Getting Started

You know me, I take everything so seriously...

Okay, so I've spent the last three hours tinkering with the blog's appearance and teaching myself the rudiments of HTML. It's an interesting language, really, as far as these things go. It's got its vocabulary, grammar and syntax, and I'm sure that if I give it enough time I can find a way to insult someone with it, so it's alright in my book.

As to why anyone should be interested in my misadventures in artificial linguistics, I don't suppose that anyone else is. I am. Read the description: it's all about me. And really, I've been running out of diversions, so this gives me another opportunity to practice thesis-avoidance behavior. So now, when I should be laboring on my Master's Thesis I can labor on this electronic journal instead. Who knows: maybe it'll help me get off my can and start to work again.

Ya see, I've been a little blocked lately--in the literary sense, that is (trust me, I get plenty of fiber). I study religion, and until about two years ago, I was able to use my academic interests as a sort of pressure valve; throwing myself into my research got me out of the house when the roommates were driving me crazy, examining the past and the lives of the persons who lived then got me out of my head and helped me to forget about the crises in my own life, and I basically got to disappear into fantastic worlds of gods and monsters that bore little resemblance to my own world of anxiety, chaos and fear. That worked because for me at that point religion wasn't about persons, and it sure as hell wasn't about me. Yes, the work that I was doing bore some vague resemblance to my life--I had a penchant for researching guys with father issues and self-esteem trouble--but those are hardly unusual interests for any guy in his early twenties, let alone one who was just coming out.

So I was content in my little cubicle in the library, sometimes forgetting to eat, never forgetting to bathe, always having a great time. I was somewhat aware of what I was doing, but I hadn't learned to ask the big questions about motive and significance. But now that I am learning to ask those questions I've begun to recognize my centrality to my work, and I've come to the conviction that religion is necessarily about persons, and that we are in fact the very gods and monsters about whom we tell stories. So I selected an incredibly personal research topic for my thesis project, one that would allow me to advocate those convictions. Now that I've been working with it for close to two years, I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable being under my own microscope. I'm not particularly comfortable being either a god or a monster, and I'm still getting used to the idea I'm responsible for making them.

And, of course, I'm scared to death of failure. I know damned well that it's not over yet, but I feel like I've made a lot of mistakes in the last few years, professionally and personally, and I'm beginning to realise just how much of my edge--my bravado, my desire and my self-confidence--that I've lost.

So, hopefully this will be the record of an ongoing journey through who I've become to whom I wish to be. So expect a whole lot of self-important nonsense, and hopefully the occasional witty observation of life's infinite risibility.