Prologue
I firmly believe that we are all products of our environment. Like individual variables we all float through this equation called life, interacted upon by the other variables in our equations. Sometimes equations may collide and variables get broken, lost or worse. These equations and variables make up who we become, and what other variables or equations we will create. Each variable is just too complex to map out what the potential outcome of any equation will be. There’s no way we can know without a shadow of a doubt what any variable will do in any equation except for our own variables in the equations we encounter. Even still, sometimes we don’t realize the right choice until it’s gone.
Like all things, I too am a product of my environment. I was the fourth child of six in my family, and shared the middle spot with my elder sister. My mother was a grade school teacher and my father was a stay at home dad. My dad was also manic depressant and bi-polar. Childhood wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t that hard either. I know my dad did the best he could with the tools he was provided, after all he too was a product of his environment. When I was really young, I wanted to be a mommy. Then my dad told me that boys can’t be mommies so I decided I wanted to be a dinosaur. When I found out that I couldn’t be a dinosaur… I was surely disappointed.
I spent a long time wandering through life, I didn’t know who I wanted to be, where I was going, hell I was too stoned to know what was going on for most my adolescent years. I bailed on school because it was boooring…. I got my GED, went to college, hadn’t even finished by the time I fell into my career, but still I knew that school was just so dreadfully, terribly, unignorably, booooring! Sometimes I feel that new words need to be created just to describe some things, because no word yet exists that could describe it so perfectly. I found that I really enjoyed learning, and the pursuit of knowledge but I hated doing it under constraints. I didn’t like being told what to learn, or how to learn it. I wanted to do it my way. I found that the internet had abundant resources for learning and I had already made my way into a career in technology and software. I had attained happiness, seemingly all on accident. Though I felt happy, I never really felt, well… happy.
One day I read a fortune cookie and it said “It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are” — Anonymous. It broke me down to tears. I realized then, that without even knowing it, I had somehow made it to right where I needed to be. I was ejected from the nest at 18 with nothing but the clothes on my back, and just ten years later I looked back upon all that I had accomplished and knew that my family was proud.
I’d say that I’m crazy but I think that normality and insanity depends on perspective. To me, my actions are perfectly normal. The way I think, the way I act, all of it is part of who I am. To be who I am is normal. Others may not like the person that I am, and they may not like the things that I do. To them I’m crazy, but from my perspective I’m perfectly normal and they’re crazy! So, let’s all just pretend we’re perfectly normal for a second and take a step back. Sometimes one step forward may take you two steps backward, however, it is also true that sometimes one step backward can help you to take two steps forward.
So by this time you’re probably wondering what this is all about. This blog is what I’ve learned. I’m not asking any of you to believe me or take my word for it. Think for yourselves, reason for yourselves, and try to solve your own equation. This is simply what I think; designed and written to make you think. We all wonder what this is all about. We wonder about it all the time. It’s that nagging feeling in the back of the head that says “What the F’ck!?” We desire an answer to this question. We look at the world spiraling around us. It’s out of control. It’s mad. It’s batsh’it insane. Many of us wonder if there is a God, if there is such thing as life after death. Some of us just don’t care. With all this madness abound, how the hell do we know which path to take? So… how many roads must a man walk down? Why are we here? Why do bad things happen to good people? What is our purpose? Are we all, just simply, spiraling coils of DNA?