Where Did I Come From, Where Am I Going

This may be one of my last blog posts, at this blog anyway. It’s been suggested to me that this site looks as though it was organized by a blind orangutan; that suggestion was made by me, after some feedback from a few folks.

2012 has been a year of both transition and growth for me, but even though I went into 2012 with a plan on paper for getting this website back on track, none of those plans coalesced. Indeed, I stepped backward, not forward, as it pertains to my digital arena.

Dad, who is also an occasional blogger, once bragged to folks that I had a “Web empire,” back when I was juggling multiple websites, including a decently popular community of Christians on a message board I administered. Those were the days…

My digital glory days are not over, of that I assure you.

I’ve ranted and raved a lot this year about religion, and Christianity in particular. I’m going to push that more in the future. The more I look around, the more pissed off I get over the state of Christianity and its involvement in the world — particularly in America. Most of what I see wouldn’t be an issue if I didn’t know the Bible so well. It is said that the Bible is a double-edged sword (well, it calls itself that… so it just must be so, right? ;), so while it is used to influence politics and the public square, I’m going to push back, as hard as I can.

Because Christians have no right to simultaneously denounce homosexuality while eagerly participating in materialistic church services.

Because Christians have no right to participate in American politics while at the same time claiming to be ambassadors of an otherworldly kingdom.

Because Christians have no right to expect anyone else to believe their message when they’re so often ignorant (willfully or otherwise) or disobedient of what the Bible demands of them.

Seeing the stream of reactions from Christians during the aftermath of the recent Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting has embroiled my heart, and I’m hopeful that I can find the passion to make an effective push back against religion.

But matters of religion are only part of the reason people wind up here. The coding bug has bitten me anew, and I’ve been hammering away at OpenHook in any free time I can find; recent updates I’ve made to the software have pushed it nearly to the 200,000 downloads milestone. For a niche plugin, that’s spectacular.

And I’ve already made significant progress toward the next major release of the plugin, which I have no doubt will be a crowd pleaser.

All of the above leads me to believe that I’ll very soon be running a great number of sites, perhaps justifying all of the domain names I own…

RickBeckman.org would remain here, an archive of the past half decade or so of me shoehorning various failed blogging projects into this one domain.

RickBeckman.com could become something useful for once in its life, perhaps an identity hub and personal journal, which would perhaps motivate me to deal with my online identity crisis in a realistic manner.

BrazenlyGeek.com would hold my coding journal — tips, tricks, and code that I’ve picked up along my way.

BrazenlyAtheist.com would hold my worldview journal, but should I stick with that? I find myself being bothered by “atheism” being a defining aspect of my worldview. All it entails is that I lack belief in any god or goddess, but it says nothing of my view of man, of other religious beliefs, of the world, of morality, etc. That’s the realm of -isms like “humanism.” And I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how to define my beliefs. Maybe BrazenlyAtheist is appropriate, for it’s the only thing I’m really sure of — note that I’m not saying I’m sure there is no god, which is something I admit to being unprovable, making such a declaration largely irrelevant; I’m simply stating that I’m sure I don’t believe in any god.

OpenHook.net, rather than redirecting to an out-of-date, hodgepodge page on this site, would instead contain a real home for OpenHook online, perhaps including a user community to facilitate the sharing of code.

Five sites… Four of which I’d have to build, design, somehow keep unique, and then write content for… Oy vey.

2013, bring IT ON!

2 thoughts on “Where Did I Come From, Where Am I Going”

  1. Rick, would you be willing to contact me via email? I would like to talk to you about something. I have submitted my email to you, here. Simply write to me. Take care.

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