Why Am I Here?

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- originally March 27, 2019


Oh my god, I'm on a blog. What am I doing here? How did I get here?

I've tried to start a blog numerous times in the past. All attempts have failed. Perhaps this time will be different. Only time will tell. Perhaps I'll eventually run out of things to talk about and abandon this one as well. Perhaps not.

I do think it's safe to say this blog won't end for the same reason the last one did. I really had a pretty good thing going on last time. The theme wasn't too restrictive. I came up with something somewhat interesting to write about every couple months or so. But I got distracted by an in-depth piece of writing on a religious topic that at the time was very important to me. I started to write so much about it that I decided to make a little website of it with sections for all the subtopics. As the writing time stretched into the months I kept thinking that when I was done with this site I could just go back to the blog, post a link, and tell everyone sorry for being gone so long, this is what I've been thinking about all this time, check it out. But I didn't expect that writing about my beliefs would lead me to start noticing major flaws in my entire concept of how the world worked. That's what it did. As I looked into questions that interested me, it became more and more clear that the only answer that solved all the problems at once was that I had been wrong about everything I had believed in for my entire life. It was the Matrix. For over 20 years I'd been living in a world where people had a God-given purpose to their lives and lived forever. Suddenly I had to admit that life wasn't designed with any particular purpose in mind and death is forever. At first I felt bad about this. But then I felt real fucking good. That probably seems like a non sequitur. Maybe I'll eventually accumulate enough posts on the topic that it makes sense. We'll see.

Anyway, at the time I just didn't feel like I could start writing about my real conclusions with all my sweet, sincere, deeply religious family and friends as an audience. I was afraid I would hurt them somehow. They're all so nice, and they would never treat me any differently, but they would be sad for me. As time goes by I'm starting to warm up to the idea of "coming out" to everyone. I'm also struck by the idea of how ridiculous it is that in today's modern world this should still be something one has to come out about.

Long story short, that blog has been abandoned for quite a while now too. Why am I drawn back to the idea of blogging yet again? I guess just so I can ramble without a captive audience. Ah yes, a victimless crime. My own corner of the internet where I can be completely self absorbed, say whatever the hell I want—and no one has to suffer through it if they don't want to. If only Great Aunt Gertrude had a blog...

Why the nihilism thing? Well, I like nihilism. I think it's nice. It's what would happen if you had Marie Kondo help you organize your thought life. The life-changing magic of not wearing yourself out trying to sustain a belief that various human constructs are actually immutable facts of nature. I also feel that I'm honoring the tradition of evangelical apologetics in which I was raised. Throughout my teenage and early adult years, many people I respected told me that if God didn't exist there couldn't be any absolute morality or ultimate meaning to life. I think they were totally right, and I hope they'd feel honored by my consistent respect for their views.

I think I will keep this blog open-ended. A true soapbox for pure, unstructured rambling of all sorts. That sounds like the sort of material I could keep coming up with.

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