Complications

            Life is a complicated mess filled with inconsistencies and contradictions. Particularly life in relation to humans and how we view and interact with the world.

Take our brains’ view on change, for example. We hate change with a fiery, burning passion. We like things to be predictable and consistent. Yet, if it is predictable and consistent, we get bored and go stir crazy, with our brains demanding something new. If we rearrange a room, we’ll adapt to it quickly, with our brains not minding very much – but don’t you dare return the room to an old arrangement! No, then something is clearly out of place and wrong.

            Similarly, people often speak of wishing they didn’t have to work a job so that they can accomplish more of what they want to do. However, if you speak to people in such a position, you’ll quickly learn that they wish they had a job to help fill their time. Because having all the time in the world to do whatever you want somehow takes away from the enjoyment of doing what you want.

            We come up with morals to clearly define right and wrong, and very soon break into factions because some things that are clearly right contradict other things that are clearly right, and some things that are wrong contradict other things that are clearly wrong. Ideas that seem so simple to one person appear nonsensical to another – and both can back up their perspectives with valid arguments.

            We seek freedom while binding ourselves with laws – though, of course, the laws are required to prevent ourselves from violating others’ freedoms, and to protect our own. We try to understand the world better, yet as soon as we discover something that doesn’t match what we believe, we’re more likely to dismiss the new information as being incorrect or inconsequential.

            We pay people money to go out and raise money. We have annual feasts when, agriculturally, food is the most difficult to come by. We spend our best years working to achieve dreams we’ll be too old to enjoy by the time we achieve them. We fight wars to achieve peace.

            And as I go through all the strange and confusing contradictions in life, I notice that the common factor is humans. How we view the world. How we treat each other. How we examine and categorize things.

            And I wonder... is life really so full of paradoxes? Perhaps life is actually extremely simple, and we overcomplicate it in our efforts to understand.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Money Cycle

            There’s a very common saying that says, “You need to spend money to make money.” This statement is incredibly true, but the truth runs deeper than most people think. It is generally believed that this is a statement specifically about running a business, but it holds true for far, far more than that.

            For businesses, the saying is true in the largest and most literal sense. In order to have a location to do business, money is needed to pay for it. Before you can sell something (thus, making money), you first need to buy it. Further to that, a business needs to get noticed so people will actually know to come buy from it – so it must spend money on marketing.

            Yet, the average person needs to spend money to make money as well. It isn’t as noticeable because it’s so built in to our awareness that it just comes naturally. The first, and most obvious, is feeding ourselves. If we don’t buy food, we don’t eat and we become inefficient workers, losing our jobs. When seeking a job, we need resumes (money), transportation (money), and, most likely, some technological assistance (money). Then, when we get an interview, we are expected to look our best – which costs money. And if you want a job that requires a higher level of education? You guessed it: money.

            At any walk of life, you need money to make money, and it’s frustrating when people fail to understand that. This week I saw an article about a government refusing to provide homeless shelters because it was ‘enabling’ homeless people and not ‘motivating’ them. So, let’s pretend for a moment that it’s true that homeless people are homeless because they ‘aren’t trying hard enough’. Let’s pretend that there are no mental illnesses, no health problems, and no other factors contributing to homelessness other than how hard they try to get a job.

            So, how is this fictional, perfectly healthy homeless person to get a job? They need you job hunt – which takes money. They need to look presentable – which takes money. They likely need a bank account, which takes money, not to mention an address – which means a home and, once again, money. They may even need an education, a.k.a. money.

            It’s a circular paradox we’ve built into our system. It works only because we are introduced into the cycle – we have other people (usually parents or banks) front the money so we can start making money, and we just continue on from there. But what happens when we fall out of the cycle? What happens when you run out of money and have no way of making more?

            You fall on the ground and get dragged along, barely able to survive until someone generous comes along to pick you up. Someone who can give you enough money that jump-starts you back into the cycle again.

            Rather than standing over a pit someone has fallen into, yelling at them about how useless they are and telling them to climb out on their own, perhaps we should lower a ladder for them. For a government, it’s really as simple as going back to that saying: spend money to make money. If these people are really a ‘drain on the system’, spend more money on them so they can become able to earn their own money. Then you’re not paying for them anymore and they can start paying taxes to you. You spent money to make money, and now they can do it too.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Oh, Nothing

            Today I can think of nothing to blog about, so I’ve decided to write about nothing. Nothing has become a favorite topic of mine, ever since a friend introduced me to the topic in highschool.

            To put it simply, nothing cannot exist. The word ‘nothing’ refers to the absence of everything, meaning that there is nothing there. However, being able to define that absentness as ‘nothing’ means that it really is something. It is, in fact, nothing.

            By calling ‘nothing’ nothing, we turn the nothingness into a thing. We define it as something defined by the lack of things. Unfortunately, this means that nothing is, in fact, a thing – albeit a rather abstract one. By definition, nothing is not a thing, yet by calling it nothing, it becomes a thing and is therefore no longer nothing.

            Therein lies the paradox of nothingness. It can only be nothing so long as we do not call it nothing, for as soon as we do it becomes something and can no longer be called nothing.

            So, nothing does not exist. But here is where it gets tricky. There is the distinct existence of nothingness that we can no longer define as nothing. Take space, for example. It’s a vacuum; there’s nothing there. No matter, no particles, nothing. However, calling it nothing is fallacious, because by defining it at all we are acknowledging that it exists, making it the opposite of nothing.

            This means that in order to even acknowledge that something is, in fact, nothing, we must pretend that it doesn’t exist. Because, you know, it doesn’t. It would, therefore, be wrong to call it something (even nothing), since giving it a label means that it exists.

            So, every time you encounter something that you suspect might be nothing, the best way to handle it is to give it the silent treatment. Pretend it doesn’t exist. It isn’t rude because it most likely doesn’t.

            Ah, I could talk about nothing all day. Anyone interested in spending a day in my head?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

This Blog Clearly Doesn't Exist

            I'm very tired today, so I decided I wasn't going to bother writing a blog post. After all, I deserve a break, right? I still can’t figure out how people manage to write one of these every day. Maybe I just don’t have enough to talk about.

            Of course, by skipping writing my blog this week, I could be facing drastic consequences. For starters, I will basically be giving myself permission to skip writing my blog whenever I'm too tired – which is frequently because, as you know, I usually leave writing my blog until way too late at night.

            Then I have to think of you, my readers. How could you possibly fill the time you set aside every week to read my blog? I've been informed that some of you quite look forwards to my weekly rambles (although, I must admit I still can’t figure out why) and my lack of blog this week (and in subsequent weeks) would be very disappointing. Eventually, I might even become so unreliable that you don’t even bother checking for a post. What, then, would you do with the empty void left by my truant blog posts?

            This whole situation reminds me of a conundrum I encountered in my grade 10 English class. We were told to write an essay about a moral debate we’d had at some point in our lives. The problem was I’d never questioned any decision I’d made. I had such a strong moral compass that right and wrong wasn't even a question for me.

            I quickly came up with a solution. I would write an essay on whether or not I should write the essay. After all, my only option if I were to write the essay would be to make up a moral debate that I’d never had and that would be dishonest. I don’t remember much of the content of that essay, but I do remember my conclusion was that it was better to not write the essay.

            Once again, I find myself coming to a similar conclusion. If I can’t provide you with a blog worth reading, why should I bother to write it? So I apologise to my avid fans for my absentee blog post this week and I promise to do my best to not turn this into a habit.

            Happy Thanksgiving to all of my Canadian readers and happy Columbus Day to the American ones. To everyone else who doesn't have a holiday this weekend, happy Monday – although how a Monday can be happy without this blog post that clearly does not exist is beyond me.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Don't Do Unto Others

            Anyone who has spent a large amount of time on the internet has, at one point or another, run into the trolls. Some are harmless jokers, some are pranksters who sometimes go a little too far and some are just bullies looking for someone to pick on.

            In most cases (the exception being some – not all – of the bullies), these people don’t actually intend malice – in fact, in my experience a lot of them don’t even know they are doing any harm! These are just people finding ways to entertain themselves and, unfortunately, people are hurt as a by-product.

            On occasion, these trolls are confronted about what they are doing. Their response is generally the same: they are exercising their right to free speech. They feel that being asked to stop imposes upon their own freedom.

            In a blog post earlier this year, I touched on the fact that true freedom can’t exist because, as part of a society of free people, having freedom comes with responsibilities. The biggest of which is to respect other people’s freedom.

            I recently came up with an excellent way of illustrating this point. As a general rule, people are legally permitted to defend themselves if they are attacked. In other words, if a person walks up to you and throws a punch, they are essentially giving you permission to hit them back.

            Technically that person is allowed to throw that punch – after all, having freedom means they’re free to do what they like. But it is also your freedom, as well as theirs, to not be punched. By violating your freedom through choosing to punch you, they are at the same time violating their own freedom by inviting you to punch them back.

            Therefore, the way I see it, by exercising their freedom, they are infringing upon their own.

            The same goes for words, spoken or on the internet, or any form of communication for that matter. Any time someone says something hurtful or offensive, they are infringing upon the very freedom they are trying to express.

            There’s a very old phrase used to explain this idea: “Do unto others as you would have done to you.” Very often it is interpreted as, “Do unto others what they done did to you”, better known as, “An eye for an eye.” The problem is that this just leads to a never-ending cycle. Think of kids having a poking war in a car, each one poking the other because they were poked first. Strange to think that adults behave that way – and countries, for that matter.

            So, next time you run across one of those cyber-bullies (perhaps the ones in real life, too), just laugh to yourself in the knowledge that with each nasty thing they say, all they are doing is undermining their own freedom, giving them a paradoxical existence. Then feel free to ignore them and move on because, as a paradox, they can’t possibly exist and are therefore not worth listening to.

            I'm thinking we could also change that “Do unto others” phrase into one more readily understandable. I'm in favour of “Don’t do to someone what you don’t want them to do to you because if everyone respects everyone else you never have to worry about getting hurt.” Okay, so it’s a bit of a mouthful, but it gets right to the point and doesn't leave much room for misinterpretation. Plus, in a few generations we’ll be able to say “Don’t do to someone” and the person doing the doing will instantly stop just so they won’t have to hear the rest of the saying.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.