A Little About Me (post 1)

Like most of us, I enjoy commenting on life and society - and, toward that end, I have perhaps spent more than my fair share of time exploring various ideas, beliefs and ways of living.

I call myself a pragmatist because, as far as labels go, it is a close fit.  It isn't perfect - but it works, and there is a pleasant irony in that :)

My desire to blog began some time after I dropped out of grad school.  I was struggling with the big questions - Why do I exist?  Is there a God?  Is there free will?  How will I pay my rent?  Yadda, yadda yadda...

Since then I have done many things.  Most famously, for a time, I wandered around rural America with a beard and a backpack - visiting family, friends and strange communities in stranger places (a pagan commune in the backwoods of Indiana, or a fundamentalist cult in the suburbs of Chattanooga).

Eventually I returned to school to study mathematics, and then taught math for years - in Massachusetts, and then Bloomington.  Now I live and work as a financial advisor in Indianapolis.  I am happily engaged, and my fiancee and I look forward to starting a family.

Throughout my adventures there was always one unifying theme: the search for integration to a fractured sense of community.  And in that desire for a more complete and permanent community, I know that I was not and am not alone.

The marvels of the modern world are many, but if there is one regret, it is that we too often end up spread out over vast regions (both physical and ideological) - leaving us isolated and longing for idyllic notions of a simpler world where we could spend each day living and loving amidst close-knit friends and family.

It is no wonder that cell phones, the internet and social networking are the dominate technological achievements of our era.  More than anything, they help to connect us.  They help us feel less alone.  And there is nothing more valuable than that.

The purpose of this blog is to attempt to understand the ways in which our world is changing - and the ways in which we can participate in these changes - so that, at the end of each day, the feeling gets a little bit stronger, that we are all in this thing together.