Twelve years ago, I was terrified of hell. It's probably why it took so much...I hesitate to use the word "agony," but it was - before I became an atheist. For years after my (literal) awakening, though, I was scared of death much less, if at all. But something made me terrified of it, just for a moment, maybe fifteen minutes ago.

I saw an ad on Youtube (Youtube has ads before videos again >:( ) in which theoretical physicist Michio Kaku (mixed feelings about him) oozed excitedly about advances that could give our brains access to the Internet's worth of knowledge, or "perfect" bodies. I, unsurprisingly, hold out hope I could get whole bodily functionality back, and if I could upload "me" to a machine...but what if that technology is achieved after I die?

Nothing has changed in my life's trajectory, really - it wasn't sure to happen for me, and it's still not - but for a second, I despaired at my mortality.

Kurt Cobain can't sing - couldn't. Rest in peace, I guess? Why do people say that: "rest in peace"? Like it's gonna make a difference. They're already in heaven or hell, most think. Are you going to change God's mind? And then, if you're a naturalist, you figure they're gone. They're not returning. And if being dead does somehow suck, a trite sentiment isn't going to change what's happening to them.

Bob Dylan can't sing, either, but Molly thinks he does okay in his non-protest songs - where he sings. She doesn't like Axel Rose's (Guns 'n' Roses) singing, though. I kind of like it. Turns out "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (the only song of theirs she likes) is a Bob Dylan song.

For a while, I "didn't like" GnR because I thought it was "wrong." They were on an online list of "Pro-Abortion Bands." Now I realize I don't even know who Rock For Life are, or how they decided who goes on that list. I just trusted any group with "for Life" in their name.

I've been into "Bojack Horseman" on Netflix recently. Far less funny and far more engrossing than I had expected. In episode 11 it made a joke I wasn't sure if I should stop watching it over. I've been noticing I do that a lot, as if someone can decide for me. I grew up Catholic. All my life I outsourced my morality so someone else could tell me what was right and what was wrong. So many people do that: "I'm a Baptist." "I'm a Democrat."

I want to think for myself, but we don't exist in a vacuum. From birth, we're shaped by factors outside our control. I read recently "they" say our "selves" are 50% genetic, 40% societal, and 10% circumstantial, or something to that effect. What is the "self"? Is there one? I'm reading Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett, and he's careful not to use such language, but when some people say "we have no free will," they still use the word "we." Is it just hard not to think of ourselves as an entity, or are there "I's"?

I titled this blog with a "randomly" generated series of characters because I'm not going to advertise it. It would be great if it turned out that some woman came across this and we got talking about stuff that mattered and fell in love and lived happily for a while, but this isn't a John Green novel (yeah, I occasionally read one of those. I still feel like a hopeless-romantic teen sometimes. Also, there's no limit to how much you can put in parentheses in the middle of a sentence. Pff.), so for now, I'm just going to use it for bits and mindspills publicly in the vain hope I do find some interlocutor to write long , philosophical letters in style of old. Also, not every long sentence is a run-on.

I was feeling cluttered earlier, so I lay down, because most of my favorite thoughts come to me when I'm horizontally oriented, in hopes it would settle. I got thinking of metaphors for life, of all cliche things.

Making your way through life is like making your way out when you're lost in the woods: pick a direction and keep moving in that direction. Or is it like building a pyramid to see over the trees first, so you know where to go? Should you pick a direction and stay true to it, burrowing through stone like a river, moving sideways if you must until you find a way forward, or build up a foundation of knowledge ever higher to reach the sky? Is there anything to reach? Is this, what we have now, what we're stuck with, or is there something to find?

I'm not religious. I don't believe there are any gods or heavens or objective points to life. But I want there to be something worth finding.