My church that I've been attending for 3 years randomly had a singles group event. I considered not going, but felt like I lose my right to complain if I don't go, haha. It wasn't bad! But it did get me thinking about how church singles groups seem mostly extinct since the 1990s.

And mind you, there are many good reasons why they died out. They could be awkward fits: 20 year old women and 50 year old men in one group. The groups could take on a social leper vibe, or there could be predators or misconduct going on. I think as time went on, there was a sense that single-specific groups also alienated singles from the rest of the church. And finally, it could feel like a group that no one felt excited about being a part of: a weird consolation prize. I had friends who would constantly make fun of the awkward folks at such gatherings. (We are not friends anymore, which is better for all of us. You'll be shocked to find out that friends who constantly talk badly about other people will do it to their friends as well. Shocker, right?).

But here's the real problem to me. Churches got out of the singles dance and singles group business because it was risky, didn't have much reward, and could be embarrassing. But what can take the place of such groups? Well, at best what happens is the young man or lady gets on e-Harmony, finds the (unvetted, unknown) love of their lives some 4-10 hours away, and moves out of the area for their new love. At worst? Well they simply leave Christianity to broaden their dating pool, or they end up taking wild chances at love since they don't have any normal way to meet hot, err, godly Christian singles in their area.

So if you've read this far, this sounds silly, or you may not have context for it. But here's a graph on how people meet their significant other: https://www.instagram.com/the.world.in.maps/reel/DA-mI14oxyZ/?hl=en the fact is, other institutions like school and groups like friend neworks have also had sharp declines. Online has eaten all its competition: we're all stuck on dating apps meeting unvetted strangers who come with Dark Triad personality quirks that are difficult to weed out until one is over-invested. And the worst part is, we didn't really put up a fight to the online takeover, did we? We just kind of...surrendered, because dating and romance really are awkward and messy.

I don't have a great ending here, just thinking about how online promises to reduce friction and do things in a less messy way, when in reality often the messiness is worse and just outsourced to, say, content moderators in the Philippines or some other shabby arrangement. I may do more in this series, still thinking it over.

I must admit, I'm a bit concerned for my future steps.

I was thinking about it: over the years, I've tended to have a crossroads moment every five years. Sometimes those crossroads moments go relatively well. Thanks to a kind former classmate, a door opened for a last-minute teaching job in Wisconsin in 2007, and the success there set me up pretty well until 2013 or so.

Then we have 2018, where I managed to lose both the job and the lady (it's a little more complicated than that, yes) and so I ended up in a sort of wilderness state (almost literally) for a few years. I think ironically I was perhaps a little too calm going into 2018: I thought I might go 1 for 2, but instead ended up both single and soon to be unemployed. I'm mentioning it now because enough time has passed that I don't think I'm compromising anyone/anything by saying it.

So here I am in 2024, trying to balance my attempts to get promoted (or more literally, not fired) at this job with keeping myself employable and eligible elsewhere. The problem I'm running into is that I may be out of lateral moves. There's a sort of make it or break it flavor this time around. I'll put it this way: if one kept getting in car accidents, eventually one's insurance goes up, whether one is a bad driver or not.

So, now to find a way to live in this high cortisol state. I wasn't proud of 2018-2019 me, getting in odd fights with beloved friends and snapping under the tension. I'd like to think that 2024 me will be more noble this time around. We shall see...

I was reading some posts by someone who has had a hard time with their mental health for years. They apologized for what they termed "crazy posting" and I felt bad and left a nice comment. But I also quietly found myself asking God whether this person will get well: are they doomed to this ill health indefinitely?

Because I know Jesus said you will always have the poor among you. But I think that somewhere deep down we believe that all Christians will have a blessing some day. Certainly God may not heal everyone. But come on, can't he give Susan a few bucks? Can't he give Joe a few days of mental clarity, where he's not tormented by voices from his own head?

I think that instead, though, it may do our theology good to consider that some people are destined to always suffer in this life. That a theology of self-improvement and deliverance has value in theory, and that we hope for salvation, but that we also accept that some of us will have a permanent cross to bear, will be slaves in this life. And at minimum we understand it is not their fault, they are not cursed by God. But at maximum we agree to bond to them in the fellowship of suffering. We agree to not turn away, to hide our frustration, disgust, and sorrow in front of them as best we can. Are we not all the least of these in the cosmic spiritual sense? Are we not all waiting for death to become truly glorified, sanctified, and transformed?

2023 was a noisy year, a year with a fair amount of new projects and new efforts. I tried new things at work, I took a trip back to Greece, and I got into teaching a few new topics that I had yet to cover before. But the strange part is that I can't truly think of any deep changes due to the decisions of 2023. At least not yet.

Because, here's the interesting dilemma with Hindsight. (By the way, what animal do you think a Hind is? Quick, try to remember, I'll tell you at the end). You do have to be far enough away from the decisions and details to have 20-20 vision. Right now, the events of 2023 seem to be kind of a wash.

For example, I bought a slightly newer used car to replace my car that already had 175000 miles on it. Functionally, nothing big has changed: I'm still driving a car with over 125000 miles on it. The whole process seemed quite major and daunting: I went shopping to at least four car dealerships, paid quite a bit in car repairs, etc. But now, I'm just back to the same state of driving an older but still functional car.

So I'm at a funny spot in that, in some ways it looks like nothing has changed, but it feels like something has changed. I feel a certain restlessness returning which normally results in me making real changes to my life. I think something changed in 2023, but it could be anything from a decline in health to an improvement in creativity. So I can't quite determine what New Year's Resolution I want until I figure out what I need to change, but I don't know what HAS changed. Make sense?

*Hind is a female deer, specifically a red deer.

I was a child when I first read of the firebombing of Dresden. It was in a history book, and it was presented without context or color. After pages and pages of Allied struggle with the Axis, the Allies were finally winning. They ruled the skies over Germany: barely opposed over Dresden. And they were able to set the city on fire, killing hundreds of thousands*. And I read it and I thought it was good, actually. Isn't that what we wanted? The evil Axis driven into cities, and burned to hell? This was a good thing, wasn't it?

And then I got a little older, and I read about Dresden again. And I realized it was a war crime. The manufacturing and military targets in Dresden were less extensive than reported, and the bombing didn't even fully target those facilities. And at first British war hawks tried to rejoice over the destruction, claiming that the destruction was the point. That the many war refugees fleeing from the East into Dresden were Nazi sons and daughters, were they not?

But the Associated Press wrote a story referring to Dresden as a terror bombing. Americans expressed concern. British intellectuals made annoyed noises of concern. So Churchill rewrote his memo, and the British Army walked back their rhetoric a little bit.

And yes, there were other cities that were bombed with large civilian casualties: Hamburg and Tokyo. But I'd like to argue that after Dresden, there wasn't the same savage glee at firebombing civilians. And that enough concerned people made enough noise that Dresden was a sort of turning point, in Europe at least. (No comment on Hiroshima and Nagasaki...).

And yes, the Nazis used Dresden as a rallying point, claiming that the Allies massacred hundreds of thousands. Massive lies were told. But the Allies "gave" the Nazis this talking point. Nazis were always going to lie (as were Allies): what is important is that one does not fan the, err, flames of falsehood.

I'd like to think that the America of today will still squirm when Dresden happens again. Even when it is our allies who do it. Even when they fight an enemy that has some evil elements. I'm finding out the answers this month. We all are.

*Note: the actual figure is probably closer to 25k and is somewhat a matter of debate.

I do love how the human mind is so well-versed at finding new things to worry about. Today it's my lack of a male friend group locally. Because I have male friends, and groups of male friends at a distance, and friends who are a group, but just not the exact combination of a group of male friends locally. So I need to worry about this and what it says about my personality, desirability, friendliness, and charisma. Good night everyone :p

As I heard Sunday's Palm Sunday, I had a good mental glimpse of how uncomfortable I would have felt at Palm Sunday. First, let's think about the feel of a noisy, unorganized crowd loudly shouting slogans. Personally, I never feel comfortable giving myself any particular mental health label. To do so, I feel like an interloper who has made off with someone else's hard-earned acronyms. However, let's just say that I get along quite well with lots of people on the autism spectrum. And a loud social setting with no opportunity to talk or hear oneself think? An absolute nightmare. I would be looking for the donkey lot ASAP to make my way home.

And not only that, but consider all the expressed emotions! The shouting, the crying, the citizens who seem half-delirious in their responses. All that palm branch waving, I could cut myself on a stray frond stroke! No, no, not intellectual at all, all this parading and shouting. Why aren't the crowds hushing themselves? Where is the Jesus Lecture? How can these fools not be allowing Jesus to deliver more insightful commentary? Waste of time, really.

And finally, that donkey and cloak thing--Jesus, I don't know how to say this, but isn't this too showy? Too glamorous? Oh I know it's not a big white horse, but these processions have meanings. This seems too...regal. Yes, that's it. Shouldn't we be more modest?

You get it: Palm Sunday challenges me on so many preconceived notions. My mistrust of the mob and of emotional response: my love of order and intellectualism: my bias for subtle, modest displays of virtue and worth, all of them trodden under the hooves of a donkey bearing a God to his prophesied death. And I have to ask myself, am I ready to let King Jesus and his followers come into my city, with all the mess and confusion and challenge? Can he get here by Easter? It won't be the same without him.

I've been musing about the High-Value jargon lately, and what it would be like to produce content for Low-Value men.

I will remark that my own measurement for when I truly was Low-Value was rarely quite right. Grad school me? No style, but elite creativity and banter. On the other hand, 31-32 year old me was perhaps peak in money and societal value, but I didn't like living in that guy's body as much as society may have thought I should have. You get the idea.

However, HOWEVAH, I think it's important for men worried that they are experiencing Low-Valueness to be willing to walk back within themselves and stay there for a little while. Because too often, a man wants to perform Value-Checks in the outside world, and use those as a measure of one's value. Even if some of those Value-Checks get cashed, the man is sliding towards a Producer, Praise, or Playboy mindset as a way to generate value.

 I think that we men often mistake noise (as in Signal to Noise Ratio noise) as value. And that we mistake the quiet as a sense of lost value. But Value is not measured in DM's or comments or likes, nor in attention per se. Visibility is, but Value is not.

Look, the strong silent type is dead for a good reason. But somehow we men replaced him with the weak loud type, shooting off blanks wildly in all directions hoping for a hit. Spray and Pray, Announce and Pounce, etc. And mind you, I refuse to recuse myself from judgment at this sort of trial.

One of my few abilities is that I do eventually learn from my mistakes, and regroup and reform. But as I age, I think I'm less willing to sit at my own bonfire and watch my illusions burn in order to create better ones. So I think it's particularly important to practice these inward journeys, in a safe way that protects against sudden downward spirals, of course

One of the moments I get most excited about is when a student knows they are going to graduate. They will soon lose the diploma itself, or misplace it on their move. But the achievement itself cannot be reversed. No one can take away that accomplishment from them, and it will be written down in the college registrar's office. Or take a team that wins their conference title. It may be a down year for the conference, but someone had to finish first, and they did.

However, the fact is there are indeed achievements that can be taken back. One's best workout body is now just seen in old photos, and is gone. Your current body gives you no real credit for being able to dunk a basketball (ok, ok, I never could, shh let me dream here) a few years ago. Or take one's successful start to a job: one can still be laid off or fired after years of good performance and wise choices. And don't get me started on the way divorce makes the entire timeline of a marriage seem like a failure, when in reality things may have been relatively decent until the marriage's sudden end.

I think my problem of late has been that I am hyper-sensitive to the impermanence of certain achievements. I know that I can be let go from jobs where I excelled for some period of time, and I know that I may be blocked by those who were once close friends and mutual confidantes. So it colors the victory of the moment: if I were an 18th century Hawthorne character, I'd be muttering something about the burning of the grass of the field. But I realize that part of the joy of being a human is indeed the surprise factor, the fragility of our victory. We celebrate with the player who successfully dunks or scores partly because of the implausibility of it all. It's a small miracle when any two of us can create a strong bond, let alone a marriage and family, is it not? So I will try to make peace with the impermanent.

I was chatting with an old friend about an incident that happened years ago. At the time, I had decided not to ask too many questions about what did and didn't happen.

One of the more fascinating things about America's culture is that we're both very private and very didactic.

On the one hand, there is a firm tradition in many parts of America that one minds their own business. Should my neighbor wish to roll across their lawn in a Speedo in the middle of December, it is my neighborly duty to pretend that I can't hear or see a thing.

On the other hand, and I'll give America's Christian tradition proper credit here, there are plenty of places in America where your neighbor will gladly look into your business and make their opinion known. And so yes, bless your heart, fool, but also, this version of America will go put a coat on their Speedo-clad neighbor in winter and gently suggest they go inside.

So when I say "None of My Business," I may be wisely recognizing that I have plenty of problems of my own, and giving my neighbor the privilege of space and silence. Yes, you can find Bible verses about this too: Matthew 7:5-6, among others. I may be saying that I don't want my neighbor to be too vulnerable in a way that would cause me to despise my neighbor or bring them embarrassment. "None of My Business," in the right mouth, can be a noble expression of love for my neighbor, that I will not satisfy my curiosity at my neighbor's expense.

But when I say "None of My Business," I may also be saying that I don't care about my neighbor, and that I prioritize my own needs first. I may be saying that I don't want to carry my neighbor's burden, as Galatians 6:2 would say. I could be turning away before my neighbor is able to take a breath and tell me the truth of what happened. None of My Business can also be the coldest thing to say, a claim that I am not my brother's keeper, that someone else will have to be their Good Samaritan.

I've lived in New England and the South in the last three years, and I've seen versions of both in action. I find it fascinating and frustrating that it is difficult to say when it truly should be "None of My Business."