I used to play a lot of video games. These days I settle for some games from my Apple Arcade subscription, but I used to have many mobile consoles, several home consoles, and a gaming PC. I played many titles across a variety of platforms, filling out a list of memorable games that left a permanent impact on my life. In a recent conversation with my coworkers I started listing my favorite games and learned that the games that I have felt the most important in my life were ones that generated a feeling of hopelessness. I certainly enjoy a variety of gaming genres and story types, but the ones I can recall with fondness are the ones that made me feel the most miserable.

🕹️ Continue reading “Hopelessness in video games”

I don’t like analog clocks. People have tried to persuade me and have shown me the obvious benefits to using such a platform, but I continue to remain unconvinced and I feel that I have good reason for my opinion. I will now present a rather adversarial and controversial view of why analog clocks are inferior to the newer digital clock method of presenting time. This will be a pedantic and antagonistic position.

⏰ Continue reading “The time for analog clocks is over”

The fragility of life is rarely more realized than in the moments surrounding a natural disaster. In the normalcy of daily routines, we all can fall numb to the potential dangers present in our world. To stay vigilant would be exhausting, so we avoid considering them until the signs of something terrible approaching are too obvious to ignore.

🌊 Continue reading “Flooding and school shootings”

Parasocial relationships are strange. They feel closer than some friendships but are hollow facsimiles, barely reaching beyond the level of acquaintance. They are unequal connections. They do not mutually benefit all participants. Why then does losing a connection to a stranger feel nearly as bittersweet as a true bond with a known companion?

🤝🏻 Continue reading “Parasocial relationships are weird”

I need to tell you of a grave error that I made several years ago that has haunted me ever since: gaining knowledge will only lead you to sorrow. You will never be happier than you are now by learning about the things that intrigue you. Don’t fall into the same trap as me and ruin your life like I’ve ruined mine. By investigating you expose your mind to nuance, new possibilities, difficult realities, and discomfort you didn’t believe imaginable, and it will permanently change you for the worse.

⚓️ Continue reading “Feeling stuck”

In the past few years I think I have started to learn that empathy, comprehension, growth, understanding, joy, and contentment come not from being more certain about what one knows but from accepting how little can be known by any one person in a lifetime. I may be more at peace now, but the process to get to this point was potentially the most painful and disruptive I’ve yet to experience.

📚 Continue reading “I used to be anxious about being thought of as ignorant”

This little side project is now built with Jekyll, a site deployment tool that was surprisingly easy to set up. Its simple controls allow me to quickly build the site into HTML files very similar to ones that I was writing before, but without all the hard work of maintaining code throughout each page. Now I can write posts in a simpler fashion and start to add new features with greater ease than if I continued coding everything by hand.

💻 Continue reading “Now on Jekyll”

The penultimate episode of The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill is a frustrating investigatory experience. The show presents to the listener the evidence of an abusive pastor in a permissive church system, building the case that this was an ongoing problem within the organization that eventually collapsed under the weight of the trauma dealt within. What I believe the episode fails to do and has continued to do throughout the series is to follow that evidence to its obvious conclusion, despite the pretense of seeking answers for how it all happened.

🎧 Continue reading “We aren’t asking the right questions”

I grew up in an Evangelical Christian culture. I was taught that the primary life purpose of a Christian was to propagate the message of Christianity through evangelism, sharing the story of Jesus to people who did not know or believe what was written in the Bible. Through this effort, souls would be saved from eternal damnation and more people would be prepared for the return of the savior of humanity. This mission was time-sensitive, because the return of Jesus was possible at any moment, and that event could potentially seal the fate of all living on Earth.

🦸🏻‍♂️ Continue reading “An identity crisis”