the ghetto, means a higher income, better work conditions, more freedom, more control over your career, more respect, blah, blah, blah. It’s true in a way, but the way a university education is described is often as the opposite of blue-collar work. That is to say that many kids are told (I know I was, all the way up through the end of undergrad) that I was going to college to avoid certain things:

– Being poor
– Having to get paid for what I “do” rather than what I “think”
– Being stuck in a “dead-end job”
– Having to “flip burgers,” “answer phones,” “make copies,” or other “menial labor” work
– Low pay (this is a biggy, and you hear it over and over and over)

Well… all of these things are exactly what you confront when you finish your bachelor’s degree. I know it was a tremendous shock to me after having been goaded on for years to get good grades in high school, then to go to college, then to hang in there—goaded using all of these reasons for sticking with it—only to find out that college doesn’t provide you with wealth, the ability to get paid for what you think, a way to avoid dead-end jobs, having to start at the absolute entry level, or getting paid nothing for all of the above… The only way up the career ladder is to climb it, from the bottom.

It’s the “all kids must go to college” culture that we have—we even direct kids away from the things they’re interested in in many cases using these kinds of arguments (which are really veiled threats in a way of what consequences await them if they don’t go to college) and then they graduate expecting exactly the benefits that have been used as selling points for all these years.

I can completely empathize. It took me a good five years to come to terms with the fact that I’d essentially been had and would now need to choose between going out and starting up the career ladder as if I’d just graduated high school with essentially no advantage, or going to grad school on the other hand (i.e. school for many more years and at great expense) to gain at least some measurable advantage for myself with all the hard work I’d done.

I chose the latter, but I often reflect on the fact that I could easily have chosen the former as well… there was certainly a point in my life where it could have gone either way.

Skreems:
In a way, what was promised probably used to be true, but not because college was such a great training ground. If only the relatively gifted went to college, say, 50 years ago, then they would probably emerge to find a creative career in a respected field waiting for them. Now that any monkey with middle class parents can bum their way through, the group of college graduates is no longer self selecting for those who are talented enough to secure the things they’ve been promised.

Now, I don’t think this contradicts your point, but it may explain it. I think people may have mistaken the self selection in the last generation for some magical property endowed by the act of going to college. But I will contradict you enough to say that SOME new college graduates do find that those expectations are met. If you’re at the top of your class, intelligent, and actually good at what you do, you’re never not wanted. It may take a bit of legwork to find someone who’s willing to pay for that, but they’re always out there, because a lot of people are really really bad at what they do.

pete_classic:
“If young people were going to develop responsibility, they would need to have a connection to what they’re responsible for, which means giving them real power in the world, which isn’t happening.”

This statement captures the problem beautifully. The world will be yours one day, want it or not. And if you’re a bunch of checked-out WOW playing crybabies it isn’t going to be much of a world. Nobody gives anybody anything worth having in this life. You get it by earning it. And if you don’t give a shit now, you certainly aren’t going to give a shit when the next generation is crying that you don’t do enough for them.

I advise you to get your ass off your shoulders and act responsible first. You’ll become elite within your generation.

-Peter

vorpal^
I worked for a company that was bought out a few years back. The new CEO came to visit us to “pep talk” us, telling us that we were currently number two in the marketplace and that we wouldn’t settle for number two: we had to be number one.

No one was enthusiastic in the slightest, and it wasn’t because we were in a new company. No, we weren’t pepped by his speech because it was clear to us that there was no advantage to us other than perhaps some prestige to being number one. All we would be doing is earning him and the stockholders more money.

We’re told that we have to earn our place in society, but from many of our perspectives, there really isn’t anything *worth* earning. What is the very best that most of us can hope for? A middle class position in an ever poverty-increasing society due to the tremendous shift of wealth towards a small number of businessmen? A marriage where we both work long hours in order to fatten a tiny number of people’s pockets, coming home so exhausted that we’re barely able to tend to the children’s needs and much less to each other’s, so we compensate ourselves by the accumulation of possessions? Some world we’ve been offered. I’m not sure that it will be worse off if we’re a bunch of WOW playing crybaby slackers.

I’m frustrated that despite all of human innovation and technological advancements, I have to kowtow to an alarm clock that rings at 6:30 AM. Where are the promises that technology was supposed to reduce working hours and make our lives more pleasant? No, we’re forced to work harder to compete with other organizations who also suffer the same fate as our own. I think many of us have realized just how much society *has* lied to us, about college, technology, etc. and we’ve grown apathetic and tired of the empty promises. I’d rather be a relatively poor slacker with time to myself to do what I want and to enjoy my family than a successful developer whose time is consumed with largely meaningless pursuits and whose life is filled with possessions.

iendedi:
“We don’t feel that we should be expected to “earn” the right to be part of the important goings on in our culture.”

It should be handed to you? Some sort of divine right?

“We feel that, even if we do “earn” what rights are available, we will still be pawns in someone elses game, and we have no more love or respect for their game than they have for us, so we don’t bother.”

We older people feel like that too. Very few people throughout history have been able to evade that feeling.

“We consume these “opiates” because we hate the real world we live in, we see no hope of changing it, and we have given up and fled to imaginary land. In our zoned out state, we do only what we must to exist, because we are not really here.”

And the inevitable result of your pathological lethargy will be the fading of America as a country of importance. Let us hope you are not all like that.

“Now, some of us haven’t given up. But we still don’t take jobs for employers, we become self-employeed.”
This isn’t different than any generation that came before you.

“None of us are interested in taking these “entry level jobs” in the hopes that we might be blessed with something better some day. We know that someday will not come.”

Well, most people recognize that gaining experience makes you more valuable and more capable of starting your own business. There is no shortcut when it comes to experience. By definition, you must experience something to become experienced at it. GTA won’t help you. There are no video games to put real-world business experience, real world technology experience or, …, well, …, real world experience into your brain.

“If young people were going to develop responsibility, they would need to have a connection to what they’re responsible for, which means giving them real power in the world, which isn’t happening.

If young people do develop a sense of responsibility, they are still not going to take jobs. They are going to take over.”

It is every young generation’s manifest destiny to take over from the older generations, eventually. But there are rites of passage. Those older guys know more than you do. They are tougher, meaner, smarter, more experienced, better talkers, better programmers, better negotiators, better strategists, etc.., than their younger colleagues. They are like this because they have been at it a lot longer. You will take over as they retire off and/or as you become experienced enough to outsmart and outcompete them. Again, there are no shortcuts.

So stop being a spoiled brat and go do the grunt work. You aren’t yet up to the task of the higher profile stuff. You will know when you are up to the task, because you will take over. Until then, you are just flapping your lips. And no, you aren’t worth the same amount of money as someone that has been doing the job for 20 years. In all likelihood, if you disappeared, they would hardly notice – as a green kid, the company is investing in you – you likely add very little value, so you are being payed more than they are able to extract in value from your labor. You are likely being trained, groomed and given experience in the hopes that your value will eventually increase past the point where their investment is, making you a profitable employee to have on board. If the 20 year veteran disappeared, the lights wouldn’t turn on, the database would stop working, nobody would be able to get a new release out, it would start raining blood, cats and dogs would be living together and the company would go into crisis mood. But you wouldn’t know about that, because you haven’t experienced it…

Sprint

I will start this off simple by revealing the not-so-surprising fact that I do not like Optimal Purchase, and I do not find my job to be filled with any measure of joy. While it’s good to work, and the money will eventually make it worth my while (since most of this will be going towards my Europe experience), it does nothing more than serve its purpose. Yet what floors me is that so many of my co-workers are positively thrilled to accept it at that. They have absolutely no true vision for their future.

Not every person is so deluded or thrilled, and in fact, the majority of them treat it for exactly what it is: a job, with a paycheck, and some benefits. Yet they, too, have no desire to move beyond their current position, and seek nothing more than the next step up in pay-grade so they can make the down-payment on that new (insert object of desire) coming out next month. Where the hell is their vision? What happened to bring people to such a level of mediocrity?

People have, from the beginning of their societal integration, been trained to separate their identity from work. What you do and how you do it is not a reflection upon your true self. (long side note: it’s for this reason that I dislike jobs that require you to hide jewelry or tattoos, to wear company-branded polo shirts, to mask self-expression for the sake of uniformity and organization) Work, school, these are just necessary hoops to jump that we can seek meaning in the rest of our lives, via marriage/family/kids, or through houses/cars/boats, or by climbing the social/political ladder. Life is not viewed as a whole, but as a series of experiences that must be suffered or enjoyed. To reach the moments of joy, you have to wade through a mire of despair – and to handle this, people have broken it down to a daily cycle, in doses that are deemed safe for general consumption.

I cannot deny that some parts of life just plain suck, but what the fuck – when it was determined that life sucks and that there’s nothing we can do about it, that was based on the presence of elements like death, sickness, the cruel nature of humanity. Those are the basics, and I don’t think those will be going away at any point in the nearby future, even with epic technological innovation. Yet, people seem content to live in a never-ending pattern just so they can try to grasp at trails of true happiness, hoping that maybe this time they’ll be content and that all of their hard work will have payed off.

I think this view of life is what pushes people into many of today’s most common ailments – loneliness and depression. It is not surprising that a man that hates his job so fiercely would eagerly desire the devoted company of another woman – yet how attractive is a man that hates half of his life? Depression, likewise, is a natural progression from such a hopeless and repetitive functionality as tossing yourself into joyless activities. People look to sex and drugs to solve these problems, but the solutions are not so skin-deep.

I often think about the classic experiment Rat Park, when considering what makes people truly happy. For those that have not heard of it, professor Alexander was studying the nature of drug addiction. He found that rats placed in healthy environments – environments that enabled appropriate amounts of exercise, social interaction, and entertainment – would not choose the morphine-laced water. The rats placed in cold, dark isolation, however, would always choose the morphine-laced water. When these rats were brought to the aforementioned “Rat Park”, they would, with time, stop taking the morphine-laced water, and would not drink it again, no matter what incentives the researchers provided.

My point is that happiness is holistic. We look to patchwork solutions when, in reality, there’s much more to look at. What’s required is a complete re-evaluation of our lives and what we deem most valuable and worthy of our time. The difference between the rats, and us, is that we are capable of crafting our environments as we deem fit (or so I believe). We have control over how we live – yet most people are perfectly content not to take advantage of that control, to sit by and let life happen to them.

My cynicism is hardcore, but I don’t think my observations are inaccurate. I’m not filled with angst, or even despair; I simply believe that there’s a hell of a lot of people that are capable of so much more than what they are, but they don’t even know it. Ignorance is not bliss, in this case.

True

I’ll miss the restaurant job.

“Hey, Jeff – do you remember that one girl that was working here probably…two months ago? Can’t remember her name, she was hosting and moved up to serving…”
“Alex. Alex, the really hot one, with black hair? And big breasts? That I was living with? And fucking? Constantly? Yeah, I remember her.”
“…”
“What? Is that who you were thinking of?”
“No.”

Voyeurism

One thing that I’m always left frustrated with about this blog is how, when it gears up into its more popular stages, people have a tendency to treat it like some back-door news feed. When someone mentions that they read it on my blog and didn’t hear it straight from me, there’s usually some level of intended guilt trip involved. It’s why I originally moved it, three months after its inception. Admittedly, that was just a lesson in understanding that the internet is not a private place and that blogs are not the place to bitch about your parents. But I don’t think the situation here is quite the same. I’ll get to that, though.

The point of this blog was, at one point, to make it easy for people that were interested in my life to keep up with it. It also served primarily as a hub for social connection between all of my friends, which is why it was once as active as it was, as it made it really easy to bring a lot of different people into one place. Especially when I was on my controversial topic kick, there was a lot of fun to be had in the commentary. I still get a warm feeling in my heart knowing that a forty-year old woman came trotting in with here three associate’s degrees (or sommat) to try and trump us. Those were good times.

While I’m happy to see the blog become a point of interest for lots of people again, it needs to be clear what exactly this is for. The blog isn’t where I come to talk about my day and provide regular updates about where I’m going and what I’m doing. I write about whatever interests me, and that has little to no correlation with the daily drama that life tends to engender, but is merely inspired and motivated by such. When I do invoke the details of day-to-day life, I do so in the hope that it makes my point clearer, not because I like to keep everybody on the same page of updates on my life.

There is no level of privilege to the information I share. Nobody deserves to hear or not hear anything I’ve said, it’s a freaking blog. As such, I find myself a little violated when I’m subtly berated for sharing any important information through this medium, in an attempt to make a philosophical point more clear while simultaneously clearing up some misconceptions about my plans. There’s also the simple fact that saying it here means I generally have to do it ten or fifteen times less than I would otherwise.

This is a personal blog, and I write with the intention of directing it towards you, my audience, and not any other. It’s not impersonal to learn about me through whatever I write here, because it’s exactly the same as what I would have told you in an email or in a conversation or over IM, but perhaps even more clear and precise due to the luxuries of time and proofreading. Hey, you’ve even got a means of public and private response. I find little weight in the idea that I’m required to share all personal information (what little of it I do share here) through seemingly private means.

On a practical level, I just hate it when the contents of my blog come up in serious conversation. This isn’t a news article or an encyclopedia. It’s a series of thoughts on life, not the de-facto place to know Tim and all that Tim’s about. I’m not that easily unraveled. As such, you, my faithful readers, would do well to understand that this is the most controlled medium in existence (or close, anyways). I’m letting you read exactly what I want you to read, and that too much inference is unhealthy. I also expect some kind of communicative integrity. I don’t like it when what I write here is transmitted to others without perfect clarity. It’s the nature of communication for accuracy to degrade as it falls from the source, but come on, it’s on the freaking internet, available for anyone to read. I don’t need to deal with unnecessary miscommunication crap. Ultimately, I just want people to understand that the blog is for my enjoyment, not as an obligation to anyone else.

With that, I’m headed back to sleep.

Awkward

So I’m at a bar, discussing business with my brother, when an Indian man and an Asian man walk in with a rather awkward gait. They sit at the bar, and the Indian man proceeds to ask the bartender what she thinks the definition of a sociopath is, after ordering a Sprite, and his companion a shitty American beer. She says she doesn’t know, and an awkward discussion between four others at the bar proceeds before I supply the actual definition, which upon doing, the Indian man gives me a very wide-eyed stare. I feign interest in the TV, but he keeps staring.

He then asks me if I’d be interested in a box of unopened condoms.

I turn from the TV and give him the blankest stare I can, trying to hide the growing fear that wells up inside my bowels. He explains that he’s moving out and thinks it would be awkward to take them on the airplane with him. As politely as I can, I decline his generous offer, to which he responds with confusion, and a weak, fumbling explanation that he wasn’t serious. An awkward silence ensues, and I turn to my brother for a moment, who’s immersed in a discussion about meetings, but the Indian guy is still staring at me. I dig through the local bowl of Chex mix to find the remaining pretzels, and upon finding one, he asks me again.

“So, seriously, do you want the condoms? It’s unopened, man.”

This whole time his Asian comrade has been giving a stoney glare in front of him at nothing in particular, previously interrupted only by very slow sips at his beer. He now turns to this Indian man and blinks, twice. The Indian guy shifts uncomfortably on his stool and shrugs his shoulders, taking consolation in his tall glass of Sprite which he seems to find bravado in nursing. I attempt to find more pretzels in the bowl of Chex mix.

HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AWKWARD

Terrorize

A lot of people ask me why I’m holding off on sex until I’m married.

The first, most common assumption that many make is that I believe sex, especially sex outside marriage, is an affront to God. I’m a Christian, and it would be a fairly rational leap of logic if you didn’t know better to conclude a lot of things about my beliefs. I’m not whatever you might assume, I’m Tim, and I have a pair of mostly functional eyes that I use to make observations for myself, and a supposedly working brain that I use to process those observations.

As such, I don’t buy the bullshit that God put one wo/man out there for you somewhere and that you’re going to make them very sad if you give your virginity to anybody else. I don’t buy the bullshit that your virginity has a super magical attachment to it, and that we’re forsaking God by forsaking that attachment. I don’t buy the bullshit that sex is something to ever feel uncomfortable with, ashamed about, or afraid of. I do believe that sex is special. I think everything about our sexuality is special, and that the fact that we have so many ways to express our sexuality is a beautiful and awesome thing. Thusly, I think our sexuality is something to be taken seriously, and I think that means more than just attaching a time and place to certain portions of our sexuality. I believe that means maintaining a healthy sexuality, just as we should keep a fit body, an active mind, and well-balanced emotions. As with every other aspect of our being, this requires discipline, knowledge, and willpower. We’ve been given a body, and we’re supposed to take care of it and make good use of it.

I came to the conclusion that I should examine what I want, before I could ever decide how to get there. We do the same thing with our bodies when we exercise, the same thing with our minds when we learn, and this is just the same thing. So, I started simple.

* I do want to have sex. No shit.
* I do want sex to be awesome. Another no-brainer.
* I do want sex to be special. It starts to get complicated. What could happen to make sex less special, for [i][u]me[/u][/i] (not you)?

* I don’t want sex to be a means to an end – it should be an expression of love, and shouldn’t be exploited for any other means.
* I don’t want sex to be an end – my goal should be knowing and enjoying who she is, not knowing and enjoying her vagina. The same should apply for her. I want her to want more than sex.
* I don’t want sex to be a necessity – I don’t want my life or my image to revolve around whether I’m having sex or not.

Ensuring all of this is no small task. Realistically, how can I have sex with someone that I’m not sure I’ll be with for the rest of my life, and guarantee that I’ll be living up to all of these standards? For me, I don’t think that’s possible. I can’t say the same is true for anybody else – no one is exactly like another. These are hopes and desires that not every person shares. Some people really just don’t care, and that’s their right. Let them experience sex however they want – this is how I want to experience sex.

Ultimately, I don’t want sex to come before a relationship in my priorities. I feel like the best way to know that I’m focused on being there emotionally is by not giving myself the chance to lose focus on the part of the relationship that has to last, no matter what. Does that really mean I need to wait until I’m married? Not necessarily, but the only reason I would let the boundary back any closer would be to satisfy my own lust. I’m not going to sacrifice anything for short-term pleasure, even if it’s a pleasure as awesome as sex. And believe me, I’ve had plenty of people tell me how awesome sex is. Ignorance is not bliss, in this regard.

Am I setting myself up for failure by trying to resist a force as powerful as my own raging sexuality? Who knows. I know I’m not perfect, and I sure as hell don’t plan on getting caught off-guard. But just as surely, I’ll do everything I can to follow through with my plans.

Dramatization of Romance

The past few days have kept an intense theme, for me. I have a giant post half-written about why I’m staying abstinent until I’m married, sparked by some forum discussions. I’ve had half a dozen conversations with my dad, both of my brothers, and two friends of my brothers, all about relationships, mostly involving me listening to what’s going on in their lives and how they’re handling it. The trend continues.

Because he isn’t brave enough to say it to anyone else, I’ll do it for him.

(I should note that this is somewhat obscure for a reason. If you don’t know who this is, you probably don’t need to.)

* okay, but keep in mind, anywhere you want to go… i’ve already been there
salandarin: i can’t believe you actually had the ovaries to go there
* the sperm bank?
salandarin: it was never a competition or a comparison, not even now
salandarin: i’d drive up there to kick you in the balls, but you don’t have any
* of course it’s not competition, timothy
* it’s simple linear progression
* i was first, you are second
salandarin: you used and abused, i didn’t
salandarin: i suppose you’re right
salandarin: you manipulated and lied, i didn’t
salandarin: you’re right!
* one of us is obviously better suited for today’s society
salandarin: don’t think yourself avante garde, your tactics are as old as humanity
salandarin: you missed out on something amazing, and with that path, you’ll never catch even a glimpse of it
salandarin: if you want happiness, you won’t find it in yourself
salandarin: i’m willing to take a fair bet that one of us is happy, and one of us isn’t
salandarin: and i’ll let you in on the secret that i’m happy
* slashdefensive
salandarin: you’re the one who’s insecurity pushes him to scoff at anything he doesn’t understand
salandarin: it’s not the first time you pull shit like this, i suppose i’m not really surprised at all
* you’re the one whose ignorance pushes him to scoff at anything that challenges his indoctrination
* and no, i am a manipulative sociopath, but i’m not sure what you’re referring to
salandarin: i suppose i’m only left wondering if i’ve aided you in your manipulation, or if i can continue to rest easy in taking the path of honor
salandarin: but that’s not a question you can answer
* well, i certainly hope you weren’t complicit in whatever it was, cause that wouldn’t go over well with deity of the day
salandarin: funny how you fancy yourself on the new, current wave, and yet you accuse me of doing the same thing.
salandarin: everything’s the same, in the end, there’s nothing new under the sun, including all the world’s assholes
salandarin: you could be so much more, and it honestly saddens me that you let yourself come here.
salandarin: whatever; see you around
* okay!

I’ve spent a while trying to think of what to say to this. I thought about a long analysis of the concept of manliness. I considered a small essay about the pursuit of happiness. I was tempted to list off all the ways you’ve wronged every person around you. None of it seemed fitting. This does, however.

ROFL, fagwagon, i pwned your n00b ass

Curiosity

This is the post the you’re going to read before you harass me with repetitive questions.

TATTOO?! Aren’t you aware of what you’re doing?!

Yes, I’m aware that tattoos are permanent. Yes, I’m aware that people change and minds change. Yes, I’m aware that skin gets old and wrinkly. Yes, I’m aware that not everyone likes tattoos. Yes, I’m aware that it hurts like all hell (obviously, at this point).

But I thought Tim was such a smart boy! What went wrong?

Nothing went wrong. You don’t have to be a miscreant to get a tattoo, and they’re not as uncommon as you think. If you’re implying it’s a foolish choice to get a tattoo, well, just about anyone that has a tattoo will disagree with you. The naysayers are rarely those with tattoos – and in general, those that regret their tattoos got them while completely blasted with their frat buddies. That’s a fact.

Where would you get such a stupid idea from?

The same place anyone gets an idea from – other people. Nobody suggested it to me, but two people in my sociology class were discussing their tattoos, and I found myself intrigued and looked into it myself.

How did you decide you wanted a tattoo at all?

I can’t really say, it was just something that really interested me. You don’t know you want one until you find what you want.

What is that? A flaming wombat?

That’s a phoenix.

That’s gay. Why would you get a phoenix?

Traditionally, a phoenix represents immortality, regeneration, and rebirth. As I was reading Mere Christianity, it struck me that these are themes heavily carried within my faith, but ill-represented in popular culture and within the faith itself. The phoenix has been occasionally used in early church history, but never made its place as a standard symbol, given its stronger mythological nature that couldn’t be altered towards Christianity’s needs.

If you don’t know, the general idea is that a phoenix will live for several hundred / thousand years (depending on where in the world you are), and at the end of its life cycle, will make itself a death nest (in some lore it would be a nest of cinnamon twigs) and its ashes will produce a phoenix egg, continuing the cycle.

Along with having some very nifty lore that, for whatever reason, manages to stay consistent across many cultures (and indeed it’s bizarre that it exists in multiple, independant cultures at all), it also carries a lot of fantasy weight to it. I had considered a dragon, but really, they’re overdone and don’t represent much. It carries the imaginative weight that other mythological creatures do, but maintains a sense of meaning and purpose to it.

On top of all that, the colors are my favorite. I’ve had orange on black as my font coloring for years, now. My forum/IM avatars and desktop backgrounds are generally dark, and were for a very long time orange on black (in fact, the fractal I have right now is what I’ve been using for a very long time). It’s just a color scheme I love, and it takes a really wicked and unique form in the shape of a phoenix.

Where’d you get the design?

For those that haven’t seen it:

I found it after about three hours of searching the internet. I have no idea who made it, and I tried my best to find out, to no avail.

How much did it hurt, how long did it take?!

A shitload. But, no pain, no gain. If you want some kind of idea of what it feels like, imagine a very precise power sander, or the feeling of a dull knife quickly running across your skin. The artist noted that I chose a pretty intense spot. Portions of the design run across my sternum – which produced some pretty intense pain that I really can’t describe, but it sucked major balls. It makes it very hard to breathe and it’s impossible not to focus on it. The stuff closer to my armpit hurt more, and as well as the stuff near my collarbone.

Much of the pain was multiplied by the presence of shading. Though the picture makes it hard to see, there are no outlines in my tattoo – it’s all done in shades, no hard-set lines anywhere. She did the black first, which wasn’t so bad – because there were large amounts of it in each area, and it progressed fairly smoothly, there was something of a numbness to it all. However, when she ran across it in red, she started at the beginning – my skin had gone from numb to raw, and the sporadic nature of the coloring prevented any real numbness. The orange was equally bad. There wasn’t too much yellow, thankfully.

I was in the studio for three and a half hours, but the time spent needling was one hour and fifty-five minutes. That’s a lot, and I’m not sure I could have lasted much more than two and half hours. I started sweating like nobody’s business the minute she started – it was REALLY nasty.

How much did it cost?

$190. A $50 deposit was required when I handed her the design and made the appointment. She charge $100 an hour, but said she’d have capped it at $225. I also left a $20 tip.

Why’s it all shiny and crap? It looks messed up.

Tattoos take approximately ten days to heal. Given that the process is essentially leaving a giant, pretty wound on your skin, the first thing that happens is you bleed. Colors will be distorted by the blood and by the irritated/rash appearance of your skin. There’s also a lot of excess ink. My tattoo is currently raised off my skin from the excess ink, but as I continue to wash it, that will fade. At the same time, the tattoo will start to scab, as any wound would. This will create a glazed, dull, speckly appearance. Once the scabs fade, the dead skin needs to come off, which will make it appear flaky (and cause it to itch like nobody’s business).

That whole process will eventually leave the tattoo looking like it should – but as is, it’s a shadow of what it will be.

Where’d you get your tattoo? Why there?

Medusa tattoo, it’s a little place run by a rather nice woman. I chose there because she had a really excellent portfolio – her work was pretty awesome, the place was clean, and I felt comfortable. Other places in town didn’t look quite as good, and as I learned from guys at work, I made the right choice. Looking at the results has pretty much confirmed this.

What do your parents think?

I don’t know. I didn’t consult them before making this decision, but I did inform them I was getting one.

Edumucations

I’ve often wondered how I came to learn much of what I know. More specifically, I’m intrigued by the processes I use to learn, rather than where I’ve learned it all – as the sources didn’t teach me how to seek knowledge, but instead just gave me the knowledge.

A standard practice of my learning is my utilization of a large variety of resources. It’s fascinating how many people I can talk to that will never interact with each other, and thus I can safely approach without fear of overlap, but still receive a wide variety of thoughts and experiences outside my own. My long-standing tendency to befriend people older than myself helps a lot with this, too.

Some of these are friends, whom aid by walking ahead of me (as the majority of my friends have been older than me, since the beginning) and allowing me to watch as they make lots of stupid mistakes. A few are mentors – not necessarily teachers, but the handful of guys I looked up to and seek out for advice and clarification. The last group would be my ‘audience’. The audience consists of all the people that get to experience the end product, and then supply feedback on where I am. These would be family, friends, acquaintances (peers and co-workers), and superiors (elders, teachers, bosses).

My process of learning begins before there’s even a real problem to address. At the earliest hint or inkling of any new issue, I inflate whatever I experience to what feels reasonable to me, in order to justify a measurable reaction. Reasonable is traditionally defined by how I see those I respect handle similar conflict within their lives – but as time marches on, I move closer to perceptual independence. I know that realistically, my situation is often a far cry from what most people are truly experiencing, thus when I set out to learn more about what a whole situation is about and how to deal with it, I preface everything with the knowledge that I’m young and inexperienced. The boons from this are twofold: my chosen teachers are more inclined to share what they have to know due to this candid confidence in them, and they’re also less likely to alter their translation in an attempt to appear more or less than what they truly are. If they know they’re not being judged for their views, but instead being relied on, they’re infinitely more willing to offer honest advice without consideration for bias. I can then make use of the availability of multiple extreme viewpoints, and taking them all into consideration, find the happy median, a balanced portion of everything I’ve heard.

Take a case example: for much of my early pubescence, I was entirely convinced of my need for some kind of romantic relationship. Some of the motivation for this could be cited towards bizarre parental relations (or lack thereof) in early youth, but looking back, it seems to me that I was attempting to tackle a problem that many men don’t ever figure out how to address, even into their last years. Spawned out of the rather irrational fear that I may have to deal with it for the rest of my life, I felt rushed to exterminate a weakness that I saw plaguing men greater than myself.

This is the formula I concocted, as best I can tell.

Step one: Encounter a new feeling that, ultimately, is insignificant. Examine it and compare it with what I know I could and should be feeling, were I in enhanced circumstances.

Two: Consider existing evidence on the matter and start watching others live out the situations I’m imagining myself in. It’s like living vicariously, but just taking notes on how other people are stupid and where I can afford to make mistakes. Once I’ve collected some concept of what’s normal and healthy, I start making more active efforts at addressing my self-made problem.

Three: Start discussing. Highly depending on the nature and sensitivity of the situation, but in general, I’ll find five different people I can trust to provide varied opinions on how reasonable my feelings are (remember that I’ve exaggerated everything in my head – what comes out to other people will sound significantly more realistic and reasonable than what I’m truly experiencing). A rough number, but I’ll keep talking until I feel satiated in the amount of information I’ve collected and the perspectives I’ve both assumed and received on the situation. I’ll process the information over (most typically) a week.

Four: Settle on one person to bring all my findings to that I haven’t talked to yet and present my situation and conclusions, but offered in the same manner as with my other friends – a dire need for advice, regardless of what I’ve learned thus far.

Five: Adjust, adapt, and record. I’ve successfully learned how to solve a problem that I haven’t experienced. By amplifying all my feelings in the situation and imagining myself in more epic circumstances than exist in reality, I push my perspective to a place that it won’t otherwise go.

People do a lot of things that they never realize.

I think too much.

Correspondance

For some reason, I feel like posting this here. It’s an email that I doubt any of you will find meaningful.

date: Sep 23, 2007 10:26 PM
subject: Communication & Moderation

D,

I have no real way of knowing how interested you are in the workings of the communities outside of SK.org. If you aren’t at all, then I can safely say this email won’t interest you. If you are, I’d like to ensure another player-run forum doesn’t blow up in the face of the game.

I’m sure you know by now that SKLogs.com has now sunk, javarmonkey.com being the replacement. While it is self-described as not being focused on SK, it does have a section devoted to SK. With that, it has the potential to enrich or degrade SK, just as SKLogs did. Communication goes a long ways towards ensuring that history doesn’t repeat itself. That might sound cliche, but there’s a lot we can learn from SKLogs.

The relationship between SK.org and SKLogs was abysmal, at best. Its origins were humble enough, but time saw a massive schism between the two, when really, they’re both working to try and make the game more fun for everybody. I don’t need to describe SKLogs’ devolution; we both know what the problems were and why they were so bad. But, I think it was a necessary problem for the community to face. SKLogs made mainstream what supamang and Chemhound did in the pseudo-underground. It forced the players and the staff to make a very conscious choice about how they played the game from an OOC perspective. Not visiting SKLogs meant sacrificing a huge wealth of information as well as a very large social connection to the other players. That wasn’t the case, before. Additionally, the wealth of information created an illusion of necessity – players seeking to maintain their status as knowledgeable and elite felt required to read and participate in order to stay on the “bleeding edge” of competition inside the game.

While it is easy to decry such an obviously weak attitude towards the game, most players don’t, even now, realize that they were so immersed in the cycle. History seems to indicate that there’s no way to change these trends – which is why a place without moderation became such a powder keg, self-destructing in a pile of chaos and flames. With this, we’re presented with the same situation, but with fresh experience and knowledge to learn from. A player-run site is a necessity for SK. As one forum passerby, Joebones notes: a strong player-run forum is a sign of good health in and outside of the game. There has to be a place where players can go to be moderated less strictly – otherwise they’ll get fed up, and something on the extreme will appear, like another SKLogs.

I am (for the time being) moderating the SK section of Java’s site. Her goal (as well as mine) is to eliminate the presence of information that detracts from the game – working out what kind of information that is, exactly, isn’t easy. That’s why I’m writing this. A successful player-run SK forum (or subsection of a forum, as they case may be) should be focused on complementing existing structures and material without fighting against the ideals of the game. I think I need your help to do that – if you’re willing to provide it.

From what I can tell, a major portion of SKLogs’ failure was derived from a lack of communication. What would you like to see in this player-run community? Where should it differ from SK.org? How can I make sure the two aren’t working against each other? How comfortable are you with any of this?

Thanks for your time and consideration. I hope I’m not too long-winded, but I thought I should be thorough about all this.

Salandarin / Tim

Centrism

As children, the primary goal for our elders is to show us, by whatever means necessary, that the world does not revolve around us. Cultural nuances are what these people are attempting to instill within us: standards of common courtesy & manners, tradition, honor & respect. These form the foundation necessary for normal interaction within one’s world. How one creates and defines one’s world is another ocean of intrigue entirely – today, I ponder upon the evolution of our idea of self, among a sea of other selfs.

Generally, we define assholes by their sense of self versus our own and/or those we care for. How dare he let his dog shit on your lawn? What did his mother ever teach him? Probably nothing, lol.

I’m more and more convinced that personality is a matter of how well one can alter one’s perspective at will. This ability is more commonly known as keeping an open mind – but so many are convinced that the expansion of the mind is more related to politics, than to every day interactions, that few even ponder the true depth of such a concept. The open-minded person is capable of empathizing and sympathizing with every person and every situation with the fullest extent of his or her heart. This is an ability most often attributed and reserved for therapists, yet why would we try and treat such a fantastic trait with such aloof disdain by quarantining it to something so limited as a counseling session?

kaika_sk: I guess it is because of my interest in psychology that I love learning about people.
salandarin: exaaaactly
kaika_sk: Its kind of a hobby, I observe people everywhere I go.
kaika_sk: Probably why I tend to troll the forums instead of posting.
salandarin: i enjoy both sides of the equation. observing other people as they react to me allows me to observe myself in a more objective manner, but i get to learn about other people and myself at the same time
salandarin: i like to think of each interaction as a chance to improve on the last one
salandarin: constant state of improvement!
kaika_sk: *nods* That makes sense.
salandarin: it’s kind of like the real-life RPG 😉
salandarin: i wish more people thought of life like that.
salandarin: which might sound kind of conceited, but a lot of people have given up on improvement and growth
salandarin: and instead are just gunning for breaking even, survival
kaika_sk: I agree, I mean, I think too many people are not really seeing the bigger picture.
salandarin: i sort of understand – experiencing just two weeks of constant work work work work gave me a real case of tunnel-vision, it’s so easy just to get lost in the details of life
salandarin: life can be lonely and embittering if you don’t keep perspective
kaika_sk: Well, I think right now for myself, I am in the survival mode, but more so because of my financial situation, I just don’t have the time or energy for more.

This is my point. Why do we lose sight of self-improvement? The primary focus of our social education in youth is how to play nice with others. Yet once that eighteen or so years of learning are done, we somehow come to accept that “people are the way they are”, that who we’ve become by the time we have our degree is who we’ll be, for the most part, to our death-beds. It’s a state of docile acceptance: we treat our personalities and our perspectives as concrete, immovable objects that cannot be improved or harmed. Our environments and circumstances only “unlock” certain aspects of ourselves, good and bad (such as depression or contentment). Why are we content with what’s enough to make it through life, when we could be emotional and social giants, building each other up with even the most minute interactions?

Idealism sucks balls.

Prediction

“Hey, Kyle, hold up a second.”
» “Yeah, buddy, what’s up?”
“This really isn’t working out.”
» “How’s that?”
“I’m going bat-shit; I’m double scheduled two nights this week. I miss a day at the restaurant, my ass is totally fired. I make more on a slow night there than I do during a full day here.”
» “So you’re quitting?”
“What other choice do I have? I fucked up planning ahead, and here I am. I figured if I could make it through this week I’d be fine, but this was the breaking point. And the planograms. Ugh, the planograms. I’m sorry, man.”
» “Nah, don’t worry about it. I saw it coming anyways.”
“Yeah?”
» “I figured it’d be some time this week. You’re really good at this, you did a great job, but I totally understand.”
“Thanks. It sucks balls, but what the hell else am I gonna do? I mean, shit, I promised myself I wouldn’t get caught working Sundays, yet here I am. I missed a friend’s funeral yesterday for work, I’m at my wit’s end.”
» “So what’re you gonna do?”
“Find a job that’s okay with me working two days in the week? I don’t know where the hell I could do that, but I’m sure there’s something.”
» “Not likely.”
“I can’t take doing the corporate crap. I’m serious about the planograms. You know how long I spent moving shredder lubricant yesterday? Damn, talk about a lifeless task. How do you put up with it?”
» “Working at Borders wasn’t so bad, it was a little more free-form, but it’s all the same in the end. You put shit on a shelf, sometimes it’s more specific than others. Management isn’t so bad, there’s some thought to it, but it’s a job like any other.”
“I guess so, but I don’t think I could handle that, either. The bureaucracy of quotas…”
» “You’ll never get away from that, don’t even try. It’s just the way any business works.”
“Maybe retail’s not for me, then.”
» “The quotas are always there, even if they aren’t called that. You go to a law firm, you better be damn sure you have enough clients, win enough cases, it’s the same anywhere you go.”
“I’ll find something.”
» “Hah. Don’t be a stranger, man. Stop by. I’m not mailing your paycheck, either, you gotta come pick that shit up.”
“Yeah, alright.”
» “My first trainee quits after three weeks. Fucker.”
“Psh.”