From the JMBzine Vault – Wednesday – September 8, 1999, 11:32 p.m.

This post is from the JMBzine Blog Vault, which means it is a very old blog post that I wrote at a very different time of my life. My views on religion (I’m now a Humanistic Jew), politics (today I’m a democratic socialist), and many other subjects (LGBTQ+ inclusion, abortion rights, etc.) have drastically changed over the years, so please bear this in mind when reading this post.

I can’t believe how much I have been writing on this stupid thing. Journaling online has definitely been an interesting adventure. I still haven’t thought through how much personal info. I’m going to give about my life. On one hand, I like the approach that the author of lemonyellow.com uses. She is for the most part very secretive about her life, doesn’t have a pic up, etc. but yet gives interesting little details here and there. On the other hand, I have to wonder if distance and/or anonyminity may create an online persona that is different than the IRL one.

I really want to be open, to pour out my soul to the internet. Yet, the thought of my soul being so transparent to the people I know IRL scares me. Don’t ask me why that telling the deep dark secrets of my life to strangers doesn’t scare me, but for whatever reason it’s the people IRL that I am more likely to put on a mask for.

Oh well. Since my last journal entry, after class I went grocery shopping at Central Market with my friend Kim. It was fun, and I stocked up on all of the neccesities of life. I also ran into lots of Hopeites which was cool. (On a sidenote, I think I might apply at CM. It would seem like a cool place to work, esp. with all of the Hopeites who work and shop there.) After that, I went back home, ate my funky looking french bread that I bought (heated up with butter of course), and then goofed off for awhile.

Finally though, I made it to the University Catholic Center for One Voice. One Voice was a combination open house/reception for many of the different campus ministries at UT, followed by a worship time. (It caught my attention because I saw a flyer that said that Hope Chapel (my church) was one of the sponsors of the event!)It was so awesome to see Christians of different denominations joined together in worship like this. (To imagine a few years ago that I would be singing God’s praises in a Catholic church, alongside my brothers and sisters in Christ of many different denominations and faith traitions!

Wow! God is truly at work!

The only sad thing was that there were several people outside passing out literature on why it was wrong for Evangelicals to fellowship with Catholics. Well, I guess it may take some time, but I hope God brings them into this unity as well.

Well back to working on Exit, or my editor will kill me.

Editor’s note (2023): This post was fun to read for its “meta” nature, very early reflections on what it is like to write a blog.

But, I also found it interesting to read because it was written at a point in my life where I was starting to take baby steps towards asking important questions about my faith and life philosophy.