VirusHead

Feedback on JW Jokes

2008/04/10 VirusHead Comments 0 Comment

It’s good to hear from former Jehovah’s Witnesses, although it also makes me very sad to hear the familiar narratives of abuse and shunning. Thank you for writing, Aella Brenna, and I’m glad that you got some distance and healing through laughter. Thrive with light and love.

i’m an ex-JW who has since become a pagan because the beliefs make more sense to me. i found the humour about JW’s on your site refreshing and amusing as I left three years ago and have consequently not heard from my parents or little sister for three years.

So i just wanted to say thanks for the healing to my soul that your jokes provided.

Especially since I was abused when i was growing up both emotionally and physically and watched my mother and sister being abused to, and my abusive dad backed his actions up with the bible and was an elder in the local congregation whom everyone looked up to and thought well of. Of course they never saw what he was like behind closed doors and I was too terrified to tell anyone.

i also didn’t ever like the fact that the bible said one thing but the watchtower said another and that the organisation had taken the place of God to most people. If only they’d read their bibles properly they would see that things have become overly complicated. So i’ve gone back to the old religion.

Just wanted to say thanks for the jokes.

Aella Brenna (it means Whirlwind daughter of Raven)

Final Touches on the Blog

2008/04/05 VirusHead Comments 3 comments

The basic template I’m going to be using for a while is Personal by WPDesigner.

The main graphic “Heidi of Many Faces” is a result of my playing around in Photoshop (apologies to Joseph Campbell).

I think I’ve fixed all the little bits that needed tweaking, but let me know if something doesn’t look or work right.

Dear Future Me Received

2008/04/05 VirusHead Comments 0 Comment

I finally got the email I wrote to myself in April of 2005.

Matt Sly and Jay Patrikios from DearFutureMe.org included my email in their published collection Dear Future Me: Hopes, Fears, Secrets, Resolutions (pp.152-153), which was pretty fun (yes, they did ask my permission first).

I’ve edited out the amount of my student loan and the number of years it took me to complete the Ph.D. here, but here is the rest:

The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on Sunday, April 3, 2005, and
sent via FutureMe.org

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Dear FutureMe,

Your past me is at a crossroads. The Ph.D. is done, but appears to have been a waste of time. I hope that I am wrong and that later events will show that everything was good and necessary. B will be five in May and I’ll be 41 in a couple of weeks. Everything is beginning to bloom and I’ve planted ferns from Gramma – we just visited her to celebrate in our small way her 88th birthday.

I’m looking at this tome that took up so much of my life – and looking at the lack of teaching positions, the chances for me to get a job here that will allow me to pay back most of my debt before I die and feeling as though I should have gone to law school. In the future, will I still feel this despair? Will I see a meaning for this path I chose?

All in all, I would rather have been enjoying my life instead of living in dread and insecurity all those years. I am writing this to you, future me, so that you can review the situation (cf. Oliver!).

The simple things are what bring me the most enjoyment. Look around. What surrounds you now? What have you chosen?

I don’t feel like the Ph.D. was a waste of time, although it took too long and the long-term financial costs are extreme. I never did get a full-time academic job, but I am very happy with my technical documentation admin position. I’ll be 44 in a couple of weeks, and Gramma is still doing great living on her own (although she did recently have a pacemaker put in). Law school is still something that I wish I had done, but I don’t feel regret about it the way I did a few years ago.

My humanities training turns out to be excellent life training, and my experiences carry an inner richness that wouldn’t have been possible without learning how to tolerate and even relish the dynamics of complexity.

All in all, I like my life and I like me – much more so than I ever did before. What have I chosen? For the most part, pretty good stuff.

WordPress 2.5 Upgrade a Breeze

2008/03/30 VirusHead Comments 2 comments

Wow. That was easy. One-click upgrade at DreamHost worked like a charm.

I’m a fan of version 2.5. The dashboard is more intuitive and easier on the eyes, and the one-click update function for plug-ins is going to save me a lot of time and aggravation.

So, I changed my template, too. Isn’t this cheerful and spring-like?

I’ve moved my sidebar texts into text widgets, so I might play a bit with other templates as well, since it won’t be the laborious task that it used to be.

Only a few little problems to figure out:

The included gravitar support isn’t working. I’ve checked the little box, but no-go.
For some reason, the Recent Post list is doubling up.
MyTwitter plug-in is giving me a warning – although it’s working. Hmm.