My Life

I've seen lots of criticism on what people should or shouldn't post on Facebook.  I've seen people complain about political and religious posts, about pictures of food, about exercise logs or weight logs.  I've seen people say that you shouldn't put anything negative on Facebook or that you shouldn't whine or complain.  You post too much.  You don't post enough.  I've seen people criticize nearly every type of Facebook post, including being critical of other people's Facebook posts. I enjoy the variety of posts that I see in my newsfeed.  I love seeing posts about the things that are going on in the personal lives of my family and friends, particularly those that I don't get to see in person on a regular basis.  I enjoy seeing photos of them doing fun things or their new haircut or whatever other exciting thing is going on in their lives. I enjoy seeing photos of the food that my friends eat.  Some of the photos are very delicious-looking, an...

I'm definitely an advocate of authenticity .  To some degree, we do have individual identity.  I think that people should feel a degree of freedom to voice their own opinions and do the things which make them happy. Gay people should feel comfortable dating someone of the same sex, including showing affection in public and getting married.  Someone with a proclivity for art or music or science should feel free to pursue a career in that field.  I believe that allowing for people to freely express themselves is a good thing.  However, I feel that one of the great lies of our modern individualistic society is "It doesn't matter what others think." We are social animals.  We have evolved the trait of forming social groups.  This has many advantages over being individualistic animals.  We can band together to protect each other from predators or to hunt prey together.  We can specialize and have different individuals perform different tasks to ...

A very special woman passed away the other day.  She was a close friend.  Karen and I got to know her several years ago when she was taking lessons from the LDS missionaries.  She fell in love with both of us (but mostly with Karen, which is perfectly understandable).  She was devastated when Karen died, but she always wanted to remain friends with me.  She loved me like one of her own sons.  She was happy to meet Conrad when he moved in with me and became a part of my life.  She was always very friendly, loving, and accepting. She was important to me because I was important to her.  She was always so happy to see me or hear from me.  I loved dropping by and bringing her meals or just chatting and watching television with her.  I feel like I was closer to her than any of my other Knoxville friends.  She was special.  She was kind and compassionate. I got a phone call from her cell phone the other day, and answered it very ...