Blog Update: Eye Candy

Finding new ways to increase readership of my blog is one of my ongoing projects. At first I did not think much about including images. After all, images do not add to the content of the topics I tend to post about. However, I noticed that when browsing other people’s posts I tended to be much more attracted to the posts with a featured image.

Tarot Reading Explained

The tarot is a set of 78 cards used by various people for meditation, insight, and divining the future. Receiving a tarot reading from my father was an established birthday ritual when I was growing up, and I first picked up an interest in learning how to read the tarot when I was in high school. 

Identity Death

A variety of ideas about myself have served as the basis of my self-worth in the course of my life. My success academically, variety of hobbies, awesomeness at computer games, intelligence, skill at listening, helpfulness of what I have to say, and the approval of others have been more or less important to my self esteem. All of the skills or qualities I have mentioned are ultimately fleeting.

Caring for People Who Cannot Give Back

I feel meaning and significance in the work I do feeding, clothing, and generally helping elderly people who can no longer fulfill those basic tasks for themselves. Not long after I started working at the nursing home, I started to wonder why taking care of these people mattered so much to me, and at first I did not have a good answer. Thinking about my beliefs and emotions was similar to the process I went through thinking about morality.

Blog Update and Social Fears

Today I updated my blog in several ways. I changed the blog name and web address to more accurately reflect the direction of its content, and instead of remaining anonymous behind the nickname “dabbler” I decided to use my real, full name. Finally, I created or updated accounts on different social media so that my posts will automatically appear on those sites. This post will be the first that is automatically shared to other social media sites.

Changing the domain name was easy enough, and having my real name attached to what I write only caused a twinge of nervousness. However broadcasting updates for my blog across social media with my name attached to them is terrifying for me.

Speculations about Death

Working in a nursing home allows me to see death up close and personal. So far two people have passed away who I was involved in caring for, and I occasionally wonder whether we exist as more than corpses after we die. “Life after death” is a phrase that never sat right with me, as I can tell the person is both no longer alive and that their body decays. That they somehow receive a new one and become alive in a physical reality we cannot detect by physical means has never seemed likely to me.

A Brief Biography

I was born in San Diego, California, though I currently live in Rockland County, New York. My parents have been divorced for as long as I can remember, which was stressful when I was growing up. When I was nine, my father moved to the east coast, and I joined him a year later. I was failing academically at the time and he wanted to have me with him to foster my education. His efforts helped me tremendously, though I did miss my family back home. While I have visited my family in California I never moved back to the west coast.

Mistakes and Progress

Today I am starting a blog for the first time. I want to leave a note to myself and my readers for when I am a better writer and thinker.