The blog initially began as a way for me to explore the issues of work and life in context of changes I was observing in the society and the workplace. Since that time, I had made several big decisions about my own life and career, where I moved from Kuala Lumpur to London, pursued a Masters degree in Human-Computer Interaction, helped launch a startup, and transitioned from Software Engineering into a different field as an Information Architect.

While I still hold a very strong interest in work and career-related issues, it does take quite a lot of effort and time to do research, write, discuss, and advocate the issues I’m passionate about. In addition, since my real goal was to pursue a career in User Experience, it was clear that this blog no longer had priority.

I still think that the discussion about “brazen careers” is important and extremely necessary in today’s rapidly changing environment, but I’ve also observed that there are a lot of personal opinions and perspectives about what a career really means. Thus, I think it’s best left to the individual to pursue that meaning and navigate the process of discovery themselves, rather than prescribe “a way” that may not be appropriate or timely.

The discussions I’ve had via this blog were certainly true from my perspective and helped shape my thinking and abilities,  but I can’t say it will apply to everyone else. I hope the articles I’ve written act as examples for others, who will then make their own conclusions based on their own experiences and abilities, and continue the conversation with others. But I’ve decided for now that I’ll be a mere observer from the sidelines, as I devote my time to UX.

Good life, slower life

I’m quite happy about the progress. Comparatively, there’s a lot more junk on the internet, and being able to consume quality experiences in a much longer duration (preparing a meal, reading a book, going out for dinner with my wife) has been more satisfying to say the least.

One thing that bugs me is the sheer amount of experiences out there I feel I ought to try. And it’s a bit scary – because it feels a bit unsafe, a bit edgy… something that demands a bit more commitment and resources than clicking buttons all day. Because I know I can read the best tutorial about designing a chair and it won’t come close to what it’s really like to build a chair (just as an example).

Today I attempted to cook fried rice again – a dish I’ve cooked countless times, but have never perfected. And although it tasted a little better, it wasn’t good enough. And, it seems I could spend more time perfecting a good fried rice, or I could go learn to cook something else… but again that’s like another lesson all over again.

More risks, more planning

The thing is – I’m at the point in my life where I am calculating more than I am taking risks. I don’t want each attempt to be wasted. Not all risks that are taken will lead to learning and success. Idiots do exist, and I don’t want to end up being one.

I’m shifting my focus away from the younger generation, a generation I learnt a lot from in previous years. Some things in life don’t change, and there’s a reason why history repeats itself. In a single lifetime, I believe it is possible to learn from our past, and make a difference a day at a time towards a better future – my future.

In a sense, I’m going to stop looking to the future in order to fix my past.

Everyone seems to be really upbeat. Articles are constantly talking about the next best thing. And for some reason, no one seems to want to stop. It’s really scary – everyone seems to be really getting ahead in life, and I feel really out of step – like stepping on a dance partner’s feet or something.

It’s like I’m expecting someone to tell me – “it’s okay to stop living for awhile”, “leave the laptop in the bag”, “forget about how your friends are doing”, “go to bed”, “it’s not going to make any difference whether the Palm Pixi is going to be a hit or not”, “it’s okay to do the same boring thing over and over again”.

Because in some ways, that’s what I’m doing now. And I don’t feel like I can change my circumstances very much, such that I have exciting things I absolutely needed to share with the whole world. I just don’t have anything going on at the moment that’s very exciting. And I’m thinking that’s what a lot of people call, “a mediocre life” – when folks start settling down and getting into a routine of things.

I actually believe that most people live mediocre lives 90% of the time. That they have routines that don’t change very much. Or wishes and dreams that seldom get acted upon. And conversations that don’t change very often. And time seems to just seems to drift by. And for these people, that’s just the way life is.

I actually don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but the Internet is inherently a very explosive sort of environment – an explosion of activities. Emails. Blogs. Messages. Articles. Feeds. Comments. Streams. Votes. Tags. Notes. Clicks. If all this activity ever grinded to a halt, then the Internet would cease being the Internet.

It’s like – on the Internet – you can’t ever be someone mediocre. It’s almost like you needed to be someone with an opinion worth giving, or someone with a message worth sharing, or someone whose goals were so important that you needed to click on stuff or to read something or respond to something. You couldn’t just be “nobody” on the Internet, because everyone else is a nobody and it’s like you need to prove that you’re not because it already became so brain-numbingly easy. Just click. Or reply. Or comment. Or upload that photo. Something. Anything.

But, here I am with absolutely no motivation to check my twitter messages or read my newsfeeds and I’m telling myself it’s fine. It’s fine to be mediocre, and to just live the way some people live – without a care in the world.

I met an old friend for lunch today. She was talking about making a big change in her life, and we were talking about how scary that whole process is. We talked a long time about the sort of ups and downs you go through when you make big changes like that – the fear of being alienated, of making the wrong choices, of not knowing exactly what to do, but more importantly – doing it alone.

Making these big changes in our lives, as we were brought up to value stable jobs and live comfortably, is akin to abandoning our roots, values, and partly, the security of the family community. While this isn’t ostracism, the abandonment comes from a lack of understanding – family and friends just don’t know what in the world we’re getting into and can’t give us the guidance, mentorship and support we really need. It’s not that they won’t – they just can’t.

And it’s just not about money or a place to stay. It big hurdle about surviving a change is the rite of passage that you need to go through to get started, establish yourself in a new place, and finally succeed.

Change Hurts

When I made a decision to leave a comfortable life in Malaysia, I got really depressed and my wife had to push me to get the visa done because I did not have the energy to do it myself. It was depressing selling away all the IKEA furniture that I painstakingly and lovingly bought and put together, some not even a year old. The worst was seeing the lovely Edefors oak table being draped by my wife’s grandmother with a plastic tablecloth to “protect” it – a very Asian thing.

Needless to say, it was sad to see my friends and family for the last time. I wasn’t sure how to react – how do you put on a face in front of some of your closest mates and tell them you’re leaving for good? Everything had to be done fast so I didn’t have time. What time I had, we just spent like good old days having meals and good laughs. Through all this, we had our visa turned down once and my wife and I had several arguments in the heat of anxiety. It wasn’t the best of times.

Yes, once the apartment and furniture was sold off, a big burden had lifted off. We were elated when my course acceptance came in the mail in the nick of time. We knew we had friends and relatives in London who were welcoming us with open arms. We knew and loved the city. I was excited about the course, and the possibilities. We felt God’s peace and felt that it was the right thing to do. But it was still a painful process – I have the memories of those things we went through, a testament of our journey.

I Network out of the Need to Survive

At times like these, real and authentic relationships were the only thing that got me back up and running. I could’ve said we survived on dreams and inspirations, or on the timely opportunities of job offers, or on the creature comforts like having our own accommodation. But friendships and precious encounters I’ve had from meeting like-minded people – people who share the same vision and goal – are the sorts of things that plant my feet firmly here in London: family, friends, coursemates, new friends I’ve met from the industry, colleagues.

Thinking back – these relationships didn’t just fall into my lap. Some relationships happened only because I went out and searched for it. Some took a lot more effort and time. But I knew that I needed it in order to survive. And that’s what change does to you.

Change forces you to take hold of what you need most in order to survive for the long run. It’s like being stranded on an island and re-learning the fundamentals all over again – what it really means to live. I don’t simply talk about the people I’ve met and how things “worked out” for me – as though others should try networking like it was putting on a new pair of jeans. These people mean much more to me than just opportunities.

You can tell yourself all you want about how inauthentic networking can be and how artificial that whole experience feels. Or, you can tell yourself that it sucks being alone with your ideas and that you need genuine relationships and genuine conversations over things that you really do care about.

For me, I did it because I knew no other way.

It was comfortable, no doubt, but it was hard to say that it was home. The hall was quite empty because we couldn’t afford to furnish it. We didn’t use the swimming pool and gym as much as we’d like. The only thing I really miss about it is the convenient parking space, which offered shelter from the rain. It was hard to say we could afford a place like this.

Outward looks can be deceptive

Now, we’re in London, in a small rented studio about a third the size of the previous apartment, and we both feel more at home here. Maybe it’s because we both made the decision to live here on our own, and that we’re both paying for the rental of the place, and we’ve still got a bit of room to breathe in terms of spending.

I find that I do more homey things, like cook meals at home, and vacuum the floor, and rearrange the furniture, and decorate the place. I feel, for once, that I am in control of my living situation, and that’s quite a breath of fresh air.

Satisfaction comes from inside you

I think that all of us yearn for a place to belong, somewhere along our adulthood. There’s something about enjoying the fruits of our labor, and a home is quite often the place that one does that. Somehow, with the apartment my parents provided us, it felt a bit like a short cut, and somehow that didn’t sit right with me.

The reason I’m saying this is because I’m constantly re-evaluating my life. What is it that truly makes me satisfied? With consumerism often choking out what’s important to us, it’s good to step back and count our blessings. No, we might not be at the top of the game, in the eyes of someone else – but inside us is what really matters – it’s really not faking it, and it doesn’t go away.

Having the internet as a big part of me is scary. It’s scary because I’ve let so much of my life be transformed by it. I don’t know how I got here, but I admit that using it has influenced me to stop watching TV, switch jobs the last few times, change the way I socialize with people, improve my domestic skills, and got me and my wife to pack our bags and move to England.

Also, it’s scary how so much of the future is going to arrive at my doorstep tomorrow. Maybe this is a curse of being a technologist, and one devoted to saving the world through it. It makes me wonder what kind of person I would have turned out to be if I read newspapers everyday, stuck with popular advice, and gone for an RM100k-a-year neck-and-tie job that would’ve made my life more cushy, if we had decided to remain in Malaysia.

It’s also scary how much I believe from the things I read.

I remember stumbling upon Penelope Trunk’s posts and being so inspired by it. Maybe because at the time, I was really feeling depressed at work, and longing for something a lot bigger than myself. That was what got me started with this blog. Somehow I had this impression that work-life in Malaysia seemed a lot worse than it seems, and I actually went around telling people to believe that and that it’s possible to achieve their dreams.

And thinking back, I don’t know if I was right. But I believed it and I still do now… but the point is, it wouldn’t have happened if I had not been living off the internet like some crazed hobo.

Is the World Really Changing?

My wife is fairly net-moderate. She’s literate, but she doesn’t feel she needs to check her Flickr or Facebook page every so often, like I do. Her inbox is filled with emails she hasn’t opened for days, weeks, sometimes months. Her job does require her to administer a Drupal site for the charity she’s working for, but it’s just a job. She’s dabbled with GIMP but that’s because it’s free and I told her to give it a try. The only thing she really relies on the internet for is streaming japanese dramas and mangas from fansub sites. If the internets died tomorrow and cellphones didn’t work, she wouldn’t give a hoot, except for maybe the lack of mangas.

On the other hand, I hang out with people who send twitter posts everytime they enter a pub. A core group of us coursemates organize events purely by @replies, it makes email look obsolete. I open up Gmail, and I get a Facebook notification from a friend who’s coming to visit the UK, and then another, and another, over a span of a week or so. No one asks for directions anymore, because it sounds silly if you don’t know how to use Google Maps. I am assimilating deeper and faster into an industry that lives and breathes technology, and will not sleep until all of creation’s problems are solved by it.

The contrasting realities are two perspectives I find hard to bring together, partly because they’re both a big part of my life.

I sometimes feel it’s like that out there in the world, too. That there’s a gap that’s moving in all sorts of directions and it’s hard to make sense where we’re going to end up tomorrow.

Being Net-Literate Doesn’t Necessarily Make You Better

I made an assumption in the past that you need powerful analytical skills and the ability to make sense of large amounts of information to survive in today’s info-rich world. Yet, I still find people who live in complete silos and have a worldview about as big as a small island. And they get by fine.

I also realized that people will gladly trade their resources for the so-called info-skilled people to do the dirty work, and just focus on managing them. This includes CEOs, managers, politicians, leaders, etc.

My dad, for example, has been running a few businesses for the last few years. I admire his reputation and his keen nose for a deal. He used to fumble so much with technology, but he’s getting better at it. By no means does it dictate the way he runs his life. He has ways of getting around that but I know it’s not about outsmarting technology.

I realize more and more that there are people out there who are successful and don’t need all that techie stuff to get there. They’re made from different kind of stuff, and it’s something I’ve only recently come to appreciate.

So now I’m not sure who’s smarter – the folks who skill themselves in technology to get ahead in life, or the folks who skill themselves in life to get ahead in a technology-driven world.

I know big things are coming ahead we’ve barely dreamed of, and I’ll probably be excited when it comes, but I can’t help but feel that I ended up the short end of a stick.

A typical week for me in London

A typical week involves making sure I get my gradschool work done, which is mostly just writing papers which are due over the next few weeks, thinking what to eat or cook for dinner, anticipating the next meetup with friends (usually coursemates, occasionally Malaysian friends who now live here, and sometimes industry people from the user experience community), or working on web development at my part-time job.

Now that just seems mundane, but I find it a novelty to wake up every morning in my tiny studio (which about the size of my previous bedroom in KL) in Islington (Holloway Road, not posh Upper Street), make myself a meal in my tiny kitchen, surf the web and see what’s happening on twitter, get dressed and head to campus to get some work done in the Main library. I don’t do this every day, of course… to avoid the mundane cycle.

Sometimes I just stay at home and write my papers there. I like to get work done at night so sometimes I work all night and sleep through the day.

Recently, on Fridays and Saturdays, I’ll hop on the 91 bus and take it to Crouch End, to Nathan’s (the guy who hired me), and Rey (the front-end developer), Sonia (the graphic artist), Nathan and I will all sit around his kitchen table and hack away at the system for a good day, with the sun overpowering our laptop screens through the big kitchen skylight.

I’m familiar with numbers like 29, 253, 254, and 91 – all buses which ferry me back and forth from home to the tube stations or school. 12 is common for the price we’d pay per person per meal in £ for dinner at Pizza Express. 592.70 for the amount of take-home pay I get after 2 weeks of coding part-time.

Life in the in-betweens

Life in London involves little pockets of activities during the in-betweens. In-between paper writing, libraries, buses, tubes, code, lunch, weekends and weekdays, and seasons.

I don’t know how we did it with my crazy random schedule, but my wife and I have managed a day out at Hampstead Heath, sips of coffee at Monmouth, several trips to Pizza Express, and occasional shopping along the high streets. It all happens in the in-betweens.

Like when a core group of my coursemates decide to head to the Duck n’ Dive for a pint or two. And cheap pizza at Icco’s, or grabbing a quick cheapy indian takeaway lunch from Poppadoms.

It happens sporadically.

Like back in KL?

It’s quite like it was back in KL. Except that it involved a lot of eating – often in different places. It was always a different place. You never went back to the same place the next day, unless you were desperate.

And instead of walking everywhere and taking the bus and the tube, we always went everywhere by car. It would’ve been almost impossible otherwise. Imagine walking all the way from Midvalley to Brickfields in the hot sun.

And I didn’t drink as much beer and alcohol back in KL. I liked my Kilkenny on tap at La Bodega, but it was expensive so I could only afford one per visit.

Nights out with my good friends in KL were a lot more fun, maybe because we had a lot of good old stories to tell, and there was interesting stuff happening with each of us. It was like a support group, except that you’d get teased and joked about and told off when you were being a gnat.

There was really nothing much happening at work then. The offices were dull. Occasionally there would be interesting projects. But I’d tend to forget than remember them. The only ones I really enjoyed was the ones outside of the office, like the DTAC project that took me to Thailand for three weeks.

The common numbers were 7, which is about the time I leave the office in the evening; 3 for the number of dishes I’d order for my wife and I for taichow on a typical weekday dinner out; 2000 for the average amount of ringgit I’d spend every time I visit Bali; 1.5 for the price of a teh si peng, which is by far my most ordered drink; 83 for the average amount of ringgit I’d spend on a full tank for my Alfa Romeo 146; 2 for the time I usually go to bed in the a.m.

Yes this post was pretty pointless, but at least you get a sense of where things haven’t changed.

A series of litmus tests I’ve applied over the years have shown that I am not very well suited for world domination, as I might as hoped. Alas, I am to resign as an aging craftsman, with propensity for intellectual quips and philosophical debates.

The thing is, you too may find yourself in that predicament.

Have you always believed that you would make it big someday, and are now in the process of executing something grand, and realized you’ve expended 50% of your effort (based on some arbitrary measure) and are nowhere near your target? This, with all the books you’ve read.

Sure, there’re a ton more. And you could always try getting another job.

I started asking myself lately if anything major had changed in my life, and I realized that my behavior hasn’t really changed a whole lot over the years. Here are some of my not-so-stellar ones:

• going to bed at ungodly hours
• wasting time reading articles on the net, convinced that it’ll lead me closer to world domination
• wasting time on twitter and facebook
• not sticking to my plans
• making quick connections about things I read from the internet, like for example… how mashups are efficient ways to make big bucks (wrong)
• watching how other people succeed and emulating bits and pieces (also wrong)

Before I sign myself off as a complete idiot, I’m going to draw the line here and state that world domination requires a lot of WORK. And that work has certain elements that cannot be removed, such as goals, patience, communities of practice, apprenticeship, planning and execution.

A few years ago, I was naive enough to believe that with technology and some life-hackery, I could take shortcuts (money, time, know-how) in order to get what I needed or wanted. To an extent, this is true. I can now listen to my favourite music without having to pay for it.

But world domination is not the same as listening to music. They are two very different things.

I realized that world domination requires at least the following:

Know-How

When I experimented with a blog aggregator to see if it would bring me lots of cash without hurting people and with minimal effort, I was in for a lesson. I realized that I needed to put in a lot of effort and give it a lot more thought.

At the same time, it took me a long time to see the point of stuff like SEO, re-designing my layout, hacking my templates… and getting Wordpress to flippin’ work just killed any desire to make the site better. In short, I was lazy.

Some great ideas are complex to pull off, and there is such a thing as an individual preference – so projection is important, as in – asking the right questions, and being effecient about it. I wasted time mulling over so many different things, executing some, but I failed to analyze good case studies and learning from folks who have done it before.

Respect for what and who are already there

This leads to the next part about underestimating experts, leaders, professionals, systems, processes, and a whole lot of other stuff that can seem very “red-tapeish”.

On one hand, some experts seem like superheroes we can’t avoid quoting them every 5 seconds or so. But on the other, it’s hard to swallow the truth that some people I worked under did have some smarts under that skull of theirs… and I could’ve been a bit more patient at learning the ropes, and reflecting on it.

“I can be like that too”, was a common thought that ran through my mind. Thoughts like, I can start a business and run my own internet company… or, like… I can earn double my salary in 1 year by focussing on X, Y and Z.

And yet, some things take its own pace – you just can’t force it. Might as well sit back, smell the roses and enjoy the ride.

Reading between the lines

Graduate school has taught me a lot about reading between the lines. A lot of people who are relatively unknown who I never used to care about, had spent a lot of time writing stuff that they’ve learnt through their work, and I used to think that I didn’t need to bother about what they cared about. So, I tended to skim read a lot, until I realized I was getting nowhere.

Then, I learnt to dig deeper and search through the work that had been done by the authors, by disecting their arguments, their references… by drawing a more holistic picture of the work itself, in order to get a better understanding of what it was I needed to learn.

The real value is in appreciating the lessons that people gain when they do good work. Because ultimately, these are things I may learn, and that’s where good dialogue takes place in places like blogs, twitter posts, and messages.

It’s not just about “knowing stuff that’s been said already”.

Collaboration

In my six months of working part-time with what is now becoming a real startup company, I learnt that big ideas need good teams. There are things that can be done solo… like, I dunno… selling lemonade.

I was hired as a lead web developer to help build a product, and we started from scratch. It’s now six months past, and I basically overestimated my abilities to build websites. In other words, I couldn’t pull off building a full-fledged site in six months on my own. If there were 3 good people on the team, that would look more probable. And I say that not to quote some esoteric theory, or startup expert.

In recent weeks, a small but formidable team has come together to help this site move along faster, and I’m blown away by the exponential effect good people can do to a team.

World domination is not a solo effort. Even if you’re planning to take over the world by writing a book, that book requires the contribution of people other than yourself.

And sometimes, it’s just worth spending a bit more

As a stingy kiasu Malaysian, I also assumed you could get by with very little. A few things I learnt from working with folks here in London is that it makes sense to use money to move things along.

My wife works for a local charity, where they get donors from all over the place. Her CEO recently bought a huge map that cost a lot of money, for the purpose of sticking pins on the areas where donors had come from, so that she could be reminded of where her donors are and subsequently keep in touch with.

In Malaysian-speak, that’s quite blasphemous to the name of all things good. Firstly because it was a charity, funded by the public. And it would’ve been cheaper to use 32 A4-size printouts of Google Maps screenshots. But taking a step back, it did make sense. It was quick, efficient, and it did the job well.

I can’t imagine the amount of time I’ve lost trying to get things done with the absolute minimum. There are other factors in play, like time, comfort, a sense of provision, or partnerships… that make spending a lot less worse than I think it is.

I could’ve quoted a line from Gladwell’s Outliers, which I think makes sense, but I didn’t.

Anyway, just my rant about World Domination. What’s yours?

Friday marked the 6th month my wife has been at her job. That’s a good cause to celebrate, though I screwed up our dinner date coming home late from work Friday night. So we went out for a nice dinner at Tupelo Honey tonight, instead. Check out the restaurant from streetview.

I realized that her 6 months at her job meant that I had also done 6 months at my part-time job, which is really cool in a weird way… weird not because of the job, but because I haven’t said much about it, and that’s due to reasons I can’t explain right now. So you just have to believe me that it really is cool, and that the work is great and all that. Because it is.

All I can say is that, around the time I got the job, I was looking for part-time work, but I was being fussy because I told myself I wouldn’t do something that would just pay me minimum wage. I interviewed for a job at uni that assisted tutors teaching semi-tech-literate people Word and Powerpoint for £10 an hour, but that was bare minimum.

At the same time, I was rummaging through online job classifieds like loot.com and gumtree and other sites that were mostly crap. I wasn’t sure I was keen on taking up programming work again but I applied for this opening for a web developer, and I got a call almost immediately and met with the guy who ended up hiring me. After being through many shady deals in the past, I was wary of stuff on the interwebs, so I was really thankful for this opportunity. And I’m confident to say that now, 6 months into the job.

Community and Volunteering

Anyway, so work is really picking up steam from all fronts. I’ve got 5 papers due, with only about a month or so to work with, plus a major exam coming up. Then, I have this dissertation thing, which is still bogged down with paperwork due to ethics clearance and risk assessments. And that volunteer thing I signed up for at IXDA is now officially in phase 3, which involves a lot more work.

So I think I’m going to drop the volunteer thing, although I think the experience has been really great and the people I get to work with are really cool. It gave me a fresh perspective of what volunteering is like, and I’d definitely take it up in the future, just to contribute back to the community.

That being said, I did attend Barcamp London 6 recently, and it was quite an experience. I think it would’ve been a lot more valuable if I was part of the volunteer team, or at least familiar with the community or people who were involved in organizing the camp. I just felt a bit like an outsider, and although the sessions were good, it really felt like a big techie club.

I’m all in for UXCampLondon though, which is coming up… oh, I don’t know… soon. I’ve already built a bit of rapport with some folks in the UX community (thanks to UX book clubs, UPA, and Twitter), so at least it’ll be like hanging out with some people I already know.

Podcasts, Herbs and Knowing God

Apart from that, I’ve been listening to podcasts of sermons from my pastor, Rod Anderson, at Commonwealth Church. The podcasts are great because it’s just good to go over messages again and again, because it’s about practicing life from what I’ve learnt, and checking myself again and again to see how good (or bad) things have been going, and of course, to discover how God is working in my life.

What’s even better is how God is also working through the lives of others, and I get to hear about that through the sermons as well. And it’s about going back in time and reflecting on the journey we’ve gone through as a church.

Rod has been taking us through a series of messages on Spirit vs. Flesh, and the most profound, yet practical part of the whole message is that while the truth of sin having no power over my life because of Christ, convincing my body and soul of that truth is all about the mind being in agreement with the spirit. This is opposed to, say, the conditioning of the soul and body to influence the mind (which, if you think about it, seems to make more sense, in a way).

And Christian living doesn’t always “make sense”, like in book sense. It’s more like jungle trekking or cooking, where you just have to get your hands dirty and actually do it, to realize what it means. So, yeah – I’ve been reading the whole Romans 7 and 8 thing in so many ways over the years, but it only really starts to make sense when I take it seriously, look closely at what it means, and put it to practice in my life.

Like, for the life of me, I can never tell what’s the difference between thyme and rosemary and all the other herbs. I used to use “italian mixed herbs” and “oregano” so often because to me they were all the same. But I’m slowly starting to discern them herbs apart, and I actually bought like a fresh pack of rosemary the other day for cooking. It’s like becoming a favorite herb of mine, until I start to discern another herb. And that’s because I can’t avoid cooking without herbs – almost every dish I look at has some kind of herb or another.

So, I could’ve been like, “all herbs are the same”, but I decided I needed to start taking my herbs seriously. Thus, the whole Romans 7 and 8 thing in my life.

update: This isn’t a post about proselytizing/evangelism/converting people. It’s about people understanding who I am.

One of the things I do very rarely on this blog is talk about my faith. And I admit it’s because of the expectation I think people have of me (which isn’t always as expectation I place on myself), and I feel this is justified to a degree.

Most of my friends and family don’t share the same kind of beliefs I do, even though we may carry long friendly conversations and relate to one another very affectionately. And I guess it has helped me navigate in social circles of different kinds, despite disagreeing on principle.

And I guess I could be more open about my beliefs, but I do fear the problems of being socially ostracized, rejected, or misunderstood (as I often am when I discuss my beliefs). Things tend to be nicer and friendlier when I keep quiet about those things.

However, I allow my life to be “read” like a book without words. And maybe this why I am quite open about other things, such as my life on facebook or on a blog. I don’t think I have anything particularly sensitive about me that I have problems exposing apart from some odd toilet habit which I shall never tell anyone about.

But this does mean people don’t know how my faith affects my life, which makes the whole thing all pointless – because for it to work, people who ‘read’ me have to go through a whole process of understanding what I believe, and they will almost never ever do that.

This is all fine for the whole world, but it’s not fine for me.

So I am thankful for this ‘club’ that I go to where people who share the same beliefs I do happen to be. It also helps that my wife is part of this ‘club’, so I don’t eat myself alive or commit suicide on a perfectly sunny day.

Sometimes, I wish so many people weren’t so anti-’this club’. But I can understand why they’re so against it. It just never made sense to them. And I consider myself one of the lucky ones to have not seen it from the ‘wrong’ light.

But I just wonder, if there is a ‘wrong’ light – why don’t we put more effort into helping people understand the ‘right’ light?

That’s where things got complicated for me, and I haven’t really done anything about it. But maybe I should.