"25 things about me" crossposted from Facebook.

1 - I have mixed feelings about Facebook. While I think it's cool to see and know what a bunch of people you used to be close to are doing with their lives... at the same time I think being in closer contact with people who you *used* to know - and who define you as a person as the person you *used* to be - hampers and hamstrings efforts at your own personal evolution and whatever efforts you make at changing yourself for the better. In my experience the people "closest" to you are the ones who give you the most grief when you try to change from who they "think" you "are." And I worry that I do that to the same people I "friend" on Facebook.

2 - I'm 36 years old and still am not entirely clear on who I am or who I want to be when I "grow up."

3 - Marriage is simultaneously the most gratifying, fulfilling, frustrating and difficult thing I've ever been a part of. I do know that I am a *much* better and psychologically much, much healthier person because of my wife. Thank you Sandy. I don't say that enough.

4 - Being the youngest of three boys, in hindsight, probably continues to have much more effect on me than I realize. At the very least, hardly ever winning at anything you compete in growing up, from Atari to driveway basketball, is sure to fuck with your head. As does trying to live up to the reputations and expectations of two highly achieving superjock older brothers.

5 - I spent the first 26 years of my life, to a large degree,trying to fulfill the expectations and gain the approval of others. From making good grades to playing football to going to the Naval Academy to joining the Marine Corps, I can see now, despite the good and the coolness I drew out those situations and experiences - which were admittedly very, very cool at times - that the reason I did them is because I just wanted the people I loved to love me back. That is a fucked up thing to realize after 26 years.

6 - I'm often just really disappointed by the people and the world. They should be better. They really, really should.

7 - I think Bill Hicks was a bodhisattva, George Carlin was a saint and Joe Rogan is a prophet. And Robert Anton Wilson was the greatest philosopher of the 20th Century.

8 - I have extremely mixed feelings about having kids. On the one hand, I thoroughly enjoy and delight in playing with kids, both at my job at elementary school and in Jr High. They are filled with joy and wonder and awesomeness. On the other hand, looking at it honestly, I feel like I'm too selfish to have kids. I don't think I could live the life I have if I had had kids. And when I think about kids of my own I usually find myself thinking of how they'd limit my options. And how it seems to me that when people have kids they abandon their own growth, dreams and development "for the children." And I honestly think and fear about what kind of permanent and scarring emotional damage I might inadvertently and irreparably cause to a child. I feel like I'm constantly struggling on where to go with this decision.

9 - I don't think there is any one right way for people to live. And I think that the vast majority of the world's problems are caused by people who think they know what other people should be doing with their lives and how other people should be living.

10 - I ignored most of these "25 things about me" things, until Aki did one. The way Jr always talked about Aki as an uber-cool older brother made me respect him a lot - even though I've only met the man all of twice. And hell, if he could write one of these things up, I can too. The opinions of my friends apparently means a lot to me. I don't know yet if that's a good or a bad thing.

11 - I thought I'd breeze through these. Now I think, writing this, I'm writing TMI and turning into a big, whiny, navel-gazing, introspective girl. [And now, apparently, I'm sexist as well.]

12 - I wish I could go back in time, do just about everything different, be a completely different person and have lots and lots of different experiences, but still end up exactly where I am now. I also know these kinds of regrets and thinking back are nothing but wasted time and emotions.

13 - I live in my head too much. I think too much. I read too much. I surf the internet too much.

14 - I know I'm too negative and cynical and need to work on being more optimistic. The great thing about my job is that I get to suck up and enjoy all the youthful optimism, cheer and joy of my kids. My job really does rock.

15 - Knowing that I spent a lot of my life trying to meet the expectations of others, these days I'm a lot more inclined to tell you to fuck off and that I couldn't possibly care what you think. This does not make me a hit at parties.

16 - From 15 - Obviously, my people skills suck.

17 - Despite 4 years at the Naval Academy and 5 years in the Marine Corps, the concept of patriotism doesn't make any sense to me AT ALL. The idea of loyalty to some imaginary lines drawn on a map, based on an accident of birth, where people got tired of fighting, strikes me as insane. Idealistically and naively I get that people are loyal to the ideals of a nation, but the fact of the matter is that no military is deployed based on the ideals of a nation - and are instead are expected to fight due to matters of political expediency and geopolitical influence. One of the many reasons I left the military is that it seems insane to kill and die based on the whims and decisions and venal and ridiculous politicians.

18 - Finding out a few years ago I have family - close family - I've never met and never even knew about makes me feel angry, deceived and cheated, and convinces me more and more that my childhood was filled with lies and deception. And affirms that the ideas of friends and "chosen families" are more influential than blood.

19 - Almost everything in my life can be tracked back to comic books. The box under my older brother's bed and the used bookstore my dad used to take me to. Batman takes me to Bruce Lee, Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini. Which matches a lifelong interest in martial arts, critical and analytical thinking, deception and psychology. Dennis O'Neil's 'The Question', Frank Miller's 'The Dark Knight Returns' and Alan Moore's 'Watchmen' takes me into existentialism, metaphysics, zen and philosophy. Warren Ellis takes me to Hunter S. Thompson and transhumanism. To some degree I still want to be the comic book characters I read about as a kid.

20 - Over the last 10 years my diet has run the gamut from vegetarianism to lacto-ovo to pesco to low carb to paleo to omnivore. I understand and agree with the ideas of vegetarianism as an ethical choice, but think, more and more, that vegetarianism isn't an evolutionarily viable option. Nor a healthy one.

21 - Since getting out of the military my fitness and health level has rollercoastered all over the damn place as I've had to reconfigure and break down the difference between coercion and discipline [discipline comes from within.] Finally, about 10 months ago I finally hit my own rock-bottom. Since then I've lost about 22lbs and finally feel like I'm back on the path of moving towards the person I want to be.

22 - I think I tend towards an addictive personality. Be it information/the internet, food, alcohol or sugar, I find myself needing to be aware of that fact.

23 - I sometimes feel obsessed with pithy aphorisms, saying, quotations and truisms. I think there's wisdom in them most people don't pay attention to. My two current favorites are - "I don't believe anything. Since we all create our habitual reality-tunnels, either consciously and intelligently or unconsciously and mechanically, I prefer to create... the happiest, funniest, and most romantic reality-tunnel consistent with the signals my brain apprehends. I feel sorry for people who persistently organize experience into sad, dreary and hopeless reality tunnels, and try to show them how to break the bad habit, but I don't feel any masochistic duty to share their misery... My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism... not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything." - Robert Anton Wilson AND "It is always about you and your body... It's how you see yourself, and as a result, how you see the rest of the world. The body dictates everything. It's where it all starts. What you can make it do. What you can make it endure. How quick you can be. How precise. How quiet, and strong, and flexible and still... It is at the heart of eveything you do, and you must be able to trust it absolutely..." - Critical Space, Greg Rucka

24 - I am clearly, when it comes to writing, a long winded motherfucker. Which is a marked contrast to how little I verbally express myself.

25 - I think organized religion is bullshit. I get why people gravitate towards it for a sense of community or purpose, but even the most cursory examination of history or comparative theology can show you it's nonsense, if you're even half willing to critically examine your own social conditioning. Even if you grant that in its origins most faiths have a kernel of decency and goodness, when you look at history, it's all pretty immediately perverted into tools of control, power and destruction.

I have a hard time dealing with religious folks. Abandoning critical thought and introspection for the comfort of dogma, groupthink and faith strikes me as a profoundly cowardly way to live.

I don't doubt people have incredibly moving spiritual experiences. I just think they're shaped by your own personal psychology and culture and like anything else, your religion and your experiences say more about you than it does about the true nature of spirituality or god.

Personally, I blame Catholicism and Christianity for for infusing and permeating my childhood psychology with deep seated notions of fear, shame, punishment and guilt. And I think what religion does to kids is tantamount to child abuse if anything is. Filling impressionable children's heads with images of a vengeful god that will burn you in the painful fires of hell for all of time and eternity [but he loves you!] if you don't worship him and do what he says is so amazingly fucked up it leaves me without words.

But I'm not nearly arrogant enough to say that no god exists. In fact, I'd lay odds that that there is a transcendental aspect to reality.