Truth is.  I simply love challenging myself to do better, to be better, and to always aspire to be what I feel I have the potential to be.  I can be a poor communicator though, especially face to face.  If you were to ask my girlfriend Cassandra to describe me in as few words as possible she would probably say “He’s a teddy bear.”

A teddy bear.  Right.

In true teddy bear fashion, I just wanted to take a piece of this blog and dedicate it to the two loves of my life.  Cassandra and Dirk.  Since I know she reads every post, and never says anything to me about it.  Since I know, sometimes reading my posts can probably lead her to question herself, and question my happiness.  And since I know, I’m not always good at expressing myself face to face, even to her.  I figured I would say it to the world.

Cassandra

I love you Cassandra.  You make me as happy as a miserable fucker like me can be.  Never question yourself, and never question my happiness or my love for you.  Especially not based on the cynical ramblings on my blog.

You are always happy.  The opposite of me.  Always offering perspective and keeping me on level ground.  Always cheerful and willing to do anything.  Always smiling.  You have an unstoppable smile that infects everyone around you.  You have an amazing ability to find the positive side of every situation.

You are hard working.  Never taking a day off, despite me using any excuse to stay home.  You have made a life for yourself and proven to everyone who ever doubted you that you are an achiever.  You take pride in your work and you always exceed expectations.  You are very mature and responsible.  I look up to you very much for your drive and motivation to do better.

You are supportive.  Everything I do, even this little silly blog, you stand behind.  You actually read what I write, and leave the occasional comment.  You push me to work on the things I want to work on.  You never discourage.  You make me believe anything is possible.

You are positive.  Impossible to discourage.

You are fun.  No matter what it is, from sporting events, to playing video games.  Always up for anything.  No suggestion is too crazy.  Nothing is too lame.  You will try anything, go anywhere, talk to anyone.  You have a passion for life I only wish I could begin to emulate.

Most important of all, you are you.

And to Dirk, even though you can’t read.  You fill a gap in our lives that nothing else can fill.  You can make me smile when nothing else can.  Your unconditional love toward us and the way you are always happy makes me envy you in so many ways.  I love you little man.

Everyone should own a dog.

The two of you are my life.  Even though I might not show it all the time, and every day isn’t perfect.  You need to know that if it wasn’t for the two of you by my side, I really don’t where I would be right now.  So to all of the readers out there who are not Cassandra or Dirk, now you know who the two loves of my life are, and maybe, hopefully, you might think I am such an emo angry bastard anymore.  I’m just a teddy bear.  Someone who just probably cares too much about the things few people even think about.

While I know it is probably out of place for my to call myself a “writer” since in reality, having a blog hardly makes you a writer, it is something I am actively doing, and actively trying to become better at.  I doubt I will ever write a book, or even a short work of fiction, but I do enjoy posing questions, and jotting down thoughts.  So, for the sake of this article, let me call myself a writer.

Kurt Vonnegut

Today on Twitter, one of the few people I follow, DoshDosh, posted a link to an article: vonnegutSTYLE.  As I am sure you do not know, Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite author of all time, hands down.  I have never been much of a bookworm, but I believe I have read almost every one of Vonneguts books.  His writing style is captivating, and his stories just, amazing.

When I saw the link DoshDosh posted I immediately clicked on it. As someone who is still in the infant stages as a writer, and actively developing a style for myself, the idea of getting advice on style from the master himself was something I could not pass up.  So now, as per his recommendation, I suppose I shall try to evaluate my own style against his guidelines publicly.  I hope you can offer me any feedback or constructive criticisms you might have.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.

-Kurt Vonnegut

1. Find a subject you care about
   This is the entire point of this blog.  I feel I only write about things I care about, without compromise.  The issue lies in the fact that often finding such inspiration to write comes in waves.  I find a direct correlation between my moods, and my passion to write.  I feel it is good on one hand, where my output is only of a certain quality, to me.  Yet bad, in that I do not write nearly as much as I would like to, since I cannot force myself to have a topic worth writing about all the time.
2. Do not ramble
   I feel I need a lot of work in this area, as most of my posts could be regarded as pure rambling.  I would really love some input with respect to this.
3. Keep it simple
   I consider myself a good communicator, yet, you will never see something as simple and powerful as “To Be or Not to Be” come out of this blog.  I feel I have a good mix of complexity in my writing while it is still easy to understand what I am trying to convey.  I am not an english major and I not studied literature, so I am sure I could use a lot or work in this area.
4. Have guts to cut
   In the article, Vonnegut describes this as basically getting rid of useless words and sentences.  Do not try to fill your writings with too much fluff.  I think I need to work on this a good bit.  I can be a bit wordy and repetitive at times.
5. Sound like yourself
   I feel this is one of my strong points.  With me, what you read is what you get.
6. Say what you mean
   While I would like to think this is true for me, it is a tough point.  I realize that this blog is totally public with my name attached to it, and unlike Vonnegut, writing is not my livelihood.  I often find myself censored by the very premise of the wrong people seeing the wrong things written here.  In most cases I do say what I mean, but not always.
7. Pity the readers
   Basically what he is suggesting here is that you make what you write easy to read.  I’m pretty sure I could use some work here as well.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So, in closing, I suppose it is helpful to step back and evaluate yourself every once in a while, but I think the most important evaluations come from those other than yourself.  Based on the guidelines set fourth by the great Kurt Vonnegut, I ask you:  How am I doing?

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

I am not usually a very sappy person.  I am not sure I have ever really been so impacted by a speech, especially by a politician, but it was a pretty legenary speech.  Barack exhibits passion for his job, his country, and most importantly, his family, that few have the strength to exhibit.  Look at what he has become.

It makes me think, what is Inspiration, what is Passion?  I consider myself a very passionate person, but do I even really know what that means?

At work, sometimes I fight hard for something I believe in.  I feel it would be what most people would call passion.  In life, I do the same.  Problem is, many times passion gets labeled as anger, frustration, or various other negative things.  How can you take passion toward something and turn it into something inspiring, rather than something negative?

Often times, fighting for a cause, or fighting for anything you are passionate about, leads toward a rocky path.  A path that is often a very hard one to traverse.  You will meet hatred, resistance, and other people who want to stand in your way.  Often you will want to give up.

I believe that successful acts of passion are acts which often lead to inspiration.  They allow short-sighted defeatist people, like me, to see that sometimes, just sometimes, if you try hard enough, and don’t give up, you can make things happen.  The tricky part is not allowing passion to become anger.  Not allowing it to become frustration, and allow it to become…inspiring.

Vote or Die!

Do I care about politics?  A little bit.  I mean, so far as it impacts me, or the worlds perspective toward our country, the economy, etc.  However, I really don’t care that much.  I care enough to watch the debates, then go out on election day and cast my vote.  What I don’t care for, is how suddenly, around this time of year, every four years, everyone is a pundit.  Everyone has their super strong views, and goes around spouting nonsense to everyone else.  Everyone has such passion toward their candidate.

I will go on record as saying, I do have passion toward my candidate, a little.  I do want Bush out of office quite bad.  What I don’t have passion toward is watching every asshole become an expert.  Having to bite my tongue around the office because my political views do not agree with most other white-collar peoples views, and having my precious twitter and wow chat rooms constantly full of political jargon.

I was thinking today, how many millions of dollars were spent on this campaign, and, how much of it will be filling our landfills tomorrow?  Well, according to this site, the total cost of the combined presidential campaigns this year was OVER A BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS.  For what?  Travel, food, websites, stickers, signs, and various other things that will be in the collective countries garbage can tomorrow?

I wish the process in this country worked a bit differently.  Between the conventions, the debates, and the news coverage it felt more like watching a big sporting event with the two main event boxers constantly bad mouthing each other on some grand stage then it felt like choosing the next leader of our country.

Worst part is, that even with all the advertizing, I’m still not sure why I voted the way I did.  The issues weren’t clear to me, all I know is, tax-cut this, gay marriage that, pro-choice, etc.  But what about the issues that really AFFECT ME.  I don’t know what those issues are, nor do I know where our candidates stand on them.  What I do know is, based on all those commercials, McCain is one maverick who sure doesn’t like Obama, and, Obama likes the word change, a lot.

So, I guess I will go back to not being all too concerned with it.  To all those of you who are feverishly refreshing election results websites.  Take a break for a few hours and put on fox news.  The Black Panthers are forcing all republicans to vote Obama.

1. to carry out, or bring to realization, as a prophecy or promise.
2. to perform or do, as duty; obey or follow, as commands.
3. to satisfy (requirements, obligations, etc.): a book that fulfills a long-felt need.
4. to bring to an end; finish or complete, as a period of time: He felt that life was over when one had fulfilled his threescore years and ten.
5. to develop the full potential of (usually used reflexively): She realized that she could never fulfill herself in such work.

The above definitions aren’t bad, especially #3 and #5.  I believe #3 is the most accurate as to what I am looking for, with one problem, you would then have to define the word satisfaction, which would be sort of circular.

To me, fulfillment is something you feel.  You either feel fulfilled at a given moment, or you do not.  The feeling to me, is mostly about feeling like I have done something useful, toward the betterment of my self.  For some reason though, going to work, getting a paycheck, or paying a bill on time, does not fulfill me.  What does fulfill me, is, taking a day off of work to do things I enjoy, writing a blog post, or helping out a friend.  I suppose, to me, being fulfilled is directly tied to feeling like I am making a difference in someones life, even just my own life.

The problem is, for me, that feeling is rare, and often short lived.

Do you feel fulfillment should be something along the lines of a “high” where you feel it directly after you do something useful, or more of a constant?  I tend to believe it should be a constant.  You should feel like your life is fulfilling, all the time.

When people see my life from the outside, they think I am just some sad dude, with no reason to be.  I make a good living, have a stable job, a great girlfriend, a house, a new car, and a dog.  What’s not to like?  To quote another comment on my last entry by MooGoo:

I’m starting to think that overall, happy people are happy regardless of their situation, and depressed people are depressed regardless of their situation.

Happy people have this mystical ability to accept whatever life throws at them. Non-acceptance, always wanting something else, thus never having what you want, is depressing.

Knowing that “you have it pretty good (compared to some other people)” is small comfort. After all, you’re not some starving African kid with AIDS, so you should stop bitching right?

I have to say, I agree with this 100%.  I am starting to believe that I am simply one of those glass is half-empty sort of people, and as such, never satisfied.  Being compared to someone less fortunate than I, does nothing to make me feel better about my current life.

If I was a starving kid in Africa, and you gave me a warm house and tons of food, it would probably only take me a few weeks to complain about something.

The American Dream is belief in the freedom that allows all citizens and residents of the United States to pursue their goals in life through hard work. Today, it often refers to one’s material prosperity, which is dependent upon one’s abilities and work ethic, and not on a rigid class structure.

Although the phrase’s meaning has evolved over the course of American history, for some people, it is the opportunity to achieve greater material prosperity than was possible in their countries of origin. For others it is the opportunity for their children to grow up and receive an education and its consequent career opportunities. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the restrictions of class, caste, religion, race, or ethnic group.

To me, this is not a dream.  Perhaps if you come from another country where you have been previously oppressed, the life I live would seem like paradise.  Perhaps, I am just a spoiled brat who can’t accept that the life he has is actually quite good.  No matter how you want to label me, I think the American Dream sucks, and I think it is an illusion.

So what is the modern american dream?  I would summarize it as saying:

To live in America, in a nice housing development, with two kids, a dog, a cat, and a heaping mound of debt.  To work at a job you barely enjoy, to make money, so that you can spend it on shit you don’t need.  Hope that you can afford to put your kids through college so they can live the same life you did.  Retire, and actually start to enjoy your life, once you’re almost 70 fucking years old.  Then die in a retirement home because your selfish kids didn’t want to deal with you.

I am just a ray of sunshine aren’t I?  But seriously, boiled down, this is the modern American Dream.  This is what the lucky members of our society are living.  Not to discount the fact that in reality, I know I have it pretty damn good.  It’s just that, living life should be what you want it to be, it should be enjoyable.  That’s the point, right?

This is where I am.  Should be enjoyable.  Without sounding too emo and suicidal about the whole thing, I can make an analogy.  If you are reading a book, and you don’t like it, do you continue reading it?  If you are playing a game, and it’s not fun, do you continue playing it?  If you are with a girl, and you are unhappy, do you stay with her?  The answer to all of the above questions is clearly, no.  So then, how come if you are living a life you hate, it is unacceptable to simply quit life?  Suicide is obviously a bad idea, it is the most selfish act one can commit.  I am not suggesting anyone do it, nor would I ever do it.  I am simply posing the question - Why is it so unacceptable?

How can I find Joy in my life?

Yup.

Education and Employment

For most people, from the time you are born, you are being sculpted.  Sculpted into what you will become someday.  From the time you are about 3 years old, barely even self-aware yet, you being the process of formal education.  Saving pre-school and kindergarten, you spend about 8 hours per day, 5 days a week, at school.  From the time you are about 6 years old, to the time you are 18 years old, you are being taught.  Trained.  Shown the things you need to know to be a successful adult.  After you are 18, many people volunteer for more education, with the expectation that the more educated you are, and the more pieces of paper you have, the more successful you will be.  Success?  A topic for an article in itself, the concept of success has become very warped.

From a very early age we are given the idea that we need an education to work towards a goal, that goal being, a good job.  So at 18, we either go to college for several more years, or we jump right into the workforce.  Those that go to college, after those years spent learning even more, we jump right into the workforce.

Why?  To make money.  If anyone even tries to suggest that they want/get a job for any other reason, then to make money, they are a liar.  So basically, we spend the first couple decades of our lives being groomed into a money making tool, so that we can provide income to ourselves, and our family, under the pretense that having that money will provide us the things we want, and need, to be happy.

The system has been designed in such a way that one cannot survive without money, and that one cannot obtain money, without a job to provide income.  Clearly these jobs can vary greatly on the scale of how much they suck, but even the best jobs, still suck.  Even pro athletes, and movie stars, I am sure, would much rather spend their time in leisure, or with their families, then being grossly overpaid to do things that to us, seem fun.

The purpose of your life

So then, if it can be argued that the purpose of your life in this day and age, is essentially a linear progression of:  Birth, Infancy, School, More School, Work, Retirement, Death.  What would you say the progression should be if you had to choose what you did?  If you did not need money to survive, if someone else provided everything you needed to you, what would you do?

Since the dawn of time, man has sought purpose.  No other organism on this planet has such a superficial life with such superficial purpose.  We are given roughly 75 years of life on this planet, to do with it what we choose.  Nature’s only concern is that we reproduce.  In days of early man, time was spent raising a family, making babies, and hunting food.  Later, we decided to make tools to aid us in this effort, even later, someone devised the idea that one could make a tool for someone else, and sell it, for a fee.  And even later, our entire life on this planet became being spent devising ways to make our lives easier, and, finding ways to profit from those ideas such that our own lives can be even more comfortable as we reap the benefits of our ideas.

Fast forward to modern times.  A system of currency has been developed, companies that provide such goods that our lives are more comfortable proudly provide us with all the things we need to live a happy, comfortable, fulfilling life.  Problem is, we need to be able to give these companies something in exchange for their goods.  Since we cant trade skins anymore, we trade labor.

You work for me helping to create these items of value, I will give you tokens for your efforts.  You give me those tokens back, I will give you the items you desire.  And thus, the cycle starts.  The purpose of our lives has become a constant uphill battle of obtaining the objects of our desire, and working hard to earn the tokens we need to pay for them.

When we age too much to be viable labor anymore, we retire, and enjoy the last few years of our life, doing what it is we wanted to be doing the entire time.  Nothing.  Shortly after which, we die.

The machine

As outlined above, there is a machine at work here.  A system of goods, services, and currency.  Companies exist to create the things we enjoy.  Other companies exist to provide those companies with the resources they need to create the things we enjoy, and even more companies exist to provide the services, logistics, and resources to all those companies, all so, you guessed it, we can have the things we enjoy.

So, we work at one of these companies, to make money, so that we can spend our money by giving back to the exact people who are paying us.

All this so that, when we are not at work, we have our television to watch, we have our video games to play, and our pre-packaged food to eat.  We have our care to drive, and electricity.  We have central air conditioning, and heat.  We have a comfy mattress to sleep on, and a toothbrush to keep our teeth nice and white.  We work so hard so that when we are not at work, our life is, what we think it should be.

If these companies did not exist, and no one created these luxuries we enjoy so much.  If the objects in our homes, and the video games we want do play did not exist, nor the tv shows or movies, nor the luxury car, or boats, nor the fishing rods and cameras, what would we want?

It is indeed a machine.  One enormous machine creating the very reasons we tire of work, creating the reasons we would rather stay home to enjoy these items we work so hard for.  And as such, in order to obtain these items, and maintain a standard of living, we go out each day, and contribute work into this machine.  We are the fuel for which the system burns to churn out the very objects we crave.  We resent the fact that we must spend so much of our life doing things we do not want to do, just so that when we get home, we can do the things we want to do.

What it boils down to…

As I am sure you already know, we must work.  We, the masses, must have a job to collect our dollars, to buy the things from the companies we work for.  All so that for about 4 hours a day, we can truly relax and enjoy our lives, all to go to sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.

The activities we enjoy the most get relinquished to being mere “hobbies”, and we spend but a fraction of our time actually doing the things we love.  But, such is life in this world.  In a system designed so that all of us humans are merely a means to an end.

Reproducing and raising families has become secondary to work.  People cannot afford to have children either due to time, or money constraints.  Some people choose to have children when they cannot afford to, and live a live of near poverty, others, decide to never have children because they are too selfish to share their income and wealth with someone else.  Then there are the minority of people who have kids, and can easily afford to raise those children properly…properly meaning, providing them with objects they want, providing them with a good education, and steering them in the direction their parents went in, to become another cog.

I know this seems like a gloomy outlook, but in my opinion, it is the truth.  Fact is, this is how it is, and how it must be.  I just wish I could find a job, a purpose, in life, which I actually enjoyed to some extent and did not dread waking up each day.  A job where I could create, a job where I was not subject to the whims and bias of other people, a job where I had the freedom to work as much or as little as I wanted to on any given day.

I guess I should launch a website and cover it with advertising.

I swear, I'm not emo!

I used to think it was just for me, but I really am beginning to believe that is not true.  I used to not care if anyone read it, or if I had any traffic, but recently, I do care.  Coming up with topics to write about several days a week is getting harder and harder (as you might have noticed from the lack of new posts), and it is beginning to feel like a thankless chore, rather than a creative outlet.  

Lately I feel I censor myself far too much for this to be a blog about me, or for me.  Ever since some of my family found the blog, and decided it would be a good idea to essentially make fun of me, I have felt quite inhibited by what I can and cannot write.  The same goes for work.  God forbid I wrote anything about work.  Lately, my biggest motivations for topics to write on have been family, friend, or other personal life related issues.  Problem is, I feel I cannot write about those topics for several reasons:

1. Who cares to read about my personal issues?  I know I don’t care to read about yours.
2. Too many of my family and friends read this blog for me to be willing to put myself out there like that, and talk about those issues publicly, since I am sure there would be consequences.
3. I really didn’t want this blog to be another personal emo-journal.  I wanted it to be an interesting blog to read for people who were interested in philosophical or otherwise thought provoking topics.

The problem is, people aren’t interested in reading about the topics I write about.  Most of what I write about are highly debatable philosophical questions, which would do best with a nice number of comments to go along with them.  But, I get none.  The blog posts I get the most hits on are either game or tech related.  My #1 post from a hits/comments standpoint is my post about why Windows Vista Doesn’t Suck, and honestly, it is one of the posts I personally like the least.

The posts I enjoy to write about are, the ones you see on her more often then not.  Philosophy and Psychology related topics, but, they generate almost no traffic, and I get the feeling I spend so much time writing and perfecting my posts/site, just so no one can even ever read it.

My motivation is dying.

I know I cannot expect a blog such as this to be an overnight success, but I thought that after 4 months I would see more than a whopping TWENTY DAILY VISITORS!

Alas, I am beginning to feel the days of this blog are numbered.  I cannot seem to find a comfort zone of topics I, enjoy writing about, people enjoy reading about, and that I can generate a steady stream of topics week after week, to write about.

I do not want this to become a personal journal, nor do I want it to become just another tech or gaming related blog, the internets would be mad at me if I did that.

So please, if you are actually reading this, leave me a comment with your thoughts or suggestions so that I can get an idea of what the few readers I do have, enjoy reading about!  I want to find my motivation again!

I should preface this by saying that my ultimate goal is to work for myself, and successfully run a business, preferably some sort of website that people enjoy using.  Short of attaining that lofty dream, however, I feel my conventional career path has been a successful one.  My goals in career development are independent of my overall life dreams and goals, which I work on in parallel, using my free time.

Developing a Career

Know what you are good at, and do it.

Everyone has some sort of dream job.  For me it was a toss up between working for a race team designing and programming engine control units, or running a successful web based business.  However, I also realized that both of the above career choices were long shots.  So, I took something I knew I was good at already, something I knew I wouldn’t hate doing, and went down that path.  For me that thing was computer hardware.  I knew that I could have a successful career working with computers, with relative ease, and I could use that career path as a slingshot to working on my other goals in parallel.

I know this is going to sound awful, but in most cases the best choice is to not follow your dreams.  Obviously some people have followed their dreams and been quite successful.  No one becomes a rock star or a pro athlete by not trying.  Thing is, if you aren’t blessed with natural talent, and you find yourself struggling with your dreams, you need to realize that it’s best to do something else, at some point.  Often times what you are actually good at, is not the same as what you would love to do.

Go to college.

This is just some advice from someone who has “been there, done that”.  Again, there are plenty of people who are highly successful who never went to college, but if you plan to develop a career in any sort of corporate sector, the ceiling for you without a college degree, is low.  I, personally, went to school for computer engineering.  I would not deny for even a moment that I do not, and have not, used a single thing I was taught at college in my career.  However, I had a job paying over $70,000 a year from the moment I graduated college.  It opens a lot of doors.  It is really just an expensive piece of paper at the end of the day, but it is also a very valuable piece of paper.  Graduating college with a serious degree program not only shows potential employers that you are smart, but it also shows that you are dedicated and able to finish things that you start.

Never stop learning.

If your company offers any sort of college tuition programs, make use of them.  I am personally currently pursuing a Masters in Business Administration and my company is picking up the tab.  It is a lot of work, but if you turn down a free graduate degree, then something is seriously wrong with you.

Get training, and certifications.  From my perspective, certifications are almost useless, and stand for nothing.  From a hiring managers perspective though, they are very valuable.  I have several certifications which cost my roughly $100 each to obtain, and I was able to pass the tests with little to no preparation.  If you have knowledge on a subject, back it up with a certification.  It really helps.

Training helps you stay up to date on the latest technologies you are working with.  Most companies will reimburse you for any training you wish to receive.  If you don’t wish to get training on a particular technology then get other types of training such as project management training or corporate development training.  This is all managerial ammunition.

Challenge yourself.
If you have a job which outlines certain responsibilities, and you do them, you will likely never get fired.  But you will also likely never get promoted.  In my own career I have often used my free time to read about other subjects I have had interest in, or gotten trained on technologies I thought it might be useful to have the knowledge of.

As a result, I have been able to expand my horizons quit a bit.  I started my career as a backup and recovery analyst and I have since made moves, and gotten promotions into areas which interest me much more, such as SAN and Storage.  I have greater respect and responsibility around the office now then I had ever had in the past.

Be outspoken, be replaceable.

Always speak your mind, but also be careful with your words, and pick your battles.  It is very important to make yourself heard, especially when you are going to be the one who is ultimately responsible for dealing with the decisions which are made all around you.  Do not bend over to management will every time, challenge them.  Expressing yourself not only exhibits your passion for what you do, but also your knowledge of your area of expertise.

Do not hold information so close to you that you are not replaceable.  Many people hold their responsibilities close to their chests so that they cannot be fired, but, if you can’t be fired then you also probably can’t be promoted.  Document what you do so that it is easy to transition someone else into your role.  It will make things a lot easier when it comes time for that big promotion.  Holding things close not only makes it more difficult for your coworkers, but it also makes it hard for management to ever consider moving you out of your current position.

Managing Change

Embrace Change.
Change happens, always.  There are people who fear it, and try to prevent it, and people who embrace it and use it to their advantage.  You should always be one to embrace it.  If your company is making moves to move to technologies which you don’t understand, learn them, and be one of the people who helps make it happen.  If you get a new manager who tries to shake things up a little bit, accept it and do your best to make a good impression with them.

For me, one of my close co-workers recently left the company, and also left a very big hole with very big shoes to fill.  I stepped up and offered to fill them.  It was the best thing I ever did in my career.  It opened up a whole new set of doors for me.

Change often means more work, especially in the short time.  It also usually means more stress, on you and your family.  More often then not though, the work pays off.

Recognize when to quit.
All change is not good.  Sometimes you have to know when to recognize bad change, and make drastic and scary decisions around that change.  Big company mergers, layoffs, recession.  All very scary.  In my career I was part of one very sloppy takeover, and a huge mess resulted.  I started looking for a new job.

Luckily for me, I found a new job very quickly, which I enjoy much more then the old one.  I turned negative change into positive change.

In conclusion

To wrap it up, the synopsis is:  Do what you know, never stop learning, and don’t fear change.  If you follow those simple guidelines you should have a comfortable and successful career.  I am only 26 years old right now and I feel like I have a very bright future.  My rules don’t apply to everyone but for me, they haven’t let me down yet.

Obvious Uniqueness

Conformity is much more than most people think it is.  It’s not just emo kids who all wear dark clothes.  It’s not just polo shirt wearing middle managers who go home to their comfortable house in their cookie cutter housing developments.  It’s not just how everyone on digg has the same political views.  No, it’s about not having the ability to formulate your own opinions, lacking the ability to think freely, and being too inhibited to express those thoughts and opinions.

Everyone likes to believe they are unique.  No one will ever tell you that they are a conformist, after all, conforming is always a bad thing, right?  Or is it?

Society is cruel.  It forces you to conform.  We must all obey the same laws, shop at the same stores, live in the same cookie cutter houses, and drive the same types of cars everyone else does.  We must work at a job, we must do what society allows us to do, to survive.  There are exceptions to this rule of course, many people have found unique ways to provide for their families, and unique ways to live, but for those of us who have already made choices in life which have left us feeling very much “the same”, as everyone else around us, what can we do?

I think the answer is simple:  Re-think what conformity actually is, and redefine it to yourself.  I myself, believe I am unique, of course.  Thing is, I live in a townhouse community, and I work at a 9 to 5 job in Information Technology.  I wear khakis to work every day, and I shop at Old Navy.  How much more “normal” could I be?

Being normal, or conforming, is not a bad thing.  If you want to be totally unique then cover your entire body with tattoos and run naked through a shopping mall.  If you want to be unique, paint your house bright pink.  Hell, you could drive to work in a bright lime green 1948 Oldsmobile.  I bet no one else in the parking lot has one of those.  Would you want that kind of attention though?

My point is, uniqueness is more of a state of mind.  Most people feel uniqueness is simply the ability to draw attention to yourself by looking or acting different.  When I watch the news, I accept the information being told to me, and formulate an opinion based on the facts I have.  When I choose who to vote for, I go with my gut.  When I design a website, I design what I like, not someone else.  I am opinionated.  I am outspoken.  I think, freely and I speak, freely.  This is the key to being truly unique.

So many people strive so hard to appear unique, when they aren’t.  If you are goth, emo, preppy, or a skater.  You look just like your friends.  If you are truly unique, on the outside, then you probably have some sort of birth defect, in which case the looks you are drawing from the people around you, aren’t the types of looks you want.  Pardon my insensitivity here, but it is the truth.  Have you ever taken someone out to eat sushi and had them say (looking they are about to puke):  “It tastes very…unique.”  Being unique, isn’t always good.

Uniqueness is inside all of us.  It is a matter of expressing it.  In day to day life, it is easiest and often best to just blend in and go unnoticed.  Wear jeans and a t-shirt, lay off the eye shadow.  When it comes time to truly express yourself, in the form of art, music, public speaking, web design, or whatever other subject it might be, be yourself.  These are your opportunities.  If you feel strongly about something, speak up about it.  When you have a class presentation to do, don’t just stand at the front of the room and read from a sheet of paper, use these opportunities to express who you are.  Sitting in the back row wearing all black, won’t help you later in life.

Be who you are, and let people know who that person is.  Take opportunities to constructively express yourself, don’t waste time and energy drawing attention to yourself when you don’t need to.

An example from my real life is, firstly, as I stated above: I am about as normal as they come.  On the outside.  I do not waste effort and energy in my life toward trying to look unique.  I wear what I want to wear, I drive what I want to drive, and I live in a house which is economical for me.

I am an IT professional, and a good analogy for me is - look at this server rack below.  They all look the same don’t they?  Nothing stands out about any of them in particular, just like me.

Hidden Uniqueness

What you don’t know about these servers, though, is that they all do something different.  Equally important.  Each one of them has a job, a function.  From the outside looking in, I look like your regular run of the mill IT guy.  If you ask around the office about me, most people will tell you something very different though.  I go against the grain.  I speak my mind.  I come up with ideas.  I embrace change, and I cause change.  This has helped me in my career greatly, and it is all thanks to my ability to think freely, and speak my mind.  My ability to be unique.

In high school, I made some of the most memorable class presentations of all time, but every other day of the week I was just that quiet normal kid that no one paid attention to.

Work toward drawing positive attention to yourself, highlight your abilities, your uniqueness.  Make it known to the world what it is that you are good at, what ideas you have which should be known about.  Make an impact.

Don’t waste time with the eye shadow anymore, please.

http://www.modelrockettier.com/posters/posters.php

Currently, I do not play any online games.  I suppose this fact alone has helped give me perspective on this matter.  Another thing which gives me perspective is the fact that many of my friends do still play these games, all different games, and I can see their opinions of each other, and each others games, very clearly and unbiased.

Rationalization 1, I play an MMO because…

If I didn’t, I would just be doing <insert other waste of time activity> instead.  This is the best way MMO players can make themselves feel better about it.  The truth is though, when is the last time you stayed up until 4 am watching re-runs of Seinfeld, or decided to not go out with your friends on a saturday night so you could read a book?  Chances are, you didn’t.  If you are a hardcore gamer though, you might have.  Maybe you blew off going out with some friends so you could attend that raid, or maybe you stayed up until 4am chatting and you were late for work the next day.  I know I did, on many occasions.

Every MMO player has their own excuse about why its okay to spend more hours per week playing a game, then they do at work.  In reality, is it bad to play an MMO?  No, I don’t think so, but I do think it can be bad, if you are able to rationalize your playtime to a point where it gets out of control.

Rationalization 2, Social aspects

Let’s face it, MMO’s are built around being social, and as such you make “friends” in the games.  The problem is, people come and go.  People join and quit.  The people you make friends with in the game are only your friends because of the game, with a few exceptions.  

If you play an MMO, and you are a part of a group who plays together, for years and years, and one day you suddenly quit, expect to be written off.  It is much the same for heroin addicts.  Surround yourself with those who make you feel better about your addiction, not worse.  Do not expect to keep any sort of meaningful contact with people who you meet inside an MMO, unless they also quit.  

The problem is that, most people are unwilling to form any sorts of real relationships with others inside the game, because we all know in the back of our minds that one of us will quit, eventually.  The servers will be turned off, eventually, and at that point, more often then not, the relationship ceases to exist.

When you invest time into a game, you feel like you are building something.  A reputation, a base of friends, camaraderie.  The truth of the matter is, the people in the game only care about you in so much as you are beneficial to them in the game, beyond this, there is nothing.  It is shallow.

I played World of Warcraft for almost 3 years.  I built and hosted (and still host) my guilds Website, I manage and deal with the billing for their Ventrilo server, but I no longer play the game.  Occasionally I will log in to say hello.  What I find is that, no one, not the players I spent so much time playing with, nor the players who have joined the guild since I quit, could give a shit less about me anymore.  It doesn’t bother me, but I find it interesting.

I suppose the heroin analogy applies again, if you quit heroin, would your old heroin addict buddies want to hang around you?  The answer is no.  As I have experienced a similar result in my real life (not related to heroin), where I quit participating in an “activity” all of my friends still wanted to participate in, and they no longer wanted my company, after I quit.

Why is this?  Rationalization would suggest that, people do not want to be made to feel that they are less good then someone else.  People do not like to feel like they are doing the wrong thing.  It is easiest for our emotional immune system to simply surround ourselves by people who agree with us, and approve of our behavior, then it is to surround ourselves with people who disapprove, and by consequence, make us feel like we are less good then they are.

Rationalization 3, All other MMOs suck, except mine

This is a great one.  Amongst the population of any MMO game you play, the entire population will agree to hate every other game that comes about.  Especially if a really good game is expected to come out and “kill” your game of choice.  Moreover, the people who decide to play the games you don’t play, are stupid, noob, assholes.

I believe this is a similar rationalization amongst gamers.  We want to believe we are playing the best game, which carries the most recognition.  We want to believe our time which is being spent so carefully, is being spent in the best possible way.  We don’t want to think that there is a better game out there, that we could be playing instead.  So it is best to just write all other games off, and ignore them.

The majority of people play WoW, and it has over 10 million players.  No other fantasy MMO out there can even touch that sort of player base, and as such, every player, who plays any other MMO which is not WoW, hates WoW.  Not only do they hate wow, but they hate the “noobs” who play WoW.

Rationalization in general

Aside from MMO games, people rationalize everything, in every aspect of their lives.  We may not even realize it.  Most people think a rationalization is something like, “I can do <this thing which I know I shouldn’t do> because <some stupid reason here>”, but it is not all that cut and dry. 

Rationalization impacts every aspect of who we are.  We choose our friends based on how much they agree with us.  When we buy an expensive item, we avoid the negative reviews of it in favor of the positive ones.  If we do poorly on an IQ test, we find reasons to prove the test was invalid.

It is part of our emotional immune system.  Much like our physical immune system, our brain tries to protect us from unhappiness, and it acts in much the same was as the physical does.  Our physical immune system kills bad things, but it knows enough to recognize not to kill our own cells.  An under-active immune system leads to disease, and an overactive one leads to auto-immune disorders.  The brain works in much the same way.  It allows us to feel the pain of events which we can learn from, and become stronger from, but prevents us from feeling unhappiness in our every day lives.  An under-active system leads to depression, where an overactive one leads to an attitude of eliteness: “I am right and everyone else is wrong”.  

I think its a pretty interesting concept, and the more you are aware of it, the more you notice it.

Why must it be like this?  It is as if one, perhaps legitimate, reason you had to dislike someone, becomes that small rip in your jeans.  You know, the kind of rip that every once in a while gets a little bit bigger;  One thing is definite, it never gets smaller.  It might start out with something really small, as most rips do: a pet peeve you have, that your roommates constantly violate.  In my case that is probably something like doing the dishes.  If my roommates leave a sink full of dishes sitting there for days on end, it drives me crazy.  Then, after we both get sick of waiting each other out, I wind up doing them myself, and then I am spiteful toward them for having let me.

The question is though, who’s fault is this?  Are they simply less tidy people then I, and therefore they are in no rush to do the dishes?  Are they leaving them there because they expect me to do them, and the reason they sat there for four days is my own fault for not doing them?  But how can it be my job to do their dishes?  Did they cook a meal for me?  Did I ask them cook for me?  If not, does that still make it my responsibility?

This is the thought process, for me at least.

So then, regardless of the outcome of the thought process, you wind up spiteful toward your roommate about their lack of tidiness.  You can also be sure that they have some similar issue with something you do.  You both decide to hide it from the other, as to not be a “pain in the ass” roommate.

This is when the fabrication occurs.  That one small issue becomes five small issues.  After that, you start nit picking them about everything they do.  This all happens in your head, of course, as you still haven’t decided to talk to them about it, nor have they to you.  At this point every little tiny thing gets under your skin, and you start to hate people who are your friends.

If you have a girlfriend or wife living with you, chances are, she agrees with you.  Maybe you have other friends who are in agreement with some of your opinions.  This is when things get even more tricky.  You find yourself shit-talking your friends and coming up with even more stuff that bothers you, the more you talk about it.

When its all said and done, you and your spouse are no different than the KKK, except instead of hating an entire race, you hate your roommates, for no good reason.  You feed off each others pet peeves, you find more things that annoy you, even the smallest things.  You can be sure that your roommates are doing the same thing in reference to you.

What causes this downward spiral of hateful behavior?  Stubbornness is probably the easiest thing to blame, especially in the case of roommates.  What about in the case of extreme racists though?  I would think it is the same.  Blinded by their own unwillingness to see beyond the reasons they have fabricated inside their own heads to become hateful toward someone else.  Feeding off of each other.

So what to do?  What is the recourse?  I suppose the correct answer is, approach them.  If you have issues with your roommates, approach them.  If you hate everyone of a certain race, try to actually get to know a member of that race.  I think when confronted face to face, and given a chance to let your fabricated misgivings go for a short while, you can find that most of them were petty, and that given the chance to air them, you realize that, and don’t even wind up talking about it.  The most serious issues come up as topics, the more minor ones just fade away as if they weren’t even there.

I have a feeling that my approach is wrong, I simply do my best to ignore it.  I convince myself that things do not bother me as much as they clearly do, and I do not choose to talk about it.  I ignore that little rip in my jeans, but I know in the back of mind that it still continues to grow.

One day, I will be a bigger person, and decide to talk to my roommates, as I hope anyone else in a similar situation would do the same.

I really don’t know, to be honest.  If i did, I would probably be a much happier person.  Sometimes it is easier to just stomp off in a 5-year-old huff then it is to just accept a situation for what it is.  I have always been semi anti-social, not really in a bad way, more that I just do not want to deal with people and situations when I am not in the mood to deal with them.  I especially hate forced interactions.

Grudges

Grudges are shitty.  We have all held them.  I am a particular master of grudges, in fact, I have held some grudges for so long that I forgot why I was even holding the grudge.  I feel that sucking up and apologizing to someone when you feel they are wrong is like admitting they are right.  Is that bad though?  Is letting someone think they are right about something better then not having any interactions with said person?  When is it better to just forgive someone for something and put your pride aside then it is to hold out hoping that some day they will admit they are wrong?

What if you were wrong?  What if you realized you were wrong so far after the fact that you feel like an ass admitting that all the arguing you did was for naut?  Is it easier to just hold up your end of the argument forever rather then to admit defeat?

I think grudges are the result of hubris.  I am certainly not innocent in this aspect but as I grow older I recognize my faults more often than not, and admit I am wrong, on occasion.  Accepting someone’s apology can almost be as hard as being the one to apologize.  I think it is best to simply put your pride on the shelf sometimes, and if you feel the friendship or relationship is worth keeping, just apologize yourself even if you are wrong, and let things heal.

This is of course, much easier said than done, but it is something I work on in my personal life on an ongoing basis.

Body Language

Body language can say a lot, and it can often make more problems then you ever intended.  I feel that most body language is completely purposeful in most cases, and generally used to convey the feelings you do not wish to express in words.  I believe this is most commonly used between couples in a relationship, but also pretty often in a professional atmosphere as well.

Some body language is blatant, rolling of the eyes, loud sighs, hand gestures, but the most harmful body language is very subtle.  Pissed off at your girlfriend and you just sit on the couch with your arms folded and don’t utter a single word for a few hours?  Not helpful.  Get up from the couch to go sit in your bedroom by yourself without saying anything as you leave?  Not helpful.

In many cases it is just as easy to get a point across using these types of movements, but I find it is often less helpful then good.  When you air a grievance using words in the format of civil adult conversation you usually make a lot more progress then you would by walking away and conveying your anger through gestures.

I am especially vulnerable to this tactic, I will get much more angry then I normally would have been if during any sort of disagreement I am treated to the silent treatment, the arm folding, or the eye roll.  I think much like any other situation this is best talked out.

I am not really one to use much body language but having been a victim of it so many times, it often amplifies my frustration and makes things much worse then they needed to be.  Again, changing how you handle situations is much easier said than done, but the least we can do is recognize what we do, and try to deal with it differently.

Isolation

This is a particularly tricky situation to handle, one which I tend to perform much more often then I should.  A good situation to use as an example is if your roommates are having a party for some reason, but you are not in the mood to party, so instead of leaving, or just going down to have fun, you sit in your room or wherever, and isolate yourself.  Everyone knows you are there, and wonders what is wrong, and you get labelled as some sort of emo bastard.  I do this all the time.  I hate doing stuff when I don’t feel like doing it.

The thing is though, it’s not that I am upset or angry, or sad, I simply do not feel like partying.  I am not trying to sulk or make it obvious that I am upset about what is going on, I am just relaxing in my own space.  Problem is, it is never seen that way from the outside.  If you don’t want to participate in a party something must be wrong with you, right?

I tend to think not.  I think isolating yourself can be a totally innocent act, or, it can also definitely be a major passive-aggressive motion.  For me it has likely been both.  Lets say you are away visiting some friends in a far away from home location for a week, and at some point a fight occurs, so for the rest of the week you just sit in your hotel room…No one wants to be on vacation to sit in their room, but you simply do it to prove some sort of point about how upset you are.  Thing is, no one gives a shit.  And, if they do, and they knock on your door to try to lure you out, you sit there and sulk, glad that they recognized you were upset, but still do not budge.

I have found that if you just join, or re-join the party, in 99% of cases, you have a great time and you are glad you did.  Sucking up your pride and just going with the flow is the hard part.

I guess basically my point is, even though I do not by any means exemplify what I am saying, that its usually better to just swallow your pride for the sake of a happier environment around you.  None of the things outlined above ever help anything, they never make you feel better, and they never resolve a conflict.  So why do them?  I wish I had the key, because I am more guilty of these behaviors then most people are, but at least I recognize them and make a diligent effort toward being a better person.

Search engines make it possible for employers to scour all manner of digital dirt to vet employees. Online profile company Ziggs.com CEO Tim DeMello fired an intern after he discovered that on the intern’s Facebook profile he divulged that while at Ziggs he would “spend most of my days screwing around on IM and talking to my friends and getting paid for it.”

Do you stand out online?

It just so happens that I have a pretty unique name.  If my name was John Smith, I would have never thought twice about it.  However, chances are, if you google “Bryan Chain” every result you see is related to me.  This made me even more paranoid.  The fact that my name isn’t common just lends itself to a google type search.  It gets worse when google isn’t the only name in town when it comes to finding things out about people online.

As such, I avoided social networking sites and avoided ever using my real name anywhere online.  I actually did a pretty good job overall of keeping myself pretty invisible, I flew under the radar.  When I decided to write a blog though, I had to make a decision.  Some people argue having a blog is a good thing for your identity since if you get high search engine rankings, the blog appears before anything else; which gives you control.  Others, argue that it just exposes you even more.

If you love and nurture a blog, it will likely become a great asset in your reputation management arsenal. But the great thing about a blog is that it tends to rank well, even when left un-watered. Blogs are the cactus of online content. Wordpress.com and Blogger.com both provide free blogs and free hosting. Add just a few posts, keep it targeted to your name—that means use it in the blog title, posts etc—add a few links and bake for a few days. It will be on the first page of Google in no time.

It was either maintain my anonymity and write this blog using my most common online alias “WerkkreW”, or pull the covers off and stop caring.  I felt that to write a blog as a fake person would take away from why I am writing this blog.  As you can see, I stopped caring.  I feel that I have nothing to hide.  You won’t find pictures of me smoking a bong or murdering someone online.  At best you’ll learn a little bit about who I am, which is hopefully not enough to get me fired, unlike the author of dooce.

Still though, I hold back.  I have yet to write about anything personal, I have yet to write about anything directly related to my job, I have not released who my employer is.  I think about this a lot, actually.  Much of my inspiration to write comes from my personal experiences and my experiences at work, yet, I am both afraid to make those parts of my life public, and also, am not vain enough to think anyone on the internet cares to hear about the fight I had with my dad.

I think there is an important balance to managing your online identity.  Like it or not, if you use the internet, people can, and will, dig up dirt about you.  I suppose the best balance is to not be afraid to make use of some of the tools which have made the internet so useful, but to not expose so much about yourself that it could come back to hurt you.

Don’t be afraid to make use of sites like MySpace, Facebook, and others to reconnect with old friends.  Keep your profile conservative and tasteful.  Be weary of the types of photos you post.  Chances are your employer does keep tabs on these things.  My employer invited me to join the “MY COMPANY” facebook group, I declined.  To make things a bit easier, most sites have pretty advanced privacy features.  On facebook you can have basically 3 profiles.  Public (which can be set so no one can see it), Restricted (Give certain people access to a limited profile), and Full (people who can see everything).  If you make careful use of these it can become fairly easy to control just how much presence you have online, and who has access to it.

Like it or not, people have lost their jobs, and gone to jail over things they posted on social sites such as facebook, myspace, youtube, and others.  If you take a sick day from work, don’t post photos of yourself in a dress from that day.  It really boils down to one thing: Don’t be stupid.  If you realize that a quick google of your name would reveal these things you have done to anyone, including your friends, family, and employer, would you still have posted it?  If the answer is no, don’t.

Fired.

At this point, I feel very secure in my online world.  If my boss googles my name and finds this blog, I would not be embarrassed or ashamed.  I do not like feeling inhibited though.  Many interesting things happen to me at work, and in my personal life, which I would love to write about, but simply cannot.  So what do I do?

One friend suggested I set up another blog which I would use to simply anonymously vent my personal feelings.  I do not think this is the best approach.  I think the best thing to do, for me, is to just keep certain aspects of my life private.  Everything you post on the internet basically becomes public domain. Remember that if you want to one day become a senator but you just finished posting pictures of yourself on flickr doing something a bit controversial. 

It is pretty simple to protect yourself in the online world, and unless you are involved in something highly illegal, I don’t think most of us have anything to worry about.  The rules are simple, only make the information public if you are ready for anyone to see it, because chances are, they will.  I think being too paranoid about your online identity only takes away from the usefulness of the tools we now have available to us.

Creation of Man, Sistine Chapel

So to start, I suppose in order to discuss if there is a God, we need to define exactly what a God is, and discuss the implications of each definition.

Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. (John 4:8)

We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. (John 4:16)

Okay, well this seems really arbitrary, especially coming from the bible.  It is a very nice concept though.  If you believe that God is Love, and you assert that love exists then, God must exist.  This is not a terrible concept as, if taken out of the context of Christianity, it can set a nice utopian set of guidelines for us to all live by.  The problem lies in the inherent imperfections that lie within our very nature.  We do not love everyone, and if we do not love everyone then we do not love God.  Are humans even capable of Love in its truest sense?  Love being another impossible to define word, I am not sure we are.  Within everyone who loves someone else is there an utter lack of selfish desire and carnal instinct at play?

Next, lets take the most commonly perceived ideals of what God is.  I am going to totally ignore the above quotes from the bible because most people do not think of God as being love.  He is an all powerful being. An overlord who demands you live within a set of rules or be doomed to eternal damnation.  This pretty much takes care of the three major religions.  Christianity (Catholicism), Judaism, Islamic (Muslim).  These all believe in, and worship, the same almighty God (Abrahamic Religions).  They just disagree on who the voice of God, his prophet, is.

So to not discriminate on the small details about each of the three major religions, they all essentially worship God as an almighty being.  I think this is what most people think of when asked “Is there a God?” and if that was indeed the question, my answer would simply be No.

So how else can we define God?  I like how Richard Dawkins put it in his book The God Delusion.  Some good quotes from the book can be found here.  Basically he outlines 4 types of God:

One is a loving God – the Gentle Jesus of the hymns on Sunday; the second a personal God who answers our prayers and intervenes in our lives; the third an all-knowing, all-powerful God capable of great miracles; and finally the God of the deists – one who detonated the “hot big bang, retired, and was never heard from again.”
(Peter Bowden)

In all of these cases I must again admit that I do not believe in this type of God.  Being a man of science I tend to not believe in an all powerful designer or creator, period.  I can definitely admit that there are many wonders in our universe that cannot be explained, yet.  I also admit that many mysterious things happen in our world that are not easy to grasp.  I am a moral person, and I might even be slightly spiritual.  I believe in the Golden Rule, and I consider myself loving.  When I say spiritual however, I am more recognizing that there are ways of life one can follow to lead a better life, which are not affiliated to a religion and do not recognize the existence of one omnipotent God.

So is there any other way we can define God?

Maybe, in fact, you could probably get a thousand different answers from a thousand different people about what God is, and if he exists.

My personal view is that there is not one.  I am not basing this belief on lack of proof, or being some sort of emo self-loathing bastard.  I simply do not feel in my heart, or my mind, that a supreme being exists.  If someone offered me more insight as to why there is a God, or isn’t, I am open-minded enough to take all things into consideration.

As of today though, things like the big-bang sounds pretty good.  What was before the big-bang?  Nothing I guess.

To ask what is before time is to ask what is three miles north of the north pole. There is no north of the north pole, and there is no before the Big Bang. A prerequisite to being a creator is existing before something.
(Stephen Hawking)