Category Archives: Philosophy

That’s Me In The Corner

I will admit: I’m a little nervous about writing this next series of posts. I’m going to be talking about very personal things. Things I haven’t really discussed much with friends or even family. Things that many people get very passionate about. True, some of my recent philosophy rants may have alluded to the subject, but this will be the first time I’ve talked about it this plainly, maybe even to myself.

I’d like to talk about how I lost my faith.

I hope you’re still with me. For those of you that are, thank you. I’d like to take you on a journey through my personal history with religion. I’m not trying to offend anyone, and would welcome thoughtful, considerate discussion on the matter. This is a big topic, and one I may be revisiting if better words come to me in the future. With that said, let’s jump in!

Like many people born in or near the American Midwest, my early life was spent growing up Christian. Catholic, in fact. Even though my family wasn’t overly religious, it was still a big part of the background culture. We went to church on Sundays. We got dressed up for Easter. I even received my First Communion. At the time I wasn’t really aware of religion as a “thing;” it was just part of the culture, as ubiquitous and unremarkable as water to a fish. In other words, it was most definitely taken for granted as a given.

But not all my experiences with religion at that time were benign and forgettable. My experience with Catholic school, for instance. While my family lived in Cincinnati, I attended Catholic school (creatively named St. Mary’s, of course) for first and (most of) second grade.* I don’t remember much about this time, other than having to go to Mass as part of school. Even then, it wasn’t very fun. I also remember getting into an argument with my teacher about the number of syllables in the word “tire” (I was convinced there were two, for the record). Other than that, I can’t really comment much on the quality of my education.

That being said, there are a few things that stick with me from this time period. One of them is good old Catholic Guilt. That’s something I internalized all too well, and it’s still affecting me to this day. Sometimes it gets to the point where I can’t even enjoy a day off without feeling like I should be doing something productive, or if I don’t give an activity 110% effort I’m somehow letting someone down. Let me tell you, it’s been great for my self-esteem.

The other thing that sticks out for me is an experience I had once my family moved to Denver. We didn’t know many people out here when my dad got transferred, ans had to start looking for a new church from scratch. One of the ones we tried was a little more… vigorous than what I had been exposed to back in Cincinnati. I don’t remember the specifics of what I was told; all I remember are the nightmares. I had always had an overactive imagination, and it swung into vigorous action filling my head with visions of hellfire and burning pits whenever I closed my eyes to sleep. These visions, on top of my already internalized guilt, were devastating for me. I was convinced that I had done something wrong, and would be damned to suffer for all eternity. I was literally so worried I couldn’t sleep.

Needless to say, my family didn’t stick with that church for very long.

*It turns out telling the parents of a bored second grader that “he would be much happier if you didn’t let him do science experiments at the kitchen table and made him play Candy Land instead” doesn’t endear one to said parents.↩

Clearly I Am Not A Music Blogger

I had a humbling experience lately. When I log in to my blog, I am presented with a few facts, such as recent posts, update news, and a quick stats preview. However, when I opened up last Friday, I realized that my viewing figures had plummeted. In fact, most of the days I was doing my recent “Music I Listen To” series had 0 views.

Zero.

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Purposefully Unpurposed

Growing up, I was often told that I was “meant for great things,” or that I “had a great purpose set out” for me. I was told that I was special, that I was unique. That somewhere in my future there was a BIG THING™ somewhere in my future that would validate my existence and make me feel fulfilled.

I’m not sure that’s really the case.

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Productivity?

I sent out a few job applications yesterday. It was the first time in a while that I’d done so. Nothing major, mostly just boilerplate cover letters to openings that I might be remotely qualified for. After all, I won’t get out of Retail Hell without at least some effort, right? But something funny happened after I sent out those emails.

I felt less productive.

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I Want To Break Free

The dark voices inside my head were clamoring especially loudly this morning. You may know these voices. They’re the ones that say things like:

“Maybe you are just lazy.”

“You wouldn’t be in this situation if you just tried harder.”

“If you’re miserable, you must have done something wrong.”

“You screwed up, and there’s no way to fix it.”

“You suck.”

In other words, all sorts of friendly, constructive things designed to encourage self-love and healthy worldviews.

I’ve made efforts to quiet these voices, but every once in a while they crop back up. Even when they’re not screaming at me, they’re all too often murmuring in the background, a never-ending susurration of bile and self-pity. But where do these voices come from? It’s different in everyone’s case, but I would think there are some common threads, ones that most likely involve unhealthy internalized philosophies.

I was not raised in a traditionally religious household. My family was originally Catholic, and I got as far as my First Communion before they moved on. After that, it wasn’t uncommon for us to refer to ourselves as “spiritual but not religious.” a moniker I used myself for some time. The kind of New Age spirituality that proposed positive thinking as a panacea and focused on the “energetic” nature of things.

In case you couldn’t tell, I don’t exactly subscribe to these ideas any more. But somehow I still find my life shaped by them, in ways that often blindside me. I must have been exposed to them at just the right age that they settled deep within my subconscious, and have since resisted determined (and not-so-determined) efforts to remove them.

Let me give you an example: I must have been in third or fourth grade, and my family was still going to Catholic church. Something must have been said to me at Sunday school that day (I don’t remember what), but it literally put the fear of Hell into me. I couldn’t sleep that night; every time I closed my eyes I was faced with lakes of fire and brimstone where I was convinced I would spend the rest of eternity for the most minor of transgressions.

Once my family changed faiths (which is really what it amounted to, in the end), that guilt stayed with me. But this time, it wasn’t because of something I had done, it was because of something I hadn’t done. “In a bad situation? Well, just think positive! Put your intentions out to the universe! Didn’t work? Well, you must have just not been trying hard enough! Everything happens for a reason!”

Telling a teenager/young adult who might be starting to struggle with undiagnosed depression to just “think more positiver” isn’t exactly the most helpful advice.

But somehow I still managed to internalize some of these ideas. One sometimes jokingly refers to “drinking the Kool-Aid” in reference to taking odd, outside-the-norm ideas to heart; it’s not so much that I drank the Kool-Aid, it’s more that I was exposed to it in an aerosolized form, absorbing it more through osmosis than anything else.

And I think that’s where some of my dark voices come from: the internalized, however unwillingly, teachings of my youth. And because we’re exposed to them so young, it can be hard to excise them later in life. They get laid into the foundation of our personality, literally shaping how we view the world. They are, in effect, already inside our defensive perimeter.

How can I get rid of them? I don’t know. In all likelihood, they’re a big enough part of my personality that I may never be rid of them. At this point, the most I can do is to try and quiet the voices of doubt and guilt, keeping them at bay.

But in the dead of the night, when you’re alone with nothing but the darkness inside and the darkness without, it’s hard.

Guns

While I was writing my article about the Nerf party yesterday, I found myself getting slightly off track. Unlike most times that happens, however, this time I noticed it, and decided to break the new train of thought into its own post. Which is probably a good thing, since the topic is one a lot of people (on either side of the fence) find it hard to be balanced and rational about.

I’d like to talk about guns.

One thing that made the Nerf party interesting for me is the fact that I don’t really like guns. No, that’s not quite right: I don’t have much of an interest in real-world, bullet-firing guns. I don’t own any, I’ve never shot one, and to be honest the cultural fixation on them (and resulting impossibility to be rational about them) makes me a bit nervous. But I’ve had fun playing laser tag and paintball, to say nothing of some of the video games I play. The Nerf party was, for me, abstracted enough from reality that I could have fun with it. It’s much like the melees I do in the SCA: sure, I may have no desire to wander into a crowded public space and start hacking and slashing indiscriminately, but I can still have fun hitting my friends with sticks.

While I was writing, that last thought gave me pause. After all, was my fascination with medieval combat and equipment (armor, swords, etc.) really that much different than modern gun culture? When I go to fighter practice every week, how is that any different than someone who goes to the firing range every Saturday? Is the collection of swords in my room any different than someone else’s gun rack?

Part of the problem, I think, is that “the gun issue” has been made out to be far more black-and-white than it really is. Guns are either elevated as a symbol of personal freedom or condemned as a bogeyman, with no room for subtlety in between. That sort of polarization will inevitably poison the well of any attempted conversation.

I know I’m guilty of this myself. It’s hard to stay rational when it seems you can’t turn around without hearing about some new incident of gun violence. And it’s so much easier to respond with a knee-jerk reaction than it is to take the time to stop, think, and perhaps face some uncomfortable truths.

Like I said, I don’t have any personal interest in real-world guns. I do find the intensity of gun culture in this country to be disturbing at times. But I do have several violent hobbies myself. To condemn someone else for theirs would make me something of a hypocrite. It’s not easy admitting that, but I try. I also tried hard to avoid offending anyone with exaggeration and straw-man arguments. No matter what your opinion on the subject, I hope I succeeded. If I fell short, I’m willing to have a conversation with you, as long as we can all agree to follow Wheaton’s Law.

P.S.: I would encourage you to go read this Cracked article on the subject that I think is relevant to what I’m trying to say. Too often the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the situation gets depicted as more polarized than it might actually be in reality.

Retail Anthropology

If nothing else, working retail gives me plenty of time to observe people. But that observation is not just limited to the customers. Sure, you get to know the different types of customer: which ones need a bit more help, which ones will talk your ear off, and which ones to avoid like the plague. And yeah, you get to observe your coworkers: the energetic one, the cynical one, the petty one, the one who’s just there to do their job adequately and move on. But for me, the real interest is in watching the managers.

Managers are in a different class than the rest of us working peons, as they have the capability to make decisions that actually have an effect on things in the store. At my job, I regularly encounter a few layers of management: department, senior, and store. Department managers are responsible for a certain section of the store. Senior managers oversee several department managers in a task group. Store managers, obviously, are in charge of the store (I’m including assistant store managers in this group).

I get on well enough with my department manager. I appreciate that they’re on the ground working with me most mornings, and that they value my feedback to a certain extent. For instance, I’ll be asked for advice on where to put things, as well as asked to help with some short-range planning tasks. There is a power differential, true, but I still feel respected. Plus, even if I advise them, the final decision (and responsibility is theirs.

Senior managers are a slightly different story. Because they have to oversee multiple departments, they are by necessity a little more detached from the day-to-day workings of the department. You’re more likely to hear something to the effect of “Do this, this, and that” from these managers, without them taking into account (in my opinion) the necessities of what those changes would entail. They swoop in, shake things up, and then move on, leaving other people to “work out the details” (read: clean up their mess).

I don’t interact much with the store managers, but they seem like nice enough people. They are, again by necessity, a bit more removed from the day-to-day workings, but the ones at my job seem fairly in tune with what needs to be done to meet their requests. I admire their ability to keep so many details of the business in their head at a time.

But for me, what’s really interesting is seeing managers interact with other managers that outrank them. A department manager, while nearly master of their domain, is still subjected to veto from a senior manager. As such, care must often be taken when presenting an idea to a senior manager lest they decide to change things to feel useful.

That may have been a bit uncharitable. But if you’ve dealt with middle management, you know how pointy their hair can get.

The real entertainment comes when senior managers interact with the store managers. For some reason, I can’t help but picture a dog rolling up on its belly before the pack alpha. Their whole demeanor changes: rather than making decisions from on high, they become much more appeasing and willing to please. They become subordinates, which is not a position grunts like me normally see them in.

I’m sure my girlfriend, with her background in anthropology, would have a field day with this sort of thing. But even I have enough insight to see things that amuse me. Has anyone else noticed anything similar? I can see it happening in any work environment that has multiple levels of authority.

Dealing With Interviews

Job interviews are funny things. I haven’t had many of them, and fewer still have panned out. But I did have one recently, and it got me thinking about the recurring patterns I go through each time the opportunity comes up. It’s no surprise that I get stressed. In fact, if I didn’t stress out at least a little bit, I’d probably be worried. But what’s interesting is what I stress out about.

The first big thing I stress out about is “being prepared.” This generally takes the form of a last-minute cramming session, where I try to learn as much about the company and the job as possible, desperately looking up buzzwords in an attempt to brush up on my relevant skills. But mostly this boils down to me trying to guess at things I have no realistic chance of finding out. Are they going to ask me about X? Or will they want to know about Y? The possibility exists that they could ask me to demonstrate Z, but will it be z, Z, or even zed? This tends to edge me into a downward spiral of neurosis and speculation.

Another big issue I stress about is myself. Or, at least how I present myself. Of all the silly things to worry about, this is probably one of the biggest. After all, I can’t exactly just change who I am to fit some arbitrary presentation that I think would be appreciated by a recruiter. But being who I am, I can’t help but worry. Will I appear confident enough? Will I come across as too apologetic? Will my desire to be precise and truthful with my statements be construed as vagueness and incompetence?

I make no claims at any rationality regarding either of these worries. That being said, I have figured out some ways to deal with them, or at least mitigate the loss of sanity.

For the first set of worries, I generally handle getting prepared like I do for any big presentation: I don’t prepare! Okay, that’s not 100% true. My preparations tend to be fairly vague, maybe a series of bullet points I’d like to talk about or questions I’d like to ask. Once the big day comes, I am generally banking on the fact that the amount of brainpower it will take to say on top of things will keep me busy enough that I won’t be able to panic. Like my writing habits, I tend to work best on the fly. Or at least, I think I do.

The second issue is a bit thornier, and I haven’t really sure how to deal with it. But I did have something of an epiphany around the time of my most recent interview. I realized that, in all honesty, I would likely be better served by just being myself, as any artificial masks I attempted to wear would most likely come back to haunt me later. After all, I am myself, and that’s not likely to change any time soon. So why worry about constants? That’s like refusing to leave your house because you’re worried gravity will pull you down and you’ll fall and hurt yourself. Or something.

I guess you could make the argument that I’m fixing these problems by ignoring them, but I don’t think about it like that. To me, I’ve found the most efficient way to deal with the issues at hand, given my finite resources of time and energy.

We’ll see how that works out for me.

Hope

I’ll be honest: I feel a tiny bit better after writing that last post. I’ve probably gotten overly concerned on what Other People Think™. Looking at site stats is only going to end in heartache. I should probably deactivate the plugin, but it does occasionally provide me with interesting info. And after all, if this blog helps me even if no one reads it, then isn’t that still a net win?

Anyway, that’s not quite what I wanted to talk about today. I’d instead like to talk about what I think one of my triggers for this current Funk may have been. No, not lack of sleep. Not even growing discontent with my retail grunt employment. Both of those may be contributing factors, but I feel the big one is, paradoxically, hope.

“But isn’t hope a good thing?” I hear the imagined voice of Constant Reader ask in my head. “Doesn’t it drive you to great things? Doesn’t it get you through hard times?” Yes and yes, it can do both. But one must not forget that hope is a feeling, and if one is having issues with those (like say, hypothetically, depression has left you feeling nothing at all like some sort of superpower), it can be quite a shock to your system.

You know how when you sit in one position for too long you get all sore when you stand up? Well, the same thing seems to happen to my mind with emotions. I’ve gotten used to just “getting by,” keeping my head down and trudging through my job as a retail grunt. It may not be getting me anywhere, but at least I’m paying the bills. Hope is like when Doc Brown shows up with his flying DeLorean at the end of Back to the Future and whisks Marty McFly away into a future that, while amazing, is also more than a little overwhelming.

You have seen Back to the Future, right? Otherwise that analogy won’t make much sense. Anyway, I’m just going to assume you have so we can move on.

Where was I? Ah yes, hope. Lately, I’ve been given more cause to hope than usual. I’ve had a few friends approach me about job opportunities, and it’s reminded me that my time in retail hell doesn’t need to be endless. But I’d kinda gotten used to the drudgery, and the aforementioned reminder has been a little shocking to my system. It’s also thrown into sharp relief how unfulfilling my job is at the moment.

And I’m not sure what to do with that.

As unintuitive as it sounds, hope and other strong emotions can be a curse. True, they can drive you forward, striving for change and accomplishment, but not without growing pains. And while it sounds really bad, I feel like I don’t have much experience dealing with things like hope. When I’m in the dark clutches of a Funk, it seems like there are far too many big decisions (grad school, dual majors in college, working retail, etc.) that haven’t panned out. This is definitely not the life I expected for myself as a 17-year-old high school graduate and overachiever. The real world has not been kind to my dreams.

That’s not to say my life completely sucks, of course. I’m lucky enough to have a loving girlfriend, time to indulge my hobbies and passions, an awesome circle of friends and family, and a job that pays most of the bills. But it’s been hard to hold on to hope against the crushing weight of reality.

I’m over-qualifying my arguments. That’s probably a sign it’s time to stop.