Deep in the Appalachian woods, a quick deer and a sneaky fox come across each other. They pause, inspecting each other at a safe distance through the bare branches and falling leaves of the autumn. The young deer notes the way that the colorful fox's colors change from black to red to white across its body, and the little fox notes the white spotting and spindly legs of the shy deer. After they've each satisfied their curiousity, they slowly begin to back away from each other, ever-so-slightly crunching the little twigs and red and orange and yellow leaves under them. When they've each gotten far enough away to struggle to make out the features of the other, they pause for a second, peering through the woods at their nearly-lost new acquaintance, then turn and go on about their business through the chirping and rustling forest.
As they say, dust to dust, silicon to silicon. 11-year-old Sony Vaio SVF15212CXW passed away in its sleep probably-not-peacefully at 2:45AM. It led a tortured and miserable life. It was persuaded out of retirement at the ripe old age of 8 to become my everyday laptop, performing that duty impressively poorly for six months. It thereby received an unearned retirement before being dragged out again for six months of abject wretchedness as a Plex server. It was not up to this task in any way. After a week of surgeries to make it compatible with the software (which left it with broken keys, a broken touchpad, broken speakers, broken WiFi, and an unbelievably bright screen that could not be dimmed), it began work. I can best liken its performance to treading water with one nostril above the waves. Keeping it going was my greatest affliction over the last six months. Marriage? Easy. University? No problem. Successfully watching something on Plex? Oh boy. But in a way, I loved that little laptop that crashed if I clicked twice within five seconds, or went anywhere near that clearly-godforsaken unremovable app called Internet Explorer. Just kidding. I harbored no tenderness. Anyway, an innocent restart (or more accurately, a re-) left it dead on the table upon which it previously operated. A solitary BIOS beep informed me that the motherboard was shot. I chose not to resuscitate. Call me merciful, but I could not be that cruel. Fortunately for elderly Vaio, I do in fact know that it was saved as a young laptop. So it will be surfing those divine digital waves until kingdom come.
I've observed a trend in depictions and descriptions of early feminists/suffragists that I find fascinating. Put simply, the majority were jerks. I think there's a very reasonable explanation for this that would back up said depictions' and descriptions' accuracy: passive, gentle, soft women didn't bully themselves into the world of men. It had to be the jerks, the women who were prideful, overconfident, mean, ruthless. Obviously I'm sure there were exceptions, but I wonder how consistently this trend holds true. It's a remarkably sad observation if the evidence is as widespread as I've seen it alleged. I wonder what negative effects the roughness of the early feminists had on their own movement. Did it turn away women who didn't want to feel extremist or radical, misandrist or untraditional? I think this observation probably holds true for most uprisings of any sort. How many revolutionary leaders were meek and shy? To conclude what I know is very scattered piece: I think I've observed a trend where early feminists were generally unfriendly; this was unfortunately necessary in my opinion, and I'm curious about its ramifications. I also wonder how unique the women's rights movement was for this quality I've theorized. In any case, I'm glad that it worked out. It's a shame that many great suffragists never got married, though. I can't imagine why.
From the age of about eight to sixteen I read addictedly. I read for at least a few hours before bed every night. I read during every meal. I read during every car ride. I read during commercial breaks for basketball games. I read while I vacuumed. I read while I washed dishes. It was my life, and I adored it. Then I stopped. I got a phone, and I got video games. I stopped reading, I started texting. I started playing Clash of Clans and Bloons TD6. Then I got a laptop and I played more games. I started watching movies and shows more than I ever read. I went from audiobooks at work to podcasts. I didn't pick up a book outside of school for about two years. Why did I stop reading? I missed it the whole time. I wanted that life again. I wanted the infinite stories and worlds, the horizon-expanding education, the improvement of my mind. I hadn't run out of stuff to read, I guess I just found easier dopamine releases. Reading a hundred thousand pages a year gave me a full-tuition scholarship to a university, a part-time job proofreading, and the ability to at least critique my own writing, even if I lack the creative half of that process. Reading never did anything bad for me. It's the single greatest thing I ever spent time doing, maybe "per minute" to make it fair. And yes, the 100,000-page guess is a fair one, I did all the math on it. I was usually hitting over 300 pages a day on the weekends and during the summer. I've been getting back into reading for about three or four months now. It's hard. I'm an adult now. I have more responsibilities. It's so tempting to use that hour before bed for YouTube or Instagram. It's easier, addicting, and quick. I'm fighting this inner battle so hard. I'm making progress. I got about a thousand pages in last month. I'm really looking for four or five thousand, at least. I should mention that I still watch television and play some games a little bit. I enjoy television just as much as reading, and I think its benefit to me is nearly as great as reading's. My issue with my television-watching is the ease of it and how it replaced reading completely (with the help of some other distractions). I'm fighting a battle against all the distractions of this tech world, trying to regulate my time strictly enough to read and watch more, getting rid of the time-wasting social media and related stuff. I feel dissatisfied and wasted if I spend an hour on Instagram. If I read a book I like for an hour, or watch a movie I like, I end up feeling happy and full. It's crazy that even with those reactions, pulling myself away from the modern world's distractions is still so hard.
"Ignorance is bliss", the universally-known phrase with a seriously valid point. I've considered writing a little essay on how truthful I think that short little statement is, and I might still do that someday, but for now I think I'd just like to point out an interesting related point. "Carelessness is bliss" is my newly-coined phrase. When someone doesn't care about much that goes on around them, life can be pretty blissy. It's a little different from ignorance, primarily in the fact that carelessness is at least a little intentional and ignorance is assumed to be unintentional. I think that carelessness is the way that our society is going, and that's happening because of how blissful the concept is. Why care what nutrition is when I can just eat delicious food all the time? Why care who the President should be when I can watch a movie instead of doing that research? Why care what the War of 1812 was about when Alexa can always tell me? I consider it a combination of laziness and a lack of necessity. Laziness has become more and more societally acceptable. My great-grandmother said "idle hands are the devil's playthings", and I think few people remain who recite that. For the other half, it's a slightly-valid point that Alexa can tell me anything I need to know. The problem is that humanity is turning into something, well, inhuman. Humanity is supposed to work, discover, learn, advance, fight, struggle, persevere. Many of us aren't doing that anymore. It's too much work, and we don't care enough.
I learned back in middle school that one of the most fundamental requirements of any software (or any computer interface) is to allow both beginners and veterans to use it effectively. For example, Windows offers two options to paste: right click and select paste, or Ctrl+V. This is necessary. Beginners need simple options and menus, and can't remember dozens of unintuitive shortcuts. Experts need something easier and faster than having to go through menus, and being able to do quick little shortcuts saves so many computer users countless hours. Unfortunately, for a reason I cannot guess at, this concept is dying. Those who makes interfaces and software have decided that there doesn't need to be a place for experts. In this context, for some examples, "expert" can extend to mean "anybody over 18 with a brain". I can give many examples, as this trend stretches across so very many areas of life. 1- I am not allowed to tell my laptop that I don't want it to update overnight, despite the fact I have important things that need to stay running. 2- I am not trusted to keep a password safe, and must instead open myself up to different avenues of attack (and endless hassle) by enabling Multi-Factor Authentication. 3- I am not responsible enough to change the radio station while I am driving my car, and must be in park to click non-essential buttons. I don't feel like brainstorming more. They make me upset. My life is a constant fight against technology. My car is a 2010 and it won't let me turn the headlights off when it's dark outside, presumably because it thinks I'm just hopelessly stupid. My next car will be older, so that it won't do that. I could go on for pages about all the ways I'm not allowed to know what I'm doing. I wish I knew what I could do to reverse this trend. I'm being babied more and more each year and losing more and more independence. The number of decisions I'm allowed to make shrinks steadily. How far will it go?
The IPA, Americanist, X-SAMBA phonetic alphabets all struggle with their own issues. They're claimed to misrepresent, or lack, sounds in non-Western languages, as well as generally being inconsistent with the sounds they do represent well. I think the solution is simple. An open-source (or at least mostly-so) phonetic alphabet. Unicode has an unusable number of symbols, and more can always be created if needed, so there needs be no limit to the precision. People can propose a symbol for a sound and record themselves making that sound, with some context about the sound's use in the world. That proposal can join other proposed symbols, where either a sizeable and diverse board of experts or the informed and enthusiastic public can vote for its establishment. The effect of this method is making sure that unintelligibly different sounds are not duplicated, and any sound/symbol proposed that doesn't have an exact match will be faithfully added. In order to make this functional, there's going to have to be a slightly less stingy set of standards for what a phoneme is, and the old experts will have to open themselves up to some simplification, all to avoid the alphabet becoming completely useless. For example, diphthongs and triphthongs should not be handled any differently if they are reasonably enunciated as one phoneme. If a native speaker would never split the sound, it's a phoneme. Maybe by prioritizing the sounds and symbols themselves, and the people behind them, we can actually achieve a usable phonetic alphabet instead of fighting in the weeds about one language's unintelligible vowel distinction, or a million other pointless issues that have stagnated the field.
As technology advances further by the day, I feel more and more strongly that the significance of knowledge is dying. This is an issue close to my heart at the moment as I have reached a crisis point with one of my most deeply-adored hobbies. I've been learning French for over a year now. I've always been addicted to anything to do with languages, but I'd never been able to settle down for a real attempt on learning one fully before. As I continue to put in considerable effort every week, totalling already hundreds of hours invested, augmented-reality technology is released that can caption foreign speech for the wearer as it's spoken. Suddenly the benefits of my time investment into French disappear. Within even as little as a few months, those wearable computers could be better at French than I will ever be. What point is there now to my efforts? Are there not better ways to spend my time, if I can achieve a very similar end result of fluency with so little effort? I love languages themselves, their beauty and culture and diversity and quirks and vocabulary and history, not the grind of learning them. This dilemma, which I have not taken drastic action on yet, made me think of the broader repercussions of this technology, quickened by the increased availability of information evey year since the computer was first put on the market: We don't need to know anything anymore. Anything I learned in school can now be shown to me instantly in any situation where I might need it. The extent of my use of my education can be as minimal as an understanding of broad topics, so I know what to search for; for example, to look up "square root of x", I would usually need to know what a square root is. But that's about it. Once upon a time, Braveheart shocked a Princess by his ability to speak several languages. Once upon a tomorrow, a couple will get married who don't speak each other's languages, because tech translates it all for them. The beauty of diverse language, already slipping away for decades, centuries, will be completely forgotten. The only language known is one's own. The distinction between languages becomes useless for the average person. The ever-aggravating continuum becomes a circle. On a broader societal scale, learning becomes a waste of time. It offers no benefits aside from personal pride and accomplishment. It's like solving a puzzle in a nursing home. "Grandpa, what do you mean, you learned 'French'? What's that?"
I'm from the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. My home is green and full of trees. Its climate is cool and shaded. Its roads are hilly, curvy, and narrow. I don't know anything else. On a trip west via a backseat I went through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. I was fascinated by the difference. Relative to my home, much of that area is hot, dry, red, empty, and flat. It looks like the mental image of Roman mythical purgatory I had formed from books. It looks hopeless and desolate. It looks like the place happiness goes to die. How do people from the Southwest feel about the Appalachian mountains? Does it look like a hellish jungle? Does it look comfortable and homey? How much of my connection of the Southwest with Purgatory is objectively valid, and how much is the bias anyone would show? I'm inclined to think the former has some validity, as Napoleon Dynamite had a very similar feel to the stereotype of the Southwest that I formed and certainly took advantage of that empty wasteland idea. I have been bothered by this idea for years, since my family took that trip. I can't resolve it without grilling multiple natives of the area. Is this place depressing to you? Does it make you feel like nothing matters and nothing will ever end? How do you feel about greenery? To me it all looks like somewhere people shouldn't live, like an encampment on the Sun. The heat doesn't really bother me. The Southern humidity I'm used to is comparable. But the colors, the architecture, the emptiness... it doesn't seem right to my mountain head.
I think it's really interesting when individuals are asserted to be the "best ever" at their skill, because it's rare that they're a current individual, except for in endeavors like the 100m dash. It's difficult to argue that a runner from decades ago was actually better than the measurably-faster Usain Bolt, but in nearly any area that can't be measured so simply, heavy bias is against those of modern times. The most important example that springs to mind is that of Shakespeare. I have seen it said that he is agreed upon by scholars to be the greatest English writer there ever was. I find this to be an interesting opinion, because there have been countless writers since Shakespearan times. The probability alone of no one better existing since he was around is by itself difficult to argue with. Another similar example is Christopher Columbus as the greatest explorer. As far as more historical individuals like those two, I think that the "best ever" statement is really meant to mean "the most important ever". Because I do think that it's difficult to argue Shakespeare has been surpassed as the most important writer in English history. Nearly impossible to argue, perhaps. And someone who discovered (accidentally) two entire continents, if my (to be fair, recent) high school education serves me correctly, is equally difficult to surpass in importance. But neither of these men need be called the most talented or bravest anymore when we have a more accurate title to bestow upon them. Perhaps we should consider Mark Twain, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Dickens for the title of the best-ever English author. Perhaps Roald Amundsen, Ernest Shackleton, and Ranulph Fiennes are deserving of consideration for the best-ever explorer. Maybe the best-ever football player wasn't the one you watched as a kid in the 80s, or the best singer the one your mother played in the kitchen while she cooked. Don't let historical bias or nostalgia blind you to the great feats of modern (or semi-modern) individuals.
I have observed a fascinating lack in fictional romance as I educate my 19-year-old self in literature and television. That lack is "romance for poor people". Romantic stories about people who can't afford the cinematic ending of a surprise flight across the world for a tearful reunion or two months off work chasing a sweetheart with expensive gifts. When it's the norm that love equals freedom with money, girls grow up thinking that their future dream man will lavish gifts and experiences upon them regardless of cost and time investment, because that's what happens in the movies. Then reality hits one day as they realize that they can barely afford to feed a dog and the best man they can find is the old classmate down the street. Why somebody can't fill this gap and write love stories for big screens and big publishers that don't involve financially-blessed lovers, I'm not sure. Maybe it's that no one has tried, or no one's attempt has been good enough. Or maybe it's that the people at the top don't have any interest in those kinds of stories. But I think it's incredibly sad. I wish I had the talent to write a poor love story myself. I'm living one. I can't afford to keep fresh flowers on the table. I can't afford to take her out for dinner more than once or twice a month. I can't afford to surprise her with gifts on random occasions. But I can find ways to love her that don't cost much money. Does she wish I could do all three of those things? Of course she does. Partly because that's what society says romance is supposed to look like, and partly because there's nothing wrong with a love of flowers, restaurants, and gifts. So we hunt for wildflowers, we cook beanie weenies together in the kitchen, and I make gifts for her with my own hands. I dream of the day that I can afford to give her the cinematic romance experience, but in lieu of that day, I make do. And I figure it's about time that the millions of men like me get acknowledged for that effort. If you've ever heard the phrase "I can't afford to be in a relationship", that's a sign that our society is downright broken. That's not what relationships are supposed to be about, and that mentality is why people can't stay together long anymore.
Around early middle school, I don't quite remember exactly, I found an old and stuck-together 2x2 Rubik's Cube in the old bedroom of an uncle of mine. I really had no idea what Rubik's Cubes were at that point, but upon being told, I decided to attempt to learn how to solve it. Over the next few months, I read some old internet guides, printed out some essential algorithms, and started messing with it. I didn't know anything about speedcubing, which is timed competitive solving, but eventually came up with that idea myself as a way to measure improvement once I started to get the solving down. I probably played with that cube for two years before I ever touched a traditional 3x3. No one I knew was able to solve it, and I didn't know if I was good or not. I just enjoyed it. I think I ended up being able to achieve an average of about nine seconds before things changed. One day, I obtained a 3x3 and a better 2x2 from someone at school. I had just started high school and there was an older student who saw me messing with my ancient 2x2 and gave me two of his old cubes. It was around that time that my two best friends, whom I met in 5th grade, didn't see while I homeschooled for 6th and 7th grade, and resumed a friendship with in 8th grade that continues to this day, also took up an interest. But their interest was not a very serious one at that time, and they weren't quite good enough to worry about stopwatches. I set the gifted 3x3 aside, as I was enthralled by the new 2x2. It was still an older one, and outdated at that time, but the step up in quality from what I was used to was something I didn't know could happen. I mean, how could cubes be better? They all turn, right? But that new one was so smooth compared to the brick I was used to that I quickly began improving. I was no longer limited by my cube, and by the end of my 9th grade year, I was averaging about 3.5 seconds, and as a part of that I had about 80 algorithms memorized for use. It was around this time that one of my two friends began to show more interest and pushed me to mess with the nearly-untouched 3x3, as he was becoming quite decent at it. I consented, and after learning the complexities of the new cube, I was soon able to average in the 23-second range. I seem to remember my friend being a little faster than me, but we still didn't care much about that at that point. I came into possession not long after of a newer 3x3, which was to me another revolution in cube quality, and found myself by the end of 10th grade approaching the 16-second mark. While improving with the new 3x3, I had picked up a 4x4 and a 5x5 that I had at least learned how to solve, if not quickly. But I wasn't interested in those, or even the 2x2 anymore. For the competition was on with my friend over our 3x3s and our timers. And my other buddy, who arrived late to the party, was content to compete with himself until he caught up. And so began the best period of my life to date. Was it all because of the cube? No. The girl I am now married to kissed me around then too. But the cube was the reason I didn't suffer from common teenage depression and boredom. The cube was how my friendship with my two buddies matured and strengthened. The cube was how I got fast fingers, a faster mind, and a love of color and patterns. Cubing was my passion. Nobody but my buddies understood my hobby and why I loved it. People at our high school found it fascinating how addicted we were to cubing, and kids began to buy cubes and try themselves. By the time I graduated, dozens of kids in our 500-student school would walk up and down the hallways with cubes in their hands. This junior year of mine was hours and hours of flicking colors and laughing with my two best friends as we all slowly improved. By the time the year ended, I was averaging under 12.5 seconds on the 3x3, which is considered very respectable in the cubing community. We had also branched out into the bigger cubes, all the way up to the 7x7, becoming decent at them, and I had de-rusted my 2x2 ability a little bit. I was happy. And I was really fast. Then came senior year. That came with some positives for our hobby: we bought some newer cubes fitting to our preferences, cubing took off a little bit and there were some interesting tournaments to watch, and we began to follow some of the world's best and have the ability to learn from them. But senior year came with some big downsides. Our schedules didn't line up in a way that allowed us to eat lunch together every day, which used to be the primary time for our hobby together. Cubing became a mostly at-home thing, and for me specifically, that meant I did it much less. Not because I wasn't used to cubing alone, because more than 80% of my cubing junior year was done at home, but because I didn't have someone to see at school the next day, their competition keeping me motivated. So as I began working more, applying to colleges, and taking harder classes, I stopped prioritizing cubing, and by the end of my senior year, I really hadn't changed in ability. I hadn't gotten worse, I had cubed enough for that, but without the camaraderie and plenteous free time it wasn't something I'd put much time into. Our friendship stayed strong, sure, but it turned into chat rooms and coming over to play video games and pool and ping-pong and cards and to goof around. Nothing was lost there, but the flashing colors were slowly disappearing. Then, as they say, life happened. It's been a year and a half since I graduated. I have probably spent less than 20 hours cubing since graduation, and my last estimate put me at about 800 hours invested in those blocks during my high school years alone. Whenever I pick up one of my cubes now, with its enchanting colors and smooth glossy surfaces, I long for my junior year. But I can't get that back, and whenever I try to coax my fingers back towards the 15 turns a second they used to be capable of and dredge my memory for the 140 algorithms I used to know in my sleep, I find my fingers and mind failing me. So I've pulled the cubes out less and less, because I'd rather them stay forgotten in a drawer than be a reminder that at 19, when I try to pick up and turn a memory of happy times, I'm slow.
You open your eyes to birds chirping and sunlight streaming in through the window in your bedroom, outlined by your pale blue bedroom walls. A desk, bookshelf, and dresser are positioned around the room, with a nice patterned rug in the center. Looking down at your clean white sheets, you rub your eyes trying to wake them up. Stepping out of the bed, you walk over to the bright window. Looking out, you see a beautiful backyard. A grand and lushly dark green oak tree towers over a clean lawn and scattered children's toys. A brown fence encloses the backyard, and past the fence you can see more trees and the houses of your neighbors. Looking up, squinting in the bright sunlight, you see the beautiful blue sky, radiant and fresh, filled with birds soaring back and forth. It's almost clear, with just a few puffy white clouds scattered around the edges. Stretching, you turn back into your room, gazing around at the colorful posters on the walls and piles of dirty clothes of all colors scattered around the room. Satisfied with your eyes' awakening, you walk over to your bedroom door, left cracked open, and head down for breakfast, which you can smell wafting up the stairs. A few houses down, one of your best friends wakes up. He opens his eyes to the same birds chirping and very similar sunlight streaming in through a very similar window. It's outlined by a dark green wallpaper, with a couch, television, and two dressers set along the walls, and with a similarly-patterned rug in the center. He yawns and stretches, looking up at his plain white ceiling. Climbing out of his bed, he walks over to his window. He looks out and sees a gorgeous backyard, very similar in layout to yours. A large maple tree with bright yellow leaves steals the show, while a couple of soccer balls and two lawn chairs are left around the bright blue lawn. Looking past the grey fence, he sees more beautifully-yellow trees and his neighbors' houses. Your friend looks up into the sky, admiring its purpleness today. He looks for shapes in the few puffy white clouds, then watches the various birds as they fly circles in his vision. He turns back to his room, which has considerably more dirty clothes scattered around than your room, adding bright spots of color to his. A big poster of a red Pac-Man is in the center of the opposite wall, with some smaller posters on the sides, including one of a blue Luigi and pink Mario. He's ready to take advantage of the delicious smells coming from the kitchen, so he heads out the door and downstairs as well.
Me: Did you consider alternative life directions before settling on this one? Mom: Early in college I thought I would go straight to grad school, live independent and free, and focus on my career before settling down with a family. I always knew I wanted to be married and have kids, just not for a while (and likely in tandem with my career). Me: Did you have a specific moment that confirmed your choice to be a stay-at-home mother? Mom: I didn’t start motherhood with the expectation of staying home full-time. I worked hard for my bachelor’s degree and expected I would use it for a career. After we had our second child, trying to balance work and a family became a burden. I realized that what brought me the most joy was being at home. So when my husband got a job that could support us (even though it meant some financial sacrifices), I took that opportunity to stop working outside of our home. Me: What skills or talents do you believe make you well suited for the task of stay-at-home motherhood? Mom: I actually think my college degree has significantly helped prepare me for motherhood. One asset is that it developed my critical thinking skills. In addition, I was a biology major, so not only did I learn about the body - development, anatomy, physiology, germs, wound and injury care, I also learned about the world - nature, animals, science, the solar system, etc. These things have been practically useful in caring for the day-to-day needs of our children but also in helping me to satisfy a lot of the natural curiosities of childhood. Outside of my education, I think it’s a benefit that I am not easily grossed or freaked out, that I love to read and learn, and that I’ve always enjoyed nature. Plus I like kids. Me: How did your upbringing influence your choice to follow this path? Mom: I was blessed with loving parents that enjoyed spending time with their kids. There were short seasons where my mom was able to stay at home with us, but for the most part she had to work. Even so, I still felt like a priority because she would work a schedule that allowed her maximum availability when we were out of school or she would work from home. My parents did a great job prioritizing the value of relationships and supporting us as kids and I wanted to do the same for my children. My upbringing helped me understand that this choice is often a privilege and I do not take this blessing lightly. Me: Are there any other role models whose examples you’ve tried to follow? Mom: I don’t think that I’ve had any specific role models, but I have been blessed through the years to have quite a few ‘mentor moms’. These women each have strengths in motherhood that I admire and have been gracious to answer my questions and offer advice and encouragement through various seasons of life. No one can do everything well, and being a stay-at-home mom is likely an excellent way to showcase any insufficiencies because there is little opportunity to delegate my weakest tasks or only work within my strengths. Instead, this job has required significant stretching and growth over time, so having women with differing strengths walk alongside me as I navigate these challenges has been invaluable. Me: What values or principles are most important to you in your pursuit of this commitment? Mom: I think a huge portion of the responsibilities of a stay-at-home parent are to instill healthy values in the children we are raising. This can often feel like a burden because of its importance, especially viewed in light of our own humanity and capabilities. But if I were to choose just a few values that I think are important for my job and for the example that I am setting for my children, I would choose honesty, humility, kindness, patience, and self-control. Because I have lived these out both poorly and well, I have learned their worth. Me: What major obstacles or challenges have you faced that made you struggle on this path? Mom: One major obstacle that I have struggled with is my own natural desire for control. Not only do my children have their own thoughts and desires, but the circumstances around them are often unpredictable. Plans are defeated, good ideas are left to waste, and lessons are learned the hard way. It’s been very difficult for me to release the illusion of control and let the children grow in ways that work best for their personalities, at their own pace, and into their own unique persons. Another big obstacle for me has been my health. I had a long, difficult season that impacted my parenting in many ways such as a lack of patience, kindness, and gentleness. It sent the wrong message that the kids were not good enough, while also setting a terrible example for how to treat others. It has been a process to break these bad habits in myself and help the children understand how it has impacted them. I don’t think the consequences for the children during that time can ever be fully reversed so I pray that they will be redeemed. Me: What long term goals or aspirations do you have for your children? Mom: My overarching goals for my children have always been that they will love God, love others, walk in wisdom, and continue to be willing to learn and grow. Those are also my goals for myself. Me: Has this life direction positively impacted your personal growth and development? Mom: Tremendously. I have been challenged physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I’ve learned negative things about myself that weren’t revealed in other circumstances which has given me the opportunity to grow in character. I’ve had to dig in to why I act or respond in certain ways to root out those issues so that I can do better. I know that there is plenty more room for improvement, so in that way, this job has been humbling. Choosing to stay home and live off one income has regularly pushed me to clarify my priorities, identify needs vs. wants, budget well, and practice self-control. It has improved my math skills, my logic and reasoning, and my discipline. It has taught me to be less judgmental and to extend grace to others. I am continuing to learn to be open-handed with my plans and to pivot better when life happens. Me: How does this commitment contribute to your sense of fulfillment and purpose in life? Mom: I don’t think there are many things more valuable than taking care of other people. Parenting creates the additional layer of investing in the next generation and contributing to their success. Of course, other jobs help accomplish this too, such as teaching, coaching, and even being a good boss. But staying at home as a full-time parent has allowed a significant quantity of time to be devoted to these things. To see the results of this effort as my children become adults is certainly fulfilling. That being said, I don’t want my whole identity to be tied up in my job because the nature of this line of work is that eventually I will no longer have an active role to play. The purpose is to release them as strong, independent, capable adults who contribute to our world in a positive, meaningful way. At that point my role will shift and diminish and I hope my own personal development through this time will mean the seasons that follow will be just as fulfilling.
Some of the stuff I listen to is blessthefall, GOJIRA, Norma Jean, Of Mice & Men, LIVE's good album, RAtM, and literally anything by Dax Riggs. Generally, a ton of doom/sludge/stoner metal and hard rock stuff, with some weird slow southern rock thrown in (think "Lightning Crashes"). I like some classical music. Vivaldi, Bach, but not really Mozart and not Beethoven. I haven't listened through any other composers yet. I think that I'll be a big Tchaikovsky fan. I listen to almost zero pop, rap, or country. Except Tyler Childers. I found Tyler Childers about a year ago. I like his Purgatory album, his Country Squire album, and my favorite is his first album, Bottles and Bibles, even though I know it's much much less popular. He alone, with those three albums, takes up probably 20-30% of my music listening. Tyler Childers released his first album in 2011, when he was 20. His next, Purgatory, didn't come for six more years, and two years after that came Country Squire. He's had two more albums since those, but I don't care for them as much. The thing about Tyler Childers that pulls me in is the passion in his voice. Especially in his first album. In that one, there isn't much going on away from his voice, as opposed to his more heavily-instrumented second and third albums. He also has a very different mood in his first album, much more one of a lonely 20-year-old than one of a more successful 26-year-old (or very successful 28-year-old). The lonely passion I'm talking about can be heard in nearly every sentence throughout the entire album. It absolutely blows my mind. Tyler Childers made me want to learn how to sing. I feel that in a way, to me at least, his voice gives such depth, quality, emotion, and meaning to those very hardships he sings about that it makes me wish I were as lonely and hopeless as him, so that I could experience the beauty of his hardships, a.k.a. his singing about it. It's the exact opposite of how one's supposed to feel about hardship. He's like a syren drawing his listener in, saying, "Listen to how gorgeous these awful things I'm going through are."
The year is 2035. The animal rights activists have won. The conditions inside of many farms and factories have been deemed unacceptable and inhumane by the majority of the public. However, meat is still in high demand. As a solution, farmers have begun keeping their animals in a drugged state 24/7. The animals are unconscious, with a little bit of drug-induced euphoria. Therefore, they don't know what happens to them from the instant that they're born to when they're "harvested" with the drugs still in their system. For the animals it's a life of pleasant dreams and sleep, for the farmers it's a maintenance of income with mildly increased costs because of the drugs, and for the consumers it's a full cart of delicious meat at the grocery store. What is the effect on society? The animal rights activists still aren't happy, but the solution the farmers came up with is supported by the public, so the activists have lost their suppport. Premium meat has become the meat that comes from a family farm, or similar circumstance. Meat that had a life, spent time in the sun, and felt its life draining away at the end. Meat that people pay extra for. The higher price, for the meat that it feels carnivorous to eat. But as for those animals that the average person eats: They aren't animals. They're unpained meat, growing at laboratory speeds, with no touch of life, for one purpose: human consumption.
It's a nice summer afternoon. A group of college friends, six of them, are together at a cabin for the weekend. They're all gathered around the table, eating and laughing, when there's a frantic knock at the door. One of the six gets up and answers the door, and there's a frantic and heavily-breathing also-college-aged girl on the doorstep. The guy answering the door steps back worriedly. Before anyone else can do anything, the girl looks him straight in the eyes. "I'm sorry." Then she pulls out a revolver and puts three shots into his chest. The other five at the table jump up, some screaming. One, a big, beefy guy, picks up a chair, jumps forward, and smashes it into the face of the girl still standing on the doorstep. She crumples backward. The other four from the table, two guys and two girls, are standing staring at the destruction in utter shock. The guy who swung the chair bent down and checked the pulse of the girl with his finger on her neck. "She's dead." One of the other girls lets out a short, pitiful squeak. The guy who swung the chair walks over to their friend who's already breathed his last breath. One of the other guys asks if they should call 911. No response is necessary from his friends. He lunges for his phone at the table and rushes outside through a back door. There's silence in the front room of the cabin. The guy calling 911 can be heard through the back screen door, practically hyperventilating on the phone. After a few more minutes of nobody moving in inch in the cabin, the guy out back comes back in with a slam of the screen door closing back that causes the other four in the room to jump. He tells them that the police are on the way. As he's saying that, he notices that the guy who swung the chair is still crouched down on the floor beside the bodies, not looking up, breathing heavily. The guy who called 911 stares down at the guy who swung the chair. As he's watching, the guy who swung the chair tenses and braces himself against the floor. The guy who called 911 steps back. The other three start talking over one another, trying to ask the guy who swung the chair if he's okay. A few seconds later, the guy who swung the chair lept up off of the ground and grabbed one of the girls in the throat with a wild look in his eyes. Screaming ensues yet again as the other guy standing around tries to pull the guy who swung the chair off of the girl. The guy who called in 911 watches in silent horror as the other bystanding girl continues to scream and panic. The guy at the throat of the girl swings out and hits the guy trying to pull him off in the face. The guy who got hit in the face stumbles back with blood running down from his nose. By this point, the girl being choked has gone silent and limp. The girl screaming is no longer screaming. She watches with a hand over her mouth. The only sound in the room is the heavy breathing of the guy at the throat of the girl. While he's still holding her there, the girl who was screaming dashes to the doorway and grabs the revolver from underneath the dead visitor on the doorstep. The guy who called 911 stands watching. The guy at the throat of the girl drops the girl and turns around. The guy with the bloody nose realizes what's about to happen. "NO, DON'T..." Another three shots are fired, followed by clicks as the girl continues to pull the trigger. Her eyes are closed. When she opens them, she sees the guy who called 911 standing in the back staring at the new body on the floor. She sees the guy with the bloody nose staring at her in disbelief. And she sees the body on the floor, still rasping for breath, with blood pooling on the floor around him. The guy with the bloody nose turns and looks at the guy who called 911, then back at the girl holding the empty revolver. The only sound in the room is heavy breathing. Except for the occasional groan from the latest body on the floor. "What happens now?" The girl drops the revolver and runs out the door. In the distance, sirens can be heard. The guy with the bloody nose turns to the guy who called 911. "I'm feeling kinda weird..." He starts to breathe heavily and crouches down to the floor. The guy who called 911 backs away. The guy with the bloody nose grunts then yells. "GET AWAY FROM ME I CAN'T..." Before he can finish his sentence he convulses and leaps after the guy who called 911, who dashes out the back door. Sprinting across the yard, he passes the girl watching the cop cars coming down the road. He yells at her to run as well, but before she has a chance she's tackled from behind by the guy with the bloody nose. He claws at her and bites into her neck as she screams. The guy who called 911 keeps running with his back to the bloody scene. The cop cars pull into the driveway and officers leap out of the vehicles. The guy who called 911 yells at them. "SHOOT HIM!" It doesn't take much convincing, considering the activity that the subject in question is currently engaged in. Many shots are fired until both the guy and the girl lay still. An officer comes up to the only remaining guy and grabs him by the shoulders, trying to calm him down. As he does so, other officers approach the scene and move into the cabin. The guy who called 911 tries to tell them to stay away and to not touch the bodies, but the officer holding his arms won't let go of him. Eventually he manages to get free and runs back to the front doorway of the cabin. He sees that there are three officers inside rolling over the bodies. He watches in horror as they touch and become contaminated. The officer who was holding him by the shoulders calls after him to come back, and tells him that he's safe. The guy looks at the officer, and at the soon-to-be-infected officers, and turns and runs away as quickly as he can.
"Have a good first day of school!" their parents called as Nathaniel and Elizabeth walked out to the school bus. It was a gorgeous spring day; their mother's flowers were all blossoming in her garden and the trees and grass were strong, healthy, and colored a wonderful shade of deep emerald contrasted with the solid brown of the trunks. It was April 1st, 2108, the first day of spring, around 8 o'clock in the morning. Nathaniel and his sister walked up the steps of the bright yellow bus to the sound of chattering children and the low hum of an electric motor, saying hello to the smiling bus driver. When they were safely in their seats and the bus started moving again, Elizabeth leaned over to her brother. "I think that our bus driver is named Mr. Cody! I read about him in the local paper. He won some award for the kindest bus driver in the district." "Elizabeth, we just moved here. How could you know that already?" "I learned as much as I could about Manorville before we came, so that I wouldn't have to stick out like a sore thumb." Nathaniel just shook his head and looked out the window at the neat little houses flying by. They went to school from 8am to 4pm, five days a week, and had a school year lasting from April to the end of November, with a two-week-long break in the beginning of October before they had to prepare for finals, along with other week-long breaks throughout their school year. It was a simple schedule as far as classes went; they went to four classes for an hour and a half each, and had an hour long lunch to socialize and work on homework, with lengthy breaks between classes to encourage the first even more. Nathaniel had Logic and Reasoning to start the day; he had groaned at the thought back home. Nathaniel wove around students and robots whizzing by with messages to carry to find his classroom without too much effort, as all the classrooms had a two-digit number indicating the hall and individual door. As he walked in, he saw maybe five or six others already seated and talking to one another. He found an open seat near the back and looked around for the teacher. "Mr. Elliott will be in here in a minute, he probably went to the bathroom or something," said a voice behind him. He turned around and met a girl smiling at him. "I'm Mae, what's your name?" "Nathaniel. We just moved here a few days ago." "Oh I see, I was thinking I hadn't seen you around before. Where did you move from?" "We used to live farther north in a town called Willingdon, but we moved down to get away from the cold. It's not very good for you after a while." "I've lived here for all my life. It's not a very large town, but it's a cozy one." At this moment a teacher walked into the room, and the bell rang a few seconds later. Mae smiled at Nathaniel and he turned around to hear what Mr. Elliott was saying. When the bell rang after his second class, he went off to find Elizabeth to eat together. He found her talking with a new friend, who she introduced as Claire. "How have your classes been today, Elizabeth?" "Not very difficult. They really just introduced us to the subjects today. I'm hoping tomorrow we can get to some real learning." "I'm sure you are," Nathaniel responded, looking around. "Who're you looking for?" Elizabeth demanded. "No one, just looking." "Sure. Have you met anyone today?" "Yeah just one person. Look, there she is!" he said, pointing. Elizabeth gave him a sly look. "What's her name?" "Mae," Nathaniel replied, giving her a little wave in hopes Mae would notice him. "Do you know who she is?" "What do you mean, do I know who she is?" Nathaniel asked, irritated that she hadn't seen him wave. "She's the mayor's daughter! I found that out when I was looking up the mayor and his family so I'd know," she confided to Claire. "She'd be a boring one to date though. You can't get into any trouble with someone like that." "Elizabeth! You're too young to be saying things like that, and I never said anything about dating her, I've barely talked to her." Elizabeth and Claire giggled. Nathaniel scowled and ate the rest of his lunch in silence. When Nathaniel and Elizabeth got off the bus that afternoon, they were greeted by their mother, who asked them if their first day went okay. "Nathaniel's already got his eyes set on someone, and I made a friend!" Elizabeth said. Nathaniel ignored his sister's statement and said, "I made a friend named Carter. He plays football just like I do." Their mother smiled at them. "Sounds like you had an exciting day! Let's find something to eat before supper." They went inside and stepped around a few boxes to get to the kitchen, as a cleaning robot whisked around the floor trying to polish the obstacles. "He's been a little confused today," the children's mother said as she prepared something for them to snack on. "Mother," Elizabeth said. "Today one of my friends was telling me that all of our money actually goes to the government and we don't get any of it. Is that true?" "Yes, sweetie. That's one thing you'll learn about this year. That way every family gets what they need and there's no poverty, like there used to be a hundred years ago. That's why you learn about the Human War in school; it was a result of an old idea called capitalism, where the rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer. The way it is now, everyone gets what they need, and instead of your efforts only advancing yourself, you advance the whole society and economy with your hard work. It really is much better for everyone." Nathaniel left the kitchen to go to his room. As he was going up the stairs, a cat came flying down and he had to jump out of the way. As he did, Nathaniel landed on the edge of a stair and toppled back, trying to break his fall with his arm. Nathaniel yelled in pain as he crashed to the ground, his arm catching on the sharp edge of a corner table on the way down. His mother and sister came running into the room and gasped. Nathaniel was sitting on the floor, holding his arm. There was a gash from his palm, down his wrist, to his forearm. Out of the tear protruded wires, gears, and cables. "I can't feel my hand!" he yelled. "Oh my gosh!" his mother exclaimed. "I'll take you to the doctor right away. He should be able to fix your arm right up. You'll be as good as new. Just let me find my keys."