Keith Blenman's Blog: This Worthless Life

"Maybe I should just give up?" We've all asked it. If you haven't, you're insane. Any writer needs to ask at some point or another, what chance does your book have? Seriously? In today's world.


It's an honest question.

Something I tell other writers, regardless of their hopes and aspirations; today's market is flooded. It's never been easier to publish a book, and while that sounds exciting, the thought should terrify you. Anybody -everybody- can publish their own book. It's easier than ever, and because of that nearly a million books are produced every year. That also means the average lifespan of a book is less than a thousand copies.

It gets better. You're not just competing against other books. Think of every movie that comes out in a year. Every new TV show. Every show that's streaming and binge worthy. Every web series. Every cat video. All the reading people do on social media. How people take in and process information isn't even the same as it was twenty years ago. And you're going to drop a book into the world?

I can't recall the source, but a few years ago I read one tactic mainstream publishers use is to buy out thousands of copies of their top author's books and stick them in a warehouse somewhere. Just to make sure that exciting new novel makes it onto all the best seller lists. It's cheaper and easier to do that for marketing than actual marketing.


There isn't any statistic that I'm aware of, but the feeling is you have a better chance of getting away with murder than you do selling your books.

That's more or less what I've been going through lately. I published my latest novella in early February. Roadside Attraction, Part Two: Tramp Stamp Vamp. A book eight years in the making. Something I started shortly after finishing the first of the series, Siren Night , but set aside in favor of my now award winning novel, Necromantica . I'm not saying this to boast. I just felt the need to point out that it felt as though Tramp Stamp Vamp should've piqued more interest. A sequel to one of my better selling books (every time I do an promotion for Siren Night on Amazon, it ends up in the top ten of several categories). My last major work had an award behind it. I'd been buzzing about the release on social media for months. Whenever I told people the plot, or brief aspects of the story, it always brought a smile to someone's face. My beta readers enjoyed it. The editor I hired celebrated it. The title is provocative, catchy, and at least a bit comedic. Friends were asking about it. Honestly, I gave myself every reason in the world to believe this book would catch on.

Two months later, and I've sold less than a hundred copies. There hasn't been a single review on Amazon or Goodreads. The book, even for an indie, thus far is a failure. That doesn't mean I can give up on it. It's months and years of work to get a title to catch on. Again, I'm competing against the entire entertainment industry that's cranking new and exciting things on a daily basis. My content output is slow at best. About as frequent as a guy with two jobs can put out new content.

But that doesn't mean I haven't thought about throwing in the towel. Often. Regularly. The question comes to mind. "Who am I even writing to?" It expands into the thought of, "I can spend the rest of my life cranking out book after book after book that nobody will ever read. And what's the point? Why? Why write at all when the final season of Game of Thrones is coming soon? And all the Marvel movies this years. Why write when there's more social media to mindlessly scroll through for hours? Why spend my life failing when I can just enjoy all the amazing creativity the rest of the world is putting out there? Have you guys seen The Chair Gang?

First world problems, I know.

I wouldn't say I'm a religious man. And spiritually speaking, I'm on the fence most days. But in a weaker moment, I found myself asking, aloud, to the world or whatever deity who would listen, "Is this even what I'm supposed to do with my life?"

I know. As if clouds would part and God or the Metatron would float down and say, "Oh, uh no. No, you were actually supposed to have gone to trade school and been an electrician."
         "Oh. Well, can I still do that?"
         "It's a bit late, actually. We've already rewritten your soulmate's destiny and altered the fates of a lot of people when you decided to pursue a creative life."
         "I had a soulmate?"
         "You were supposed to have met her in electrician school."
         "Can I see her?"
         "It'd hurt too much. Better to just let you die in a gutter in eight years without actually knowing."
         "Damn. That's pretty brutal, Metatron."
         "Well, that's what you get for fucking up your life, Keith."

Any Kevin Smith fan will tell you the Metatron sounds (and should sound like) Alan Rickman. For some reason I hear him more like Eddie Izzard. I know I'm wrong for this, but to be fair, Mr. Izzard is a very close second.



Anyway, the maybe I give up question has been on my mind lately.

I think the world answered.

A long gestating project with a friend has been an audiobook version of Necromantica. Originally we were supposed to start on it last summer, but life has a way keeping its own schedule, so contact has been minimal and it really started to feel like this wasn't ever going to get off the ground. Then the other night, I was sick in bed (I've been at war with the common cold for about four days now.), and my friend sent me a brief recording of the prologue. It was just a test. She just wanted me to hear her voice and tone. But it was perfect. It was better than all the ways I'd imagined her reading it. Just a few minutes of story. Followed by her cat barging in and her saying, "Dammit!" But it sounded spectacular. I couldn't have been more thrilled.




The next day, a friend from high school found one of my books in the Tardis Detroit. This isn't too entirely shocking. I'd dropped off several books from Detroit authors (Kasey Pierce and Jamaal May) along with a few of my own in the Tardis about a week prior. In fact, I've been leaving books all around Metro Detroit for about three years now. Mostly in Little Free Libraries. Recently I've discovered The Book Fairies, and have been including their stickers with my books, just as a way to encourage people to share books instead of leaving them on a shelf. For the most part I'd only been putting my books around town. Lately I'm trying to include other Detroit based authors, preferably indies. Especially in locations such as the Tardis.

It's one thing to get my own work out there. I'm hustling. Struggling. Hanging on by a thread more days than I should admit. But I have to figure most other indie authors are going through it too. So if I can get their work out into the world along with my own, all the better.

So it's funny that just the day after I get the very first sample recording of my upcoming audiobook, a friend from high school, someone I haven't had a real conversation with in over twenty years, sends me a picture on Facebook, showing me that she "found this little gem" in the Tardis Detroit. Tramp Stamp Vamp of all things, being called a gem.

Two things together, one day after the next, were enough to help restore my faith in myself. But the world didn't stop there. Like I said, I've had a cold. I'm in day four, missing work today, and feeling all around pretty miserable. But I managed to make it to the pharmacy to stock up on DayQuil, Airborne, cough drops, and orange juice. It was early afternoon, and I'd just finished paying for my drugs at the U-Scan, when a random somebody approached me. Like I said, I leave my books all over town. She asked, "Is your name Keith Blenman?"
        I was prepared to be served, but I said yes.
        "Are you an author?"
        I knew who she was from that. She'd posted a review of Necromantica on Goodreads recently. I'd left a copy of the book on a bench outside the store earlier this year, Book Fairies sticker included. She saw me shopping, recognized me from social media, and just wanted to say how much she enjoyed my book.

That said, I'd like to take a moment to apologize to her. Like I said, I've had a cold. I feel terrible, but I've never been approached by a fan before and wasn't thinking clearly. I definitely shouldn't have shaken her hand. Especially while sick. Plus I'd been in bed since Saturday and hadn't showered or even brushed my teeth. She got me at my absolute worst. So I'm very, deeply sorry if you catch this cold. And if I smelled bad.

Anyway, no matter how awkward and stinky I was in the couple of minutes that we chatted, she smiled at me, said several times how much she enjoyed my book, asked when she can expect a sequel, and told me to "Keep up the good work."

Totally out of the blue. What a moment.

Anyway, with those three experiences, one day after another, even while sick, I think the world gave me its answer. I don't know what I believe in, let alone what you believe in, but I asked, and something was definitely listening. Whether you believe that or not, if you find yourself asking the same questions I do, keep trying. Keep working. Don't give up on yourself. You never know what tomorrow will bring.

Also, take a shower. You never know who you'll run into.

That's my advice. Don't give up on yourself. And always take a shower.

I recently published a book called Tramp Stamp Vamp. A few days later, a coworker asked, "What's the deal with that? What's the book about? Why would you publish a book with that title?"

"It's catchy," I shrugged. For some reason I remember myself being on a ladder in the moment, even though I'm pretty sure I wasn't. "The original title was Sucking Midnight and I wanted something memorable, but a bit less provocative."

"Well it is provocative."

The conversation meandered, and I never really had the opportunity to answer her next part. Why would you publish a book with that title? The answer is simple, really. Because I want to see it become the number one book on Amazon.

Art by Natalie Schunk
I'll come back to that. With just a bit more setup before arriving at my point, I should say that I've been doing a lot of promotion for Tramp Stamp Vamp. I advertise on Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and Google. I post images and excerpts. I post in Kindle forums. I tell friends and family about the book. I have a stack of refrigerator magnets of the book's hardcover design that I hand to just about everybody. And my most recent attempt at grabbing attention, I started a Reddit account and keep dropping the book's title there.

But this isn't a post about marketing, building an audience, or anything like that. This is just a quick entry to discuss a common theme I've been seeing on Reddit. Specifically, a lot of fledgling authors ask, "What is the secret to success?"

That's what this post is about. Not my formula for success. I don't have one of those yet. Lots of trial and error, at best, has resulted in a formula for affording cat food. I've been doing this for twenty years. I've made every mistake. I've taken every gamble. I still have two other jobs. And I'm happy. I still want to see Tramp Stamp Vamp become the number one book on Amazon. But if it doesn't happen... Hey. I still wrote a good book.

That's more or less my advice. Don't write for the money. Don't create because you're looking for that magic gateway to fame and a better life. That's how you fail. When the goal is to make a million dollars, anything less is failure. It's a backwards way of limiting yourself. If you want to be a successful author, just write for the love of it. Make a world because you're the only person who can discover it. Spend time with characters because you want to hang out with them and get to know them. When you daydream, imagine the adventures, the drama, and all the moment of joy you experience in creating. Write for the story. That's where your heart belongs. In the work itself.

I'm not even talking about the story itself tonight. The links are here. The book is already waiting for you. But I will say, when I wrote Tramp Stamp Vamp , every word came from my heart. I wrote it earnestly. I slipped in memories, feelings, and experiences from my life. Masked under comedic horror and over the top action (things I enjoy in my entertainment), there's a lot of myself in this book. Even under all the vampire ridiculousness, there is a jumbled up memoir and baring my soul on every page. Even with a title like Tramp Stamp Vamp , I can say this is work I'm proud of. It's practically my child. And one that had been gestating for eight years at that. When I say I want to see Tramp Stamp Vamp become the number one book on Amazon, it's not for money. It's because I love this story and I think a lot of you will be amused by it.

My thinking is that no matter how much of a fortune you acquire in your life, all the money you spent your life chasing dies with you. If you're the creative type, and you put your heart and soul into every word on every page, then no matter how much you earn, you're still leaving the world with greatness.


...At least that's why I wrote the story. As for why I titled it Tramp Stamp Vamp , it's because I'd love to see it be the number one book on Amazon. Whether or not you read the story, pretty much everybody in the world can get a laugh from seeing that specific title, of all things, at the number one spot. That's pretty damn funny. That's why I do it. Because if you and a bunch of people you know buy that book, the result is hilarious.

Tramp Stamp Vamp!

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think we're pretty much all in the same boat.



I don't care enough to actively seek out the change, but if somebody were to approach me with a petition to end daylight savings, I'd sign it. Sure. Why not?

"If I sign this, how will it impact my life?"
"Well, you know how your clock loses an hour in Spring, but then gains one in Fall?"
"Yeah."
"You just wouldn't worry about that shit anymore."
"Oh. Okay."

It's just not a fight worth having. I'm already thinking the world is on the brink of collapse. Between pollution, equality, corrupt politics, climate change, declining education, mental health crises, cyber addictions, unemployment, and apparently a resurgence in arm races, the battle over daylight savings is low on 'battles worth picking' list.

It's something we can all pretty much agree on. It doesn't matter if you're left wing, right wing, communist, Christian, Muslim, from rural America, a city slicker, anti-vaccer, mime, punk, goth, meth head, hippy, alcoholic, old, young, working three jobs, retired, a conspiracy theorist, some monk living on a mountain, nerdy, weird, gay, straight, or any other walk of life you can imagine. Daylight savings is dumb.

I am saying this without having done my research. This may be a case of confidence spawned from pure ignorance, but I'm doubtful. Never in my life have I known somebody to have a definitive answer on its purpose.

"Why are we doing this?"
"I think it helps like some farmers or something."
"Are you sure?"
"..."

We live in a consumerist society. We find any and every excuse for deals and sales that we can think of. St. Patrick's Day sale! Easter Sale! President's Day Sale! Groundhog Day Sale! And we don't even bother with a daylight savings sale. I think that's all the proof you need. Even people looking for lame excuses to drive business, who can rely on this being a yearly tradition, are irked over this one.

"Come on by for our twenty-three hour sale! We've got crazy deals but only for twenty-three hours! Because they twenty-fourth was stolen for no fucking reason!"

It's not like we have parades. There aren't t-shirts. You all probably know somebody who can tell you on a whim exactly how many days it is until Christmas. There's nobody in the world looking forward to this one. There are people out there who will defend to the death, who will fight you in the street, if you tell them the Earth is round. And even they don't want to set their clocks an hour early.

"Hey, are you doing for daylight savings?"
"Ohmygod, my friends and I are getting so fucking smashed. You should come."

Do me a favor this year. Monday, when you and everyone else is just a little bit extra tired at work, school, the gym, or wherever you go. Any time something good happens, blurt out, "It's a Daylight Savings miracle!" As long as none of us care quite enough to make a change happen, we might as well pretend to enjoy it.

An interview, five years into the future:



Interviewer: Let me ask you, Keith. What is the secret to your success?
Me: I’ll tell ya, it’s all about knowing your audience. With my fantasy novel, Necromantica, I spent years advertising through Amazon, Goodreads, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Google. I pushed the book to fantasy fans, readers in general, d&d enthusiasts... Anybody who I thought might enjoy some fantasy action and adventure. But I really wasn’t seeing much success.
Interviewer: So what changed?
Me: One Cyber Monday I was copying Amazon links to post on Twitter. Necromantica was 66% off on the Kindle that day.
Interviewer: Plus the paperback and hardcover were discounted with promo code NOVBOOKS18.
Me: You know it! Anyway, I’m on the paperback page and I notice the other products viewed by people who checked out my book. And right there, I had my answer. People who were into my fiction were also interested in painter’s tape and shirt garters! All this time I was trying to appeal to readers and people who enjoy fantasy. I kept telling myself, “It’s a huge industry. Hundreds of books are published every day. Most sell less than a thousand copies. But if I just keep plugging away and letting people know my stuff is out there, eventually I’ll hit that threshold. Eventually, my audience will start sharing my work with each other.” I’ll tell ya, I couldn’t have been further off! All that time. All those years, wasted! I should’ve been focusing on the shirt garter and tape crowd all along!

I know, I know. But check out this graph:

For any of my fellow independent authors out there, if you've never looked at your sales rank at authorcentral.amazon.com, I highly recommend it. Along with viewing your books' current rankings, you can view your overall ranking in book sales, keeping track of data from as little as the past two weeks, to as long as you've been publishing. Or at least since September 28th, 2012. You'll forgive me for not researching that date further, but I think that's the date they started keeping track of sales in this format. I've actually been self-publishing on Amazon since 2001, and on the Kindle since 2008. So I don't know if the September date is arbitrary, or if the folks at Amazon actively decided against showing me number prior to 2012 as they were just that depressing.

On the other hand, it may simply have to do with the Mayan calendar. The world ended in 2012 and ever since we've been existing in some after-life illusion that makes us think we're carrying on as normal. The 2012 date is an oversight on some higher power's part, as my sales rank is a little too irrelevant to warrant masking the truth.

So let's take it all in. From the end of the old world to today. I actually love this graph. Not because it looks like polygraph results (that is pretty neat though). But because I can see the story it tells. The ups and downs of my life in recent years.

In 2012 I was a student, finishing up my certification in forensic investigation while taking chemistry and biology classes. I'd been offered a job to continue with the forensics program after graduation, shortly before this graph started. I wouldn't officially start the job for almost a year, so you can see a space where I'm still frequently writing, advertising, and little by little, losing focus on my fiction. I entered graduate school and was in a long distance relationship while -frankly- putting too much focus into every word of every lecture, desperately trying to convince myself I deserved the job I'd been given. You can see the lull in late 2013 to mid 2014 where I was barely writing. The following year tells a sad story.

The lowest points on the graph correspond to a particularly dark couple of years. My cat, Franny, had a tumor in her chest. For months I struggled to keep her fed, comfortable, and happy. My relationship at the time was in a bad place, and my anxiety really started to overwhelm. If I was selling the occasional book in that time, I hardly noticed.

In early, not long after Franny passed, 2015 I was diagnosed with a c-diff infection. I should say misdiagnosed for about a month, hospitalized, correctly diagnosed, and quarantined for a couple of days. I'm a bit of a hypochondriac, so after several months of battling c-diff with antibiotics, every little thing was a new symptom to some life ending disease. For almost a year, I was essentially the sort of person who takes webmd for its word, constantly dying of one thing or another. Without insurance, I was checking myself into the hospital about once a month, racking up debt, and driving everyone I knew insane. I broke off my relationship that year and was in a dark place for it.

I can look at this graph from 2015 to 2016 and see depression, the self loathing, and the constant anxiety. I'll never forget December 26th, 2015, when I left work and checked myself into the hospital after an old friend passed away from heart failure. Apparently my form of mourning him manifested as mimicking symptoms of a heart attack. At least that's what I told myself it was. While they were performing tests and I was stuck on a bed until five in the morning, I knew it was my last day on Earth and I was leaving it an empty, bitter, broken person with nobody at his bedside.

Obviously that didn't happen. Instead, a few conversations and conclusions later, it was determined that all these hospital visits and my year of convoluted symptoms were a steady blend of stress, anxiety, and depression. I wasn't diagnosed sooner because, well, at the ER they treat your current symptoms. If they can't find anything wrong, they can't treat it. It wasn't until they started looking at my medical history and realizing I had a long history of nothing that conclusion could finally be formed.


So I started treatment for depression. I was medicated. I tried a few things. I dealt an assault of side effects. On the graph you can see the faint beginnings of an upward trend in 2016 as I started to pull myself together. While I had published Necromantica and Whisper in late 2015, it really wasn't until mid 2016 when I started to feel like my old self again.


I say started to because it was still a long climb. And that climb is by far my favorite part of the graph. I can see the good days starting to outweigh the bad. I can see when I started to get back into my writing, when I said not to give up on myself. When I started opening up to people. When I started being more proactive and sharing my fiction. The failures are still there, but the graph shows the past few months, when I accepted that my previous methods of advertising and sharing weren't all that effective and took more business-like approaches to my work. When I formed my own publishing house, Blue Donut Books. I started paying for advertising. I started giving out books and doing occasional interviews. The graph shows this slow and steady increase, bringing me back to where I was in 2012. Even a little better. In February this year, I've had my highest ranking ever. 47,029. Not exactly a best seller. A far reach from #1. But looking at the past few years, such a lofty goal doesn't feel out of reach. Today if you go to your local bookstore and request one of my books, they're still not going to know who you're talking about. But as long as I keep writing, keep working, and keep getting my work out there, it'll happen. This graph isn't just showing me how far I have to climb, but how far I've come.

For more, be sure to check out and follow my author's page at Amazon.

I’m a little behind on my Bible studies, so I want to make sure I have this right. Today symbolizes when the messiah was tortured, ridiculed, and stuck up on a plank to bleed out. And a lot people 1) celebrate this, and 2) celebrate by taking the day off work and shopping.
Is that fairly accurate? I just want to make sure I’m the one who’s backwards here.

So it turns out I'm terrible at this.

Like, you ever wake up and say, "Oh yeah. I have a blog!"

...And then decide you really don't have much to write about?

...More forthcoming. Hopefully.

It's not that I've lost hope in the future of the human race, life on Earth, and our continued existence in the universe. I'm just taking an honest look at the world right now and thinking out loud, "Yeah, this could be the shit that does us in."

I don't even really want to discuss it. You guys are watching the news. You're seeing your overly political friends' Facebook rants. You get it. World War III could be around the corner. There's quite a lot of greenhouse gas about. Every day is a new scandal. Our media closer resembles Saturday morning cartoons than a provider of information.
Nothing shocking.
I just can't help but feel like we're at this tipping point where we need to decide if we're going to buck up and do what it takes to carry on as a species and civilization, or if we'd rather just go down in flames, laughing maniacally at a universe that was never going to hear us anyway.
So here's the question I've been pondering for some time now.
If humanity ends up killing itself off, or let's even go the distance and say if humanity ends up wiping out all life on Earth through its faults, is that really such a big deal in the grand scheme of things?
From our perspective, it sure it. I'm trying to imagine a little broader than that. There are countless stars and planets out there. At this point, we're just not advanced enough to know if there is other life out there. It's probably going to be quite some time before we figure that one out. But it's a safe assumption. With all the stars. With all the galaxies. With all the possibilities spanning the great infinity, there's probably a lot of life out there. I mean just tons. Oodles. And if even a tiny fraction of the planets that support life also develop as advanced species, it stands to reason that there are still bunches of those out there. 
Our general assumption is that if a planet has life and has a technologically advanced species, then at some point, this species is going to turn to the stars and explore further and further out. Possibly colonize multiple planets. Maybe figure out how to warp around and refuel using stars and asteroids or whatever. And as long as we're imagining that, I'm going to assume that a good chunk of these aliens out there are going to make it. At some point, our universe is going to host a number of alien species who meet each other, share resources, figure out the meaning of it all, and... I don't know... develop exciting sports and interplanetary ways of making out.
But as long as we're considering the idea, it's safe to assume that for every technological species that makes it in the universe, there are a whole mess of them that don't. Just to throw out some examples:

How many civilizations reached their industrial revolution, had their cities full of smog, and never quite figured out that such a thing was problematic? It's a pretty safe bet that somewhere out there, some mass of people were suffocated by their own progress. Others still probably had scientists and researchers saying, "Wait! All this machinery is emitting gasses that poison us!" But were heavily silenced by the people running the machines.

Somewhere in the universe, an entire population died off because they never figured out STD's. Their leaders said, "We need more workers! Just keep fucking everybody!" And the masses responded, "Hooray!" until there wasn't enough food, they all turned to cannibalism, and died out some horrifying blood orgy.

...Man, that got dark fast!

Being a bit more practical, other aliens were probably killed off by whatever bacteria that happened to run rampant. I bet that one happens moderately often. It wasn't even two hundred years ago that we started saying, "Oh shit, guys! We need to start washing our hands."

Oh, sure. There are probably entire planets killed off by more sexy moments of mass destruction. Some big ass asteroid. Being too close to a black hole. Stars going nova. Hooligans running rampant after an interstellar soccer game. But odds are the things that wipe out more advanced species are going to be their own fault. War. Pollution. Overpopulation. A lack of education is all it takes for things to go to hell.

This is the kind of crap I think about after reading the news lately. Maybe our demise just isn't that big of a deal. It probably happens all the time. Just like HPV. Just another mass extinction.

Anyway, I just wanted to say it's been fun guys.[image error]

"Jesus loves you."
I seem to get that a lot in recent years. I don't know if it's just the neighborhood that I work or what, but it always seems to be on the weekend. Typically Sunday. And it's always while I'm on my lunch break from work. And it's always, always, always in an aggressive tone.
I'll go out for a meal. I'll go shopping. Just going about my business, relaxing for an hour before heading back to the grind. And out of nowhere some stranger will approach and declare, "Jesus loves you!"
Not, "Jesus loves you," said in a way that makes me feel loved and united in our frail, human experience together. Not in a way that makes me feel my fellow man is compassionate or even concerned over my well being. More like "Jesus loves you" as an alternative to telling me, "Fuck you."
That kind of "Jesus loves you."
"Jesus love you," with the same compassion as one might say, "We should nuke the sight from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
"Jesus loves you," with the sort of generosity that comes from people who refuse to tip their waitress.
"Jesus loves you," like he's drawn a line in the sand and I'm on the opposite side of it.
"Jesus loves you," like I should be waving a white flag.
"Jesus loves you," because it's politer than saying, "You look like the sort of person who deserves eternal damnation in Hell."
I assume this is because of the tattoos on my hands and wrists. Or at least I hope it's that. And more specifically I hope it's not just my face. Because how awful would that be? Somebody's pastor or priest at the end of the ceremony tells his flock, "Go out into the world and spread the good word of God," and these people get behind the wheel of their cars, white knuckle grip, and go cruising around town until they spot... me.
"That asshole. That one right there. He has the face of eternal suffering without relief."
Or maybe I just look like an easy save.
Like maybe they'll say, "Jesus loves you," in that accusatory tone and I'll just suddenly perk up a bit. I'll smile at them and say, "Oh. I was just minding my own business and enjoying this here salad, but now that you've come along I'm really going to rethink my life. What's the address of your church? I'll see you next week! Is there a Saturday service? I can't wait!"
Don't get me wrong. I am absolutely in the midst of a spiritual crisis. Well, maybe not "crisis" as much as "aloofness." I'm not feeling much of any particular belief in my heart and therefore am just ignoring it. I often feel as though my life is without meaning. But I can pretty much guarantee the absolute worst way to save my soul -probably a lot of people's souls- is through this sort of drive by preaching. Saying, "Jesus loves you," like you've been waiting in the bushes and are about to mug me isn't the most effective method of delivering that message.
In fact, you'd probably have much better luck if I happen to see you buying a stranger lunch. Or spending time with your kids. Recycling is always a good one. I love when people do what they can to protect and preserve the planet their lord has created for them. Plant something. Adopting a pet is great. Or bake some cookies and just give them to a friend, neighbor, or even the cashiers in the stores and restaurants who have to work on this lovely you're enjoying. Have a food or clothing drive. Take the time to get to know somebody you've never met. Bonus points if they're from another ethnicity or culture. Just show me you're a good person trying to form a good community. That's spreading the word. That's making a difference. That's just living a fruitful life. One thing I've always said is that I've never once felt God's presence in a church. Whatever I feel, spiritual or otherwise, it's in the individual. It's in the heart and nature of the person.
Alternatively, I suppose you could try kidnapping me. You know, burlap sack over the head. Hands bound. Throw me into your church basement for a few weeks with little food and water. Just a bucket to piss in. Ominous voices reading pages from The Bible outside my cell door but for some reason they refuse to speak directly to me. It might take me a few days to come around, and I'm not too sure what will be in my heart apart from fear, but once I've determined just how committed you are to your cause, I'll definitely become more willing to comply.
Either way it's significantly better than "Jesus loves you!" like you'd rather be saying it with a baseball bat.

I was responding to an email discussing beliefs and the afterlife. I haven't updated my blog in forever, so I figured I should probably post this rambling online. Wrong an incoherent as I most certainly am, I should make a point to upload these little states of mind. Feel free to tell me what an idiot I am in the comments below.

Anyway, here's my response to a question. Essentially "What's wrong with having beliefs?" on the subject of the afterlife.


I don't think it hurts to believe in anything. I mean, I do think people get carried away in their beliefs and it hinders them a ton. Bigot bible thumpers. Second amendment maniacs. ISIS. KKK. Nazis. People who think pickles taste good. You look at what people believe and how they use those beliefs and a lot of the time nothing good comes from it. People totally and completely lose themselves and wrap their hearts in stuff that's in all probability wrong. It's not the simple belief, I think. Maybe it's believing without questioning that gets me. Like how me and some stereotype in Texas can live in the same country but our comprehension of what it is to be an American is so vastly different. But that makes it hard to find a path for myself. I mean, who the fuck am I to believe in something when I clearly look down on so very many misguided hearts? Who the fuck am I to say anything is right when I so freely challenge the incorrect beliefs of billions of other people? Even if somebody out there has the right answer, how the fuck is anybody supposed to distinguish it beneath all the piles and piles of bullshit? It's not easy. And you're right. This is my fears talking. Maybe just another wall I've built. I see what people do with their beliefs so I struggle to allow myself any. Something like that? I don't know. At the same time, I know that Teemo, Franny, you, and everyone else is an absolute miracle made up of the utmost impossible set of circumstances. Life itself. The stars, moons, planets. The fact that all of this started a mixture of basic elements, atoms and molecules, and took to self replicating forms based on energy levels, gravity, accretion, heat, hydration and such simple, simple little principles. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. All mashed up to make self replicating RNA and DNA, and develop into increasingly complex structures. A bamboo plant and human being are made of a slightly different combination of the exact same stuff. On a chemical level I'm virtually identical to Donald Drumpf and couldn't be more far apart in every other sense. How the fuck can somebody not appreciate how much we are like individual snowflakes? To quote a song I like by Nahko, "I am a miracle. Made up of particles." The mind alone. The fact that our core functions as living beings beyond keeping ourselves alive is to observe and experience our existence should be sufficient evidence of a continued existence in some form beyond what we are now. The capacity for belief and wonderment are not at all necessary for survival but none of this would be possible without that. But every thing, every single little tiny thing happens for a reason. From your migraines to wind patterns to why certain bugs pollinate certain flowers. As awful as some of it is, everything exists in a perfect moment, at a perfect balance. That doesn't just happen. That's not an accident. There absolutely has to be a reason we interpret our existence to every conceivable and often wrong truth while experiencing an infinite gambit of beautiful and terrible possibilities. Shit. With computers and burgeoning AI we know that a mind and intelligence are perfectly possible without being tied to functions of life. So to say that a mind or soul can exist outside of life is perfectly reasonable. The form is currently impossible to comprehend. But we know data can be conducted via energy through space and transported. It's how we're discussing this right now. What is the mind but a collection of data? Energy cannot be destroyed but can take on other forms. And we run on energy. We know all of this stuff. We know so very, very much about our existence. And the more we learn the more we realize we only comprehend about 1% of our existence. For everything we're right about, we're wrong about so much more. To say we stop existing after our bodies expire is a little too foolishly certain. To say we're here at random without some form of intelligent design is naive. It's just that, you look at all this, you look at everything we do understand under the magnifying glass of everything we don't understand, and to say, "I believe in something with all my heart!" feels so small. Whether it's Heaven or nothing. Especially when those beliefs were made thousands of years ago by bigger idiots than us. I see and understand enough to know that an existence beyond our observable universe is certainly possible. I think our capacity to learn, grow, and experience shows function beyond survival. If somebody asks, "Why are we here?" The only answer that makes any sense to me is simply to be here. To experience this. To be wrong or right. To discover. To love, hate, enjoy each other. To grow ourselves. To grow together. To continue to be more than we were yesterday. To climb and stumble. To tend to, hurt, wonder, gaze upon, and question. To live. All of this, every bit of it is just as important to experience being hungry or tired. Physical sensations. We know that all behavior, all action, every single event occurs for a reason. So "Why are we here?" To do all these things seems reason enough. To what end though is the question I can't answer. And I just don't have it in me to place my faith in a belief that's probably wrong. It's not at all wrong to believe. We have that, we do that for countless reasons. And sometimes I can let myself go enough to feel the core reason we believe is because there is indeed something to believe in. Something in that vastness of shit we can't possibly comprehend. I guess I have no real way of knowing when I'm holding myself back and when I'm throwing myself forward. It's all so much and I always feel so incredibly small. I feel like I'm always wrong and terrible, but sometimes I take comfort in that. Like in some ways it's healthier than being someone who puts so much faith in the certainty of being right all the time. I think it stunts me from bridging that gap though. That willingness to look into the vast unknown and attach an absolutely certain belief to it. Does something more happen when we die? There are enough indicators in all the places we're not looking for it to say, "Yeah. There's probably something more to us than this moment." Can I comprehend what it is? No. Can I put any certainty of beliefs into it? No. Should I even be looking for a greater miracle than the fact that I have the privilege of existing against all odds in this, the absolute impossible? Fuck, that makes me feel like an asshole.






Just a few random thoughts.






People always look for ways to see the grass as greener. This seems like an incredible oversight when you take a moment to realize, "Holy shit! There is fucking grass!"






I read a thing recently discussing evolution in The Bible. Jesus was considered to be tall at the time, and him and I were the same height when I was ten. For some reason this got me thinking about how a fish will grow to fit his environment. Any archaeological site of past civilizations will show you that people are getting bigger over the ages. We're still so tiny, but we're also currently trying to extend our environment to Mars and beyond. Dumb thoughts. But fun to play with.






Anyway, I know I'm full of contradiction and hypocrisy. I'm just trying (and probably failing) to illustrate why it's so hard for me to put faith into something. Why I don't think it's wrong to believe in something but why doing so on such a grand scale is too much for me. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I wish I could. I feel insane most of the time without it. I know I have a hole in my heart because of it. But I suppose I can't fill it until I've exhausted every reason as to why it's there in the first place. Hopefully there's some little thread of logic in my incoherent rambling.