…the radio plays the sounds we made and everything seems to feel just right. The Aughts are over and looking back on them, it was a damn good decade for me personally. I earned two college degrees, discovered what it is I want to do with my life (even if I only did it for four years), landed a lucrative job, worked my way out of my short-term debt obligations, and bought a home. I rediscovered the benefits of exercise, moved to a new state, and met some amazing friends. Most importantly, I married the love of my life.

Looking forward to The Teens, I expect things to only get better. I’m going to continue my exercising and plan on being in the best shape I’ve been since my high school years. Another goal is a retirement of sorts. As I mentioned, I know what I want to do with my life. The trouble is that I’m not doing it. There are many reasons for this, mostly financial in nature. If current trends continue, I will have secured at least a decent standard of living for my full retirement later in life and eliminated most, if not all, of my debt obligations. I have a goal of retiring from banking by the end of the decade and enter my second career – teaching collage mathematics.

This also happens to be a perfect time for Jess and I to plan the next phase of our life together. Very recently, we finally dragged ourselves out from underneath the mountain of credit card debt we buried ourselves under during college which opens up new opportunities. Since then, we’ve been having serious discussions on how we want to live. We’ve made some decisions but they’re not all final, some of them are private, and it’s too early to talk about them on a blog. Hopefully, some details will be forthcoming.

While I’m working to make the next ten years better than the last, I’m wishing you a great decade as well!

Read the rest of this entry »

Happy New Year (and a few days)!

As most of you already know, I achieved my primary exercise goal for 2009. I walked 1,000 miles. My average pace was about 4.2 miles per hour. I also achieved my secondary goals of doing over 10,000 push-ups, 20,000 crunches, and 10,000 back exercises (it’s kind of like a reverse crunch where you lie on your stomach and arch your back). This, of course, has changed me. I have much more energy throughout the day, feel less stress, and built up my muscle tone and strength. Surprisingly, I only lost about 10 pounds. I’m not too worried considering first that weight loss wasn’t part of my goal and second because I put on some muscle weight, I lost more than 10 pounds in fat. In short, I am much more fit today than I was at the beginning of the year. Thanks to my friends, family, and twitter pals that gave me encouragement. Your support helped me get out there on the difficult days.

It’s time to set up my physical goals for 2010. Once again, my main goal will be 1,000 miles, but limiting myself to walking was a bit boring. Instead, I want to travel 1,000 miles under my own power this year. Right now this plan includes walking, running, and cycling. I may add swimming to this list as well. With cycling in there, 1,000 miles is much easier to achieve, so I’ve limited the number of cycling miles that contribute to the goal to 300. That means at least 700 of them will be on foot. I’ve also doubled my secondary goals from last year to 20,000 push-ups, 40,000 crunches, and 20,000 back-crunches. In addition, I’ve going to add a weight lifting goal. I’m not sure what the particulars will be, so I’m just starting off with 60 minutes of lifting with free weights a week until I get comfortable with a routine. This will allow me to set a realistic annual goal eventually. For the fun of it, I’ve also tossed in 30 minutes with Wii Fit a week.

I hope 2010 is your healthiest yet!

It’s a new year and blogs across the net have done “2008 in review” and “looking ahead to 2009″ posts. I’ll do a little of both.

Music:

2008 was a great year for music. My first discovery was Yeasayer and my last was Bell Hollow. Both had CDs I immediately purchased. The best musical find wasn’t a band or a new CD though, but something much more valuable: a source of new music, RCRD_LBL.

The last year also involved a rediscovery of my interest in music creation. In addition to recording an old favorite and three new shorts, I wrote and recorded my first new full-length song in years. Unfortunately, I have done very little music recording since. This is partially because I finally got the equipment to record drums. I played and recorded myself only to discover that I’m hopelessly out of practice and need lessons. I’ve been taking lessons for several months just to relearn what I’ve lost. I’m also picking up some new skills along the way.

In 2009, I plan on continuing the lessons to the point where I can play and record the drums competently. Then I can continue my collaboration with Chopdeli. I also plan on continuing my electronica composing. I have a song in the works tentatively called Rust Belt. I’ll also post about what I think is the best of RCRD_LBL and hope to review CDs more often.

Religion:
Read the rest of this entry »

Scott tagged me with this post. It’s taken from those emails that have a list of questions with the sender’s answers, which you’re supposed to answer yourself and send on to others. They can be fun, so I decided to participate this time.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
I always used wrapping paper until Bunnies4Buddha introduced me to gift bags.

2. Real tree or Artificial?
I prefer real.

Read the rest of this entry »

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-Epicurus

This is Part II of my post on The Problem of Evil (PoE). The first post garnered quite a response! The responses generated three separate rebuttals to the PoE (theodicies). I’m sure there are more. If you have your own reason for why the PoE is wrong, let me know! I’m always up for a challenge. Thanks to Snurp, Scott, and sawaz for contributing!

This second part explains why the PoE has significant personal interest to me. It’s what caused me to lose my religion. Before even being exposed to this argument against the existence of God, I thought up a simplified version of it in my teens. At the time, I was a Republican-loving, Christian fundamentalist. What’s odd is that the idea of the PoE came to me as a result of this tasty little piece of Christian fundamentalist propaganda which was shown to me by the youth pastor at my Baptist Church. It’s a film aimed at scaring the shit out of Christian teens via that tried-and-true religious motivator: guilt.

I probably forget many of the details, but the following is how I remember my experience of the film. The basic idea was that four teens die in a car accident only to find themselves in a dramatized Christian afterlife. The four eventually make their way to a line in front of a receptionist at a computer terminal. One of the four is ‘saved’. During the wait, the other three have plenty of time to poor the guilt on the fourth for not sharing the “Good News” (as if they haven’t heard it before). They watch as each person walks up to the receptionist. The receptionist then takes their name, types it into a computer, which then brings up their personal info as well as their ‘reservation’ status. Those with reservations step off to the right (how politically symbolic) into the light. Those without reservations are directed to a scary elevator on the left that only goes ‘down’. The ‘saved’ teen watches with mounting guilt as his three friends enter the elevator before his reservation is confirmed.

The film ends with a shot of the computer screen listing name after name color coded according to their reservation status, which, if it isn’t obvious by now, indicates whether or not that person is ‘saved’ or not. The name is in red is the person is unsaved, and green if saved. If you pay close attention, approximately one-in-four names is green, the same ratio as the group of teens had, hmm. This coincidence is confirmed as the names blur and a statistic is placed on the screen claiming that only one-in-four humans on the entire planet are saved. This was one of the biggest shocks of my life.

I know the film’s purpose was to motivate us teens into evangelizing. “Don’t end up guilt ridden, like the main character”, was the message, “You never know how much time you have”. It had a very different impact on me. I had thought most people were ‘saved’. I immediately asked myself how God, who is all-powerful and loving, could allow this to happen to his creations? Three in four suffer eternal torture? Where is God’s love? Where is His mercy? Where is His justice? Why doesn’t God have a higher ‘win’ ratio?

I didn’t lose my faith immediately. It took time. Those question and related ones slowly undermined my world view. Eventually, those questions, combined with some deep, personal suffering experienced in my late teens and early twenties, and exposure to the multitude of other word views did my belief in Christianity in.

I now imagine my name switching from green to red on that fictional, 1980s style computer monitor and laugh.