Making a Movie

While I have liked the job that I do in Hollywood, I have always focused on the technical aspects of filmmaking, as opposed to the creative side.  I didn't go to meetings about script revision, or character development.  I dealt with things like file types, compression formats, and data security.  As time went on this became a more deliberate distinction, for a number of reasons.  For one, I was a leading expert on the technical front, and that was not true in the creative side.  With technical issues, whether an idea is "good" or not is measured by if it is true, and whether or not it actually works.  With creative ideas, whether or not a suggestion is "good" is measured by how much it is liked by other people.  I prefer to avoid such subjective issues, because I like being right.  Looking back, I guess I was afraid to lose the status I had earned of always being right.  I valued that my bosses trusted my judgment enough to take significant risks based on my technical input.  My ideas were very outside-the-box compared to the industry at large, and my company was willing to invest in unproven ideas based on the fact that they trusted I could make it work if I said I could.  And I always made it work, and never lost a single shot in ten years.  But I nearly always refused to offer my creative input, even when it was deliberately sought.

My avoidance of creative conversations may have been to my detriment in the long run, since that is where the upward mobility is, and those ideas and experiences are less time sensitive.  I was the best at what I did because I was well connected with the technologies that were being developed at the time, and what that meant for my industry.  Those technologies are still in use, but are no longer the area where the most significant innovation is taking place, so I am out of the loop in that regard.  The concepts of good storytelling are not going to become obsolete anytime soon, but that world can never be totally conquered by a single individual.  There is always more to learn, and ways to improve.

This is all on my mind, because after years of avoiding the creative aspect of filmmaking, I am considering trying to create a film of my own.  I won't be doing it on my own, but I will have to take the lead in regards to the creative direction, which is going to be a challenge.  Unlike my actual job for the last ten years, this is the role I was trained to play in college, with an Art Degree in Multimedia.  So I am pitching my idea for a documentary about the importance of Freedom to anyone who I think might be able to help or support the project.  Freedom is a fairly intangible concept, so illustrating that in a visual format is going to take some creativity.  But I believe it is possible, and that this is an important time for that idea to be better understood by the public at large.  It is unlikely to become a financial success, but it can still succeed in spreading the message due to the innovations in streaming video and online distribution.  If I can create something that presents and defends the idea that "Freedom is the opportunity to experience the consequences of your own actions," and that "Freedom is more important than life itself" then that will be a success in and of itself.

Worth my Weight in Gold

So it randomly occurred to me the other day that I was probably worth my weight in gold.  It must have been a God thing, because I don't naturally come to conclusions like that.  But I was curious to see if that was actually true.  It order to figure that out, we need to establish the value of the two items in question.  One is quite easy.  At 145lbs, with current prices, my weight in gold would be worth about 2.7 million dollars.

But am I worth $2.7 million?  Obviously it can be a philosophical question what one life is worth, and there are many answers.  Biblically one is worth more than all, so a human life or soul is worth more in the eyes of God than anything else in creation.  Another way or determining value is to evaluate how much something costs to create.  By that measure, we add up all of my parents' expenses in raising and caring for me, plus college tuition, as well as how much the government has paid in tax deductions and insurance companies have paid out in claims.  I doubt that would surpass $2.7 million in my case, but that is not usually how value is determined anyway.

Value is usually determined by what people are willing to pay for something.  Hence Biblically humans are worth everything because God was willing to pay his life for them.  But if we look past that issue, at a more limited scope of our impact here on earth, how would we determine one person's value?  If someone wanted to buy me, they are essentially buying my time, since that is all I really have to sell.  That is essentially what slavery is, so while I don't foresee myself going down that road anytime soon, let's examine it hypothetically.  If someone else could buy my productivity for the rest of my life, what would that be worth?

Our worth in that regard is not necessarily determined by how much we are paid, although that is usually a related variable.  Our work must be worth more than our wages in order for our employment to be worth something to our employer.  This is why we have unemployment when wages are artificially raised to a "minimum level."  Some people's work is worth more than others, based on their skill set and talents.  So what is my work worth?

The value of my work depends on what I am doing, because my tasks vary greatly, and I am usually on the spending side of the ledger instead of the income side.  I have had some periods at work where I was very aware of the fact that I was saving my company at least $1000/day, so my work was worth at least that much.  But that was only during times of major expansion where my innovations can be compared to the usual ways of doing things in my industry.  Other times it was less significant, but still valuable.  Based on my pay and the economics of what I spent my time doing, I would estimate that I was worth at least $100K/year to my company when I was working full time.  If my work was worth $100K/year, I would hit $2.7 million in value before I turned 50, assuming I started after graduating college.  Therefore, at least in the video technology world, I am worth my weight in gold.

Of course by that measure my "value" decreases as I get older, so at some point that would cease to be true.  Fortunately our value does not decrease in the eyes of God as we grow older.  And we are worth far more to him than our weight in gold.  But it does make for an interesting examination of value.

The Significance of Freedom

Freedom is a very interesting concept.  It is not at all tangible, and frequently misunderstood.  In one sense, no one can take your freedom away, but in another sense they can impose some severe limits on your available options.  Freedom is what makes good and bad possible in the world.  Without it, there would be no sin.  So is freedom a problem that must be overcome to remove sin from the world?  Is freedom a good thing or a bad thing in the grand scheme of things?

I believe that freedom is not only a positive thing worth pursuing more fully, but they most significantly important thing to pursue above ever life itself.  Most members of the Church would agree that freedom is a good thing, but I would ask them whether they believe that because they are Christians, or because they are Americans?  Basically it comes down to: "do they believe that God agrees with them that freedom is a good thing?"  I believe that God does agree, and see strong evidence in the Bible to support that claim.

When God originally created humans in the Garden of Eden, there was no death in the world.  Death was introduced only after sin entered the world through mankind's decisions.  God didn't have to place the tree of Knowledge in the Garden, allowing sin to enter the world.  He could have given Adam and Eve life without end in the garden, without the possibility of their fall.  But no matter how comfortable, they would have essentially been prisoners, with no option to leave.  They would be God's captive audience, not choosing to spend time with him, but doing so because it was the only option.

Instead, God did place the tree in the Garden, which allowed the possibility for sin.  So he chose to provide freedom at the expense of unlimited life.  Therefore he must have determined that freedom was more important than life.  And if God thinks so, it must be true.  Now the Judeo-Christian world has not always been the best at recognizing the importance of freedom, likely because of the restrictive nature of Old Testament Law.  But the Christian Biblical worldview is what eventually led to the creation of the first political system that valued the freedom of its citizens, when the US Constitution was ratified.  It is the logical conclusion of the Bible story, where God empowers his creatures to make their own choices and deal with the consequences.  He is constantly trying to love and shepherd them, but never at the expense of free will.

Fatherhood

I wrote down some thoughts about two months ago, the first week we discovered my wife was pregnant:

"My wife and I learned this week that we currently have a baby on the way.  The initial reaction was a strong feeling of the enormity of that responsibility.  And while that is true, it ceased feeling overwhelming after about 30 seconds, and the feeling has not returned.  We are as prepared as anyone without kids can really be, and it was assumed this is the direction we would eventually be going.  It will shift the focus of our marriage a bit, no longer fixated on each other, but towards the rest of our family.

It is crazy to think about the world that we are bringing a child into, and what it will be like as they grow up.  I see more negative changes than positive ones at the moment, but it is difficult to tell how much of that is perspective as opposed to objective reality."

It is interesting to look back on that and see how much my perspective has shifted with my experience the last two months.  My wife has been very sick most of that time, which has been quite challenging and stressful to deal with.  While I still believe that my original assessment was correct, and that we are as prepared as we could be as individuals, I don't think that our relationship was as prepared as it could be.  We have not been married for very long, and this happened sooner than we expected.  Not counting time spent on the road, we have hardly had 6 weeks of married life to establish "normal routines."  And nine months of pregnancy is a much longer time to get through, which has its own (hopefully temporary) "normal routines."  Those are not things that I want to continue to see happening after that process is over, but we don't exactly have strongly established patterns to return to.

So while I am excited to be having children, and believe this is the path God intended for us, I can't help but feel that I somehow missed out on most of what should be "newlywed bliss," or something like that.  I assume that after the baby is born there will be a whole new set of challenges and stresses that will tax our relationship in different ways.  Right up until they leave for college, right?  Now maybe this whole train of thought is just my reflexive response to the weight of the responsibility of having a child, and I would feel like I am losing my freedom, regardless of how long we had been married.  I don't know if it is, and either way, I don't know anything I can do to remedy the issue, besides just continuing to press onward.

Marriage in Game Of Thrones

Game of Thrones is a very popular TV series, set in a medieval world, during a violent conflict.  It has been criticized for violence, sexuality, and all sorts of other course things.  It is true that it depicts all sorts of terrible things on screen, but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing as long as it doesn't glorify those things.  It usually graphically portrays all of the horrors and outcomes of those things that are very real in our own world, even if we usually sanitize any sign of them from our own daily lives.  But there is one thing that is portrayed in a very different light than modern society is accustomed to: marriage.

Marriage is clearly in the process of being redefined in our culture, from the unconstitutional "a union between a man and a woman," to the more open ended and acceptable: "a loving bond."  Notice that the word love is not even in the first "traditional" definition.  Modern society thinks that love is the only thing that matters, and that this recent change is a case where love wins.  But what happens when that "love" is no longer actively being felt.  If that was the basis for the bond, then the marriage is over, and it is time for divorce.  And then we see that on its own, love does not win.  But what if the marriage was based on something else besides love, namely commitment?  And if it wasn't about seeking happiness of the individual so much as developing a lasting relationship between different families through creating children they both valued?  What if divorce was not even an option?  That is the scenario we see played out in Game of Thrones.

The first relationship where we see this become clear, is the king and his wife.  They hate each other, and both cheat on each other, so their marriage is by no means the Christian ideal.  But it is clearly stated that their marriage, tying together two powerful families that are otherwise at odds with one another, is what preserves peace in the kingdom for 17 years.  Once one of them dies, the marriage is over, and all hell breaks loose in the power struggle that follows.  The closest thing we see to divorce is the young prince breaking off his betrothal to the daughter of a man he sees as a traitor, and this is still considered a serious decision that requires the approval of the gods.  And he doesn't live long enough to benefit from his replacement wife.  That daughter's brother spurns an engagement he agreed to for political reasons to marry for love, in a move that was criticized by all his advisors, and led to his death.  By contrast, another political marriage is forced upon a couple, and they develop a level of care for one another where there had been none before, even without the benefit of sex.  So clearly the commitment aspect of marriage is strongly reinforced throughout the show, in  a way that is probably more historically accurate than the passionate romances that we see in most historical movies.  But marriage is also presented as a tool for social stability and family advancement.  When motivated by greed, that is a bad thing, but when motivated by love, that stability provides a solid foundation for raising up the next generation.

Marrying for money is frowned upon in our culture even by those who actually do it.  And marrying for looks is ridiculed, but only because marriage has been decoupled from sex.  Having sex with someone based on their appearance is celebrated, but marrying them for that reason is not.  Society thinks that marriage is supposed to be based a strong passionate emotional connection, which is why many high profile marriages are so short, because strong emotions rarely last long or are consistent.  And that is why commitment is so important, as is the recognition that it is about more than the individual emotions.  Now I am not saying that marriages should be exactly like they are in Game of Thrones, I am just saying that those marriages do have a level of commitment that our current marriage culture appears to be completely lacking.

The Government as (a) God

In practical daily life, most liberal atheists still look to a higher power for help, to solve problems that are beyond their control.  But instead of looking to God for those answers and solutions, they look to the government.  Maybe this was obvious to everyone else before now, but I was blind to the idea until it was revealed to me a few weeks ago.  But now I can't go a day without seeing another clear manifestation of this principle.

The clearest example to see, is the concept of climate change.  The climate is changing, and pretty much everyone agrees on that.  The disagreement comes when trying to determine how we as people should respond to that obvious fact.  For thousands of years, people in cultures around the world have prayed to God or gods for rain for their crops, for less severe cold and snow, for less severe heat.  Christians continue to do that today, but there is a new trend.  Those who don't believe in God find themselves turning elsewhere for a solution to control the changes in weather and climate.  The only other higher power that they can see is the government.  Now from an objective human standpoint, the idea that the government has any control over the climate of the region they rule is laughably arrogant, but now widely accepted.  Now from the government's perspective, it's citizens are coming to them with a request that they have no true power to respond to, since they can't legislate the weather.  They can see that human activity has at least some effect on the weather, if not the climate.  So they respond that if we want them to deal with the climate issue, they need to have control over all human activity.  It's a win-win for those who want control, because if things they have no real influence over (read-weather) improve, they can take credit for that, and if they don't improve, they can claim they weren't given enough control over the situation, and demand more.

Another example is the war on poverty, as if that was something that the government could solve.  Instead of seeing those less fortunate and doing something for them themselves, they think: "the government should do something about that."  So they present the problem of poverty to the government, which responds with, "let's set a minimum wage, so that everyone has enough money."  But since certain jobs are of less financial value than others, those jobs under the minimum wage disappear.  That leaves many people with no one willing to pay them the legal minimum to work, so they are now unemployed.  So the government responds by creating unemployment benefits.  As each solution fails to solve the poverty problem, this is followed by social security, medicare, welfare, food stamps, and a myriad of other government programs to make poverty more comfortable.  Now poverty is not something that the government should even be trying to solve.   They are responsible for providing justice, freedom and defense, but not economic prosperity or happiness.   But this overreach is favorable to those receiving the benefits of it, as well as those whose consciences are eased by it, freeing them from any personal obligations to those around them in need.

So instead of believing in a God powerful enough to solve problems, they want a government powerful enough to solve all the problems they see, and they are willing to trade away their liberty and freedom to get it.  And those who are willing to trade away freedom for security deserve neither and will lose both.  God on the other hand goes to great lengths to give us freedom, when he has the authority and power to solve any problem by forcing us to do things his way.  Instead, he put the tree in the garden, making it our choice to solve problems or create new ones.  We are supposed to look to him for guidance and support, not a man-made government, which in that case becomes in idol.

Taxes

I am not totally opposed to taxes at a philosophical level (render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's) but I am opposed to government expansion, which is what US taxes currently represent.  I am also opposed to governments using taxes to manipulate and control it's citizens.  Obamacare was ruled constitutional because it was enforced through a tax, reasoning that i strongly disagree with.  Taxes should be in place to raise needed revenue, ideally proportionally to benefits received, not to artificially incentivize certain actions.  For example gasoline taxes should be used to support highway infrastructure, and the tax rate should be determined by the needs of the roads, not increased as high as the public will stand for, to increase revenue and discourage fossil fuel use.

Rand Paul recently proposed a total reworking of the US tax system.  Although his new plan is not perfect, it is simpler than the current system.  It tries to remove most of the loopholes, and change the tax rate to a fixed percentage.  These are two separate changes, that are independent.  I favor simplifying the rules in both areas, but the tax rate isn't very complicated, the tax tables just distract from the the fact that the tax rate increases as income increases.  The loopholes and corner cases are the areas with the most need for improvement.  The plan would eliminate complex depreciation and amortization calculations from the business world, and most of the complexity from personal investments.  It would probably put a few accountants out of work, but I have no problem eliminating jobs that were only artificially useful in the first place.

Interesting as well are the loopholes he leaves in place, including the mortgage deduction.  Interest is tax deductible, which is the government incentivizing borrowing.  From a Biblical perspective, lending money with interest is prohibited, which seems to have been long forgotten by modern society.  I am not saying we should ban interest, but we shouldn't be incentivizing and encouraging it.  This is the single main loophole that remains in Paul's proposal, which I see no reason for, besides politics.

The other half of the plan is to flatten the tax rate to 15%.  Regardless of the effect it would have on Federal revenue, that is not longer linked to how much the government is spending.  I favor cutting government spending drastically, but due to the national debt, we probably shouldn't decrease revenues.  So I am not pushing to decrease the tax rates, just decrease the complexity and waste.

So the rate and the flat percentage will get lots of debate before the whole idea is canned, but the simplification is what we really need.  And some common sense and basic budgeting skills in Washington would be helpful as well.  Until then our tax money, regardless of the rates we pay, is just being flushed down the drain.

Married Life

I have been keeping pretty busy since my last post.  This whole "married life" thing is great, but it does not lend itself well to blogging.  (Or staying in contact with friends, or...)  But I don't want to totally abandon this endeavor yet.  So besides working in Vegas, buying a backhoe, and planting a garden, I have been taking a long trip across the country with my wife.

We are staying at a Baptist summer camp for a few weeks as volunteers.  While I have done this numerous times in the past, this has been different for a number of reasons.  For one, I am no longer a single man in need of a wife.  So that shifts your interactions with the staff of the opposite gender a bit, although the continually increasing age difference has been doing that for a while.  As a married couple with our own space, we have a bit of liberty for recreation, which is nice.  But this is my wife's first experience dealing with conservative Baptists, and that causes me to see things through her eyes, which can be a bit amusing at times, and she has had to adjust to some things.  We also do all of our work together, which allows us to get things done faster, but I have to dial back the intensity a bit so that she can keep up.

I am a pretty intense worker, even at home, and she knows that.  But in the camp environment, with no distractions, and clear objectives and visible progressive steps in front of me, I can get a bit too focused on the task at hand.  Because of that, we will get finished and home sooner than we anticipated, but we still have to take breaks occasionally for the sake of our relationship.  And the most significant contribution from some of our "help" from the camp has been just to give her some social interaction outside of myself.  (When you send two girls in skirts out to help the people building the ropes course, what are you expecting them to do?)  But the trip has been a good adventure to have together, early in our marriage.

Once we get back, I suppose we will have to settle into "real life" together.  Pretty soon we will probably have chickens, then maybe a cat or dog.  And then kids eventually.  And probably not so many two month trips and time working at camp.  But we will see what the Lord has in store for us.

Weddings

I have pretty big day coming up tomorrow.  An argument could be made that it is the biggest day, or most significant one, of my life.  Marriage is supposed to last the rest of your lives together, which is a pretty long time, hopefully.  And it is a deliberate decision that you make, it is not something that happens "to" you, at random.  It is one of the only ways (besides adoption) that you extend or increase your family.  And family is intended to be a permanent status, and a significant part of your identity.

The identity shift is a big one, from single guy to married husband.  Certain things are less of a shift for me, because I haven't been living a particularly wild single life.  Besides the extensive traveling, I have lived in a way that is fairly conducive to marriage, and that was no accident.  I have been looking forward to this for a while, but it will be a big change.

People keep asking me if I am nervous, assuming a positive response.  Maybe it hasn't really "hit" me yet, but I am quite calm about it.  The major decisions involved were made a long time ago.  The only thing the wedding really marks is the end of the opt-out period called the engagement.  And since I am confident that I am not going into this decision impulsively, or without thinking about it enough, I don't see what there is to be nervous about.

Sure there will be a lot of people staring at us during the ceremony, and it would be nice if all of our carefully laid plans went off without a hiccup, but that is not essential.  Even if something doesn't go as smoothly as we would like, we will get married.  And then we will have a whole new challenge in front of us, that will be longer but probably less intense than planning a wedding.  I am honestly almost as excited to get that stressful tedious phase behind us as I am for the new phase that we step into, on the honeymoon.  It is not like we haven't been waiting long enough, and our engagement was short compared to most.  So it will be interesting to see what new unanticipated things this new change brings.  But I am definitely looking forward to it.

Modern Homesteading

So I had this brilliant idea a few weeks ago, that seemed like it could help alleviate a number of major national issues.  It would create jobs, decrease homelessness, and generate revenue for the government, at no immediate cost to them.  What was this brilliant idea?  To bring back the Homesteading Act, that originally motivated Americans to populate the Western United States.  Instead of 160 acre parcels, they could be closer to ten acres, just enough for sustenance farming as opposed to large commercial operations.  There would be a requirement to build your own small house, with well and septic within a few years in order to keep the property.  There would be commercial areas developed like townships used to be, except farther apart since we can travel by car instead of horses now.  Those commercial parcels could be sold for decent prices, since the influx of development and building would provide new markets for goods.  Imagine a lot of Home Depots popping up in those areas.

So if people are willing to work, they can show up their, register for a claim, and get started.  Developing a claim would require some money, but it is likely that neighbors who are better funded will be looking for assistance with their own projects.  Helping there will be a good place to start, to acquire both resources and experience.  So unsurprisingly, community would be the factor to make it all work.

I had been working on sorting out some of the details in my head over the last few weeks, when I made an interesting discovery.  This is not a new idea.  There was an attempt to re-institute homesteading at a Federal level a few years ago, but didn't make it through Congress.  Instead, a number of states and smaller communities have implemented similar systems, to give away public land to stimulate growth.  So much for my novel new idea.  There are places out there giving away free land to those who want to homestead on it.  But for the most part, those locations are areas that are not particularly pleasant to live in, which is why the incentives are being created.

But it is still an interesting concept to think about.  I am doing something similar to what has become known as modern homesteading, but without the free land.  The modern movement is about creating an independent and sustainable lifestyle that allows one to be more self reliant.  I have been developing my own garden to grow a portion of my own food, with rainwater collection and irrigation reserves.  And most of my appliances are propane, which could allow me to run off of solar power in the future.

So the discovery of that established homesteading subculture has provided a lot of new resources and ideas for my projects around the property.  Not like I wasn't busy enough before, but there are definitely a few new items on the to-do list.  But I have been learning better ways to do a variety of the things I had already been planning, so it evens out a bit.  But I won't be running out of things to do anytime soon, if ever.

Freedom of Expression-Legal versus Right

There was a major terrorism incident in Paris at the beginning of the month, which has many angles to examine.  A cell of Muslim extremists from Al-Queda in Yemen attacked the creators of a satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo" killing many of their staff members.  The shooters escaped the scene, and were hunted for two days before being cornered in two locations, and killed by police attempting to rescue hostages that had been taken.

There has been much debate about the incident, which is really about contrasting values in the world.  Charlie Hebdo was a magazine that published deliberately controversial and disrespectful cartoons as part of their satire.  They were deliberately pushing the limits of social norms and political correctness.  Islamic fundamentalists of course claim that they had it coming, while those on the opposite end of the spectrum fully support the magazine, and claim that they should have been able to say whatever they want without fear of retribution.  And everyone else from the pope to the media falls somewhere in the middle.  Directly after the attack, the prevailing reactionary response was to show full support for Charlie Hebdo victims, but that overwhelming opinion seems to be shifting in a more moderate direction as time goes on.

For once I agree with the pope, who condemned the violent attack, but pointed out that you cannot throw insults without expecting a reaction.  "There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity ... in freedom of expression there are limits."  It is not their fault, but they were also not random victims.  It was a targeted attack, with a specific military objective, to quench what Al-Queda saw as overt propaganda and blasphemy.  It was still wrong, but it wasn't unprovoked.

There was initially a movement on social media linking the shootings to an attack on the freedom of speech and expression.  I saw immediately that this was nonsense, because the freedom of speech protects one from the government suppressing what they have to say.  It does not protect one from the other consequences of what they say.  But freedom of speech may now be under attack as a result of the shootings.  There is currently much dialog in the media about whether Charlie Hebdo's type of expression should be outlawed in the same way that Holocaust denial is outlawed in France.  I for one believe that disrespectful insults shouldn't be made, but that the limits should be set by internal discretion, as opposed to external censorship.  Not everything that is wrong should be illegal.  People should have the freedom to set the course of their lives, but must be ready to face the consequences of the decisions that they make.  We all face the possibility of dying as the result of our decisions on a daily basis.  Have you driven a car today?  No amount of legislation eliminates that potential, so why try to minimize it?  Especially if you believe in the theory of natural selection as the source of life.

The surviving Charlie Hebdo staff who published the next issue, which depicted the Prophet Muhammad on the cover, knew exactly what risks they were taking.  But now so does everyone else who is considering publishing something like that.  The government doesn't need to make that decision for them, they should be free to choose for themselves.  The potential consequences should be what causes people to pause, not just because the government may intervene and shut them down.   Just because it's legal doesn't make it right.  Before anything in life that we choose to do, we should ask ourselves: "is this really the right thing to do?" and "am I prepared to face the consequences of what I am about to do?"  Some people are offended that the artists should even have to consider the threat of violent response in their decisions, but that is the reality of the world we live in, and unless we confront and defeat violent extremism and terrorism, that threat isn't going to disappear.

Entering a New Phase

As we enter a new year, I find myself transitioning into a new phase of life.  Being engaged is a relatively short phase, ideally leading to a very long phase, called being married.  And that will be a very big change in life, but one that I am looking forward to.  I am not sure what that will mean for this endeavor in particular, but it will probably mean some sort of change here as well.

I started this blog over three years ago, and I have grown and changed a lot in that period of time.  I have read a lot of books, met a lot of new people, and done a lot of writing.  328 posts later, I have never gone more than a week without publishing something new, although some posts were better than others.  Some of my best work was in the first few weeks, because I had so many ideas I had been storing in my head for so long.  It had taken me quite a while to finally take the step of actually creating a blog, because as usual, I wanted it to be perfect.  Once I finally came up with the theme and title I used, they provided me a wide field to fit the topics and ideas I wanted to explore.

The original intent of this blog was as a tool to help me learn to be more open as a person.  This characteristic was specifically desired because it was a prerequisite for closer relationships with others.  And one of the primary reasons I wanted to be able to build closer relationships with others, was because I was hoping to someday find a close enough relationship that it would lead to marriage.  I think that this project was successful in achieving what I set out to do, measured both by who I have become, and the situation I find myself in.

But what purpose does it now serve?  I am not entirely sure.  I still post every week, but primarily because I have been too OCD to just let it go after a three year run.  But being engaged, I have a new outlet with whom I can be even more open, and practice those skills in the real world instead of just online.  And now it isn't just my own life that I am sharing online, but "our" life.  And it is not necessarily my place to share that on my own.  And speaking of "on my own," I am very rarely on my own, with time by myself to write, or do anything else for that matter.  That has added to the challenge of creating useful posts on a weekly basis.  So it may be time to set this project aside for a while.  I don't intend to abandon it, but I don't intend to maintain the rate at which I have been posting up to this point.  It will be returned to whenever inspiration strikes, or when need for it has arisen again.  In the meantime, I will be preparing for a wedding, and a honeymoon, and then a life ahead.