Standard Deviant Singlehood
This has irked me for quite some time now.I was in a committed relationship for the entirety of my 20's, during which I ignored most of the statistics that came out of studies about romantic relationships. I'm single now, and re-examining a lot of the ideas that I've come across in the last couple decades of my life. Here's one that I've always come across, and despised, but decided to remain silent on: that people...
Good Writing is Numbered Dots
Here's my favorite piece of writing advice that I've ever heard: "Give the audience one and one, let them make two, and they'll love you for it forever." As writers, we're advised to avoid tautologies. This goes one step further. We shouldn't just avoid saying the same thing twice. We should leave out pieces of information, gaps that the reader must fill in with their own understanding. (I should point out that I've never studied...
Distillation of the Historical Jesus
A few months ago I wrote about Christianity. That post was intended to be a sardonic tome that straddled the middle ground between believers and unbelievers, pointing out that one can easily find meaning in Christian scripture while at the same time calling into question its authority by deriding the authenticity of several of its claims. I began studying the Christian religion because I wanted to answer one fundamental question: why is it that, 2000...
Pobody's Nerfect
Being the complete and total geek that I am, I always carry pens with me in the front pockets of my jeans. Sooner or later, the cap comes off of one of them and the front of my jeans gets stained with blobs of ink. Despite this, I continue to wear the jeans. Sure, I could replace them, but if I'm meeting someone new for the first time, and they're sizing me up, I think having...
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
A man of constant inaction is a man of constant sorrow, whether he recognizes it or not.
Reflections on the Self-Help Genre
For the last year and half, I've been reading lots of self-help books. In terms of developing a much better understanding of who I am and what is important to me, this has been immensely helpful. On the other hand, in exploring the genre, I've definitely developed a much better sense of why people don't like these kinds of books.The titles in the section about "success" would be enough to turn me away from the...
Perfectionism as the Enemy
"The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer --- Reality is not perfect. I doubt I'm going to get any opposition from anybody on that point. One only need to turn on the news to learn about the difficulties being faced by people everywhere. Chances are good that anyone reading this...
"Did You Say 'Thank You'?"
This is a line that parents tell their children when they've received something. It's their way of gently reminding the child that when someone does something for you, you should thank them for it. I hear people ask the question: what happened to good customer service? You'd get the impression from people asking the question that if you were to walk into any business, you wouldn't find a single employee who treats the customers with...
Why Are You Here?
I interviewed at a tech company a few months ago for a software engineering job. It was a larger organization, with an impressive campus located right on the Pacific Ocean. There were gorgeous views of the water from just about every vantage point in the sizable two buildings they occupied. As I was getting the tour, my guide was rattling off all of the perks that came with employment: a gym onsite, self-evident proximity to...
The Hazards of Moral Superiority (Or How I Learned to Lose Myself)
About a month ago, I wrote about a difficult set of experiences I had gone through recently; I alluded to the fact that this had shattered my sense of self. Specifically, I wrote that "the cloak of self-deception I had wrapped myself in fell away". This is pretty cryptic; what exactly did I mean by this? There's a common story told about the founder of the Buddhist movement. Before he became the Buddha, he was...