Retrospective

And a happy third year anniversary to this blog. It has been a long while since boredom during my senior year of high school first pushed me off in this direction. It has been cool, this opportunity to consider and dump my thoughts, preserving them for a second-look sometime in the future, and in all honesty, I have been surprised how long I have kept this thing alive. I always figured I would get bored with it someday. Fortunately (except for those who claim I think too much), that assumption has been shown to be wrong.

As a means of celebration, I offer my favorite posts from the intervening years to give you an idea of what has most stayed with me and still fascinates me. It saves you a lot of time from searching the archives yourself, I guess. Of course, any longtime readers who would like to offer their own favorites are welcome to, too.

Journey
The oldest of the posts, hailing from an era when rereading what I had just wrote was (more) rare, the idea remains solid. I could have developed it all a whole lot more, but I remain faithful to that central theme of the journey being of greater importance than the destination.

A Crude Life Philosophy and On thinking about yourself
Right here, these two posts demonstrate a large part of this blog's raison d'etre. It gives me an opportunity to see the evolution of my thoughts. Came pretty quickly after one another.

Animorphs
Looking back on the formative book series of my youth with a mature eye and still finding something worth anything in it. Cool. And remembering Marco's truck theft still makes me laugh.

Further thoughts on volunteering
This post was a revelation, and Mission:Possible itself, though I did not realize it then, marked a turning point in my life, the time when entering into social work of some sort after graduation first niggled into my mind.

On the morality of elliptical machines
Not linked to so much because I liked this post but because of the response from my friends who are incredulous that I can have an opinion on elliptical machines but not the upcoming election. I refuse to support any candidate until the end of October. There's plenty of time for things to get complicated.

A modest proposal as regards education
Possibly my most original idea yet. Now to get into Teach for America and implement it.

Running in winter
To change it up every once and a while, I write about an experience. This is one of the better ones.

Considering "Babel" and "Into the Wild"
If you let it, a movie can sneak up and rock you back. These two did that for me.

I love you
It's true.

Also, be sure to check back frequently over the next few days. I will be spending the next month in Jakarta, Indonesia working at an orphanage and teaching English classes. It will be my first time across the Pacific Ocean and south of the Equator. Should provide some good fodder for travel writing.