I had to have a mental health day.

I need to take one of those soon.

I have lost 34 pounds since August.

How are you doing this?

This is my first Lent in ages where I haven't given up a single thing.

I was raised in a Baptist/Non-denominational home and we never gave anything up. The only thing we did was not eat red meat on Good Friday.

I just figured out why my mom didn't seem to understand how much work a Ph.D. entailed. She thought it was simply a matter of taking more classes. She didn't realize there were years of hardcore research involved, and it could take any number of years until you accumulated enough data to write a thesis.

Does she understand now or is she more supportive of your decision?

Liltyyyyyyyy!

Does she understand now or is she more supportive of your decision?

...Yes? I think she's still hoping I'll go back and get a Ph.D. eventually. I told her that yes, yes, I can still do it, and yes, yes, they'll still pay me.

Would the heathens/pagans/Others care to explicate their stances and/or spirituality?

The thing about sharing, for me, is that my spirituality is deeply individual/personal/private, and while I don't mind people knowing the broad strokes, it's not something I really want on the table for discussion. (Which isn't to say I won't participate in the conversation -- I seem to be pathologically unable to avoid commenting -- but I can't start it. It's not in me.)

FWIW, I know I'm interested if/when you have the time at the same time you have the inclination, and not in a bring-him-back-to-the-fold way--just human interest.

Well, maybe I can sneek little comments in between fixing our client's payroll system....

To me it makes perfect sense that life evolved on earth over an incredibly long period of time, and that one of the results of evolution is us. I don't see where there needs to be a God to do anything. OTOH, if there is a God, then all sorts of issues come up, such as why are there thousands of different and contradictory religions over human history, why is there no direct evidence of God's existence, why there is so much pain, suffering and premature death, and so on....

Would the heathens/pagans/Others care to explicate their stances and/or spirituality?

It'd consider myself a Deist, in that what we know about the creater can only be determined from the details of the universe around us. While I've had a good deal of exposure to christianity, I've found that the more I learned, the more I felt it was mythology rather than reality. Also, I was always uncomfortable in thinking one set of beliefs should be right when so many others have believed other things. So I sort of went to the position that, okay, there are some core values that might be shared among beliefs and that the christian mythos is one story of those beliefs.

I was also bothered by the concept that our existence here on earth somehow determined our eternal fate. To me that just didn't make sense, sort of like making life decisions for an infant based on the infants actions in the first second of its life. But I could abstract this, thinking okay this is just one step in a progression and while it does have consequences in the hereafter, it is only a beginning.

Essentially, the more abstract I could make the beliefs, the more comfortable I became. Eventually, I just abstracted out the Deist view of the universe. I do think there is more to us than just matter, so I place myself in the Deist camp rather than the Atheist camp.

P-C!!!

I think she's still hoping I'll go back and get a Ph.D. eventually.

Why is this so important to her ?

MotherFUCKER!

When I was hired, I was told that my benefits would kick in on the first day of the month following 90 days of employment. Since I was hired Dec 1st, therefore, my benefits should kick in March 1st -- and I was explicitly told so by HR. I just handed in all of my insurance documents, and now I'm being told that, actually, since March 1st is the 90th day of my employment (what with Feb being a short month), my health insurance won't be able to start until April 1st. Meaning the cancellation papers we just sent in to our COBRA plan will have to be recalled. (And, of course, those papers have already been moved over to the new apartment, meaning DH has to go over there and bring them back before he can call them to find out if it's too late to extend our plan another month.) Meaning that we have to come up with the money to pay for another month of COBRA. Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

Have you talked to HR again, Jess? You might be able to get them to change, if you remind them they promised, and you expected, etc....also double check they dont' start taking out money for the health care too early. Cause that would doubly bite.

WARNING: Rambly, unconnected thoughts ahead. My usual kind of post.

In re: spirituality - I have a hard time defining my beliefs enough to clearly communicate them. This may speak to an absence of belief. Hmmmm.

Anyway. I can't speak to the existence of a God or Gods. They certainly may be there, but I am not in their ken nor are they in mine. I do not have the capacity for blind faith, and I've not received an impression that They/He/She/It are there. Mind you, I'm not a person who only believes in what I can see or touch or smell. I know there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy. I do believe in ghosts and alternate planes and continuation of self and intellect after these wonderful machines we occupy cease functioning. All of that is a continuation of energy, and not everyone accomplishes it. We as humans have a most amazing capacity for imagination, which (I think) works against us in some way. We need a reassurance that We Are Not Alone (we’re not, of course, look at all the other life-forms sharing this rock with us). So, some people may have the self-energy to continue after their body stops. What if a whole bunch of people were concentrating their energy on solving the Why Are We Here question? Could they then create a god or gods? I think so.

Hunh. This veered off from my personal beliefs into larger sociological issues. If I continue, I’ll start explaining how I think religion is just a way to codify certain social mores, and that’s just boring and possibly offensive. So. To sum up my personal code:

There may be gods, I don’t know and have no truck with them. There is a lot of energy crackling around in the universe, and some of it interacts with us, and some of us interact with it and can harness/use it better than the rest of us. An It Harm None, Do What You Will (and don’t try to impose your worldview on others thankyouverymuch). All You Need Is Love (And Some Booze). It’s A Small World After All (so don’t fuck it up).

If I do have a god, it's the God Of Parenthetical Abuse.