Laid Off

Note: I had a really long post typed out and omitted a lot of it due to the nature of the industry I work in.

I have had a few days to think about this now. Long story short, my line of business is getting the boot. We are “migrating” all of our North American offices to New York (specifically, Brooklyn). My choices are:

  1. Stick it out throughout the transition then relocate to New York.
  2. Stick it out throughout the transition then start figuring things out while on my severance package.
  3. Find a new job.

I deleted about 500 words. But all you really need to know is that everything is going to be okay. I’m going to figure it all out. I’ll either stick it out with my company or find a new job. But I will not be unemployed. This might finally be my chance to move out west. Maybe I’ll find a gig in southern California or Seattle.

What I’m most scared of is trying to make friends in a new city. Right now, in Chicago, all my friends are either from high school or college. What happens after if I move? How do people even make friends anymore?

Dating Advice

This is going to sound very John Madden-esque. It’s going to sound stupid, but what I am about to say is entirely true. Once you internalize it, hopefully it will change your life and help you be more confident in yourself.

When you see a pretty girl at the bar and you’re thinking to yourself, “Wow, I really want to ask her out. But I really don’t want to make a fool of myself…”

Do it, man.

If she says no to you, she isn’t your type. If you have a conversation with her and when you go in for her number and she doesn’t give it to you, she isn’t your type.

Rejection hurts. But when someone rejects you, they’re sort of helping you out because you now know that you weren’t going to work out anyway. Relationships are a two-way street. You don’t want to be with someone that doesn’t want to be with you anyway. A person that isn’t attracted to you is not your type. When someone rejects you, they’re helping you in slimming your range of potential partners. It is one less person on the planet that you are not compatible with; meaning the % of people that you are compatible with increases.

It’s stupid, I know. But you can work on things like your confidence and how to interact with women. But sometimes, you just have to take the rejections in stride and think of the positives of being rejected. In the end, like most other things in life, you should really only work about what you can control.

Working out and staying in shape, eating healthy, maintaining a well-balanced mental state, staying up-to-date on your passions; these are all things you can work on.

Convincing other people to like you? That’s A) lame; and B) out of your control. Just be you, man.

Remember, if someone tells you that they don’t want to go out with you, they weren’t your type anyway. Your type of girl likes you. Your type of girl is both attractive and attracted to you. She’s out there, don’t waste time settling or trying to convince the other ones to like you.

Poker: Position and Ranges

I play a lot of poker. Not near the amount of time necessary to consider myself a pro or even a semi-pro, but I average about five to fifteen hours a week. I don’t consider myself good enough to be a professional (I don’t think I have the potential/discipline to even give it a shot). I am, however, a winning player. I don’t have to lie about my stats and skew them to make it seem like I’m winning more than I am. We all know those gambling types, the ones who tell you the gross amount they won without telling you their losses. I am 100% honest with myself in regards to my net winnings, my winning percentages, and other aspects of poker. I think that this approach has led me to be somewhat successful in my poker career. Eventually, I’ll probably have a lot of posts about poker, but this first one will be about basic strategy.

To give you a brief summary of my poker career thus far: I learned how to play poker in 2004, I was 13 years old. I had a lot of fun playing poker with my family and watching the ESPN braodcasts. About two/three years later, during my sophomore year of high school, I made my first online deposit. I consistently lost about $50/month for a few months. I knew I wasn’t very good, but the general strategy was fun to me. I eventually convinced my mom to drive me to the book store and i bought a book called Super System 2. Nowadays, it is by far outdated, but at the time, it was basically my second bible. I read the no limit hold’em section and general strategy sections. I started to read online poker forums. I made another $50 deposit, and eventually rode it to about $2,000 during my junior year of high school. The summer after that, i played online poker for anywhere from 20-30 hours a week. I didn’t have a job, but I did have a girlfriend so I needed a way to pay for our dates and such. I had a pretty successful summer averaging a little over $10/hour. Granted, this wasn’t much, but for a kid in high school whose friends were making a minimum wage of 7.75/hour, I felt pretty good about myself. Eventually online poker got shut down (for the most part) in the US and I stopped playing entirely. I recently picked it back up, subcribed to a poker training site, and research the current state of the game. So far this year, I have made about $3,000.

I am going to assume that if you’re reading this, you understand the rules of the game. The rest of this post will focus on position and ranges.

1) Position
This is a very basic concept that almost everyone at the poker room knows about. At lower levels of player (the minimum buy in tables), people will think that they’re ahead of the competition because they understand position. People avoid talking about position at these tables so that they don’t tip others off because these people feel like they know this secret that only an exclusive set of people know. The truth of the matter is, if you understand the importance of position in poker you are on your way to gaining positive expected value (+EV).

Okay Jon, we know position is important, but what is it? Basically, every time a hand is dealt, there is a person with the “button.” The two players to the button’s left are the small and big blinds. Your position in relation to the button is what gives you an advantage at the poker table. After the cards are dealt, the person on the button is the last to react. This means that the button has a chance to see everyone’s actions before deciding their own. With this in mind, the button is obviously the best position at the table with the positions to the right of the button are the next best.

Let’s use an example of why position is your friend. Imagine that you are dealt King-Jack on the button. A flop of Ace-Seven-Jack comes out. If someone in early position bets, then that person is reraised, it’s pretty easy to tell that your middle pair isn’t good here and that you should fold. If you were in early position with Jack-Ten and you are first to act, your only two options are (1) to check; or (2) to bet. If you check, you don’t gain any information on your opponents and whether or not you’re ahead of them. If you bet, you are often behind by better hands with Aces, two pairs, hands with a better Jack, etc

From this example, you can see that hands like Jack-Ten are better folded preflop from early position, and better when played from late position. The same can be said about any hand. It is better to play hands in late position than it is from early position. This is simply due to the fact that you can see everyone’s action before you decide on your action.

Of course, if everyone knows about position, and that the players on the button are playing hands that they wouldn’t normally play in early position, when someone raises in late position, you shouldn’t be respecting it as much as when someone raises in early position. This is why, generally, you want to be raising strong hands from early position (AA, KK, AK, QQ) and then from later positions, you can open it up to hands like (AQ, JJ, TT).

*Pause 1. Just wanted to note here that all of this is general advice/strategy. A good poker player adjusts their strategy depending on each opponent and how they play. You can’t employ the strategies here and expect to make money by making the same exact decisions every time.

Unpause. I want to weave this concept of position with another poker concept called “ranges.” Once again, I want to note that almost everyone knows about position (poker pros, semi-pros, regular players, and recreational players). The number one thing you can do for yourself is to learn the importance of position, but to also learn how to abuse other players’ knowledge of position.

This leads us into ranges. Often, we’ll watch poker on TV or hear peple at our tables saying things like, “I think you have Ace-King. I’m going to fold.” or “”You have 9-7 of spades, don’t you?” It is entirely unreasonable to try to pinpoint your opponents’ hands down to their exact two cards. It’s almost impossible to actually sustain a winning strategy while pinpointing their exact cards. Instead, poker players will put their opponents on a range of hands. By observing a player and seeing their tendencies, you can figure out the range of their hands in each position relative to how much they have betting. Using my early example, when someone raises preflop from UTG, we can put them on hands like AA, KK, AK, and QQ. Very strong hands. After sitting at the table for thirty minutes, we can add on to that range, some other players might have JJ, TT, AQ, and AJ to that range. Or, if the person calls instead of raising preflop from early position, maybe the range is even wider and includes hands like AT, 99, 88. All of these actions influence our estimate of someone else’s range.

When observing how your table is playing, you can often figure out who is a decent poker player, who is a recreational player, and who is a consistently losing player. We can talk about how to identify these kinds of players in another post, but depending on the type of player, we can abuse our knowledge of position and ranges in our favor.

Pause #2. Generally, at the lowest levels of poker, people don’t think in terms of ranges. This gives you an advantage because you are able to put your opponent on what the hands they they could have while your opponent is only playing his/her cards without trying to figure out what you have. This means that if your opponent gets a low card flush, they are less likely to fold it when you have a better flush. The same applies the other way, you know that your opponent’s range is much wider so when you have a small flush, you are more likely to fold it to a strong move by your opponent. Simply having this knowledge of your exact two cards and the different combinations that your opponent has is +EV because your opponent has so much less information at their disposal.

Unpause. If everyone played poker by raising hands in certain positions and maintaining similar ranges, poker would very much be solved and not very fun. This is why we need to polarize our ranges. Imagine that we are in the middle position of the table and our perceived raising range is pocket tens or better (TT+) and Ace-Ten plus (AT+), we need to also add hands like 97s (nine-seven suited) in there in order to “polarize” our range. This means that we are adding a hint of unpredictability to the hands that we could have and adding value to our position when we have the other hands. By raising a hand like 97s in middle position, the following things can/will happen:
If the opponents end up seeing our hand at showdown, they know that we raise hands like 97s in early position which discredits us in their eyes. They are more likely to call raises from you when you do raise with a premium hand.
If everyone folds because they think you have a strong hand, you steal the blinds.
People will only call with premium hands (AA, KK, AK, QQ) or hands with a lot of implied odds (the odds that they will pay larger dividends later if they were to hit a strong hand such as a straight or flush). If the flop comes as a board that doesn’t seemingly add value to your perceived premium hand, the opponent will bet/raise at a board of 972 because they (1) believe that you missed the flop because the board doesn’t support your range; or (2) think that your pocket pair can’t beat their QQ+.

The most important thing to remember about polarizing our range is that it isn’t something we are trying to do very often. You aren’t playing every 97s you get in middle position, but you are playing it enough that the players that would pay attention to ranges assume you have a wider range than you actually do. You aren’t hoping to hit a two pair with cards like these, because you can get a two pair with any cards. You are developing your range of predictability so that your hands that win more often (AA, KK, AK, QQ) win more money.

My last thought on ranges that I want to touch on is that when considering how if you are ahead of a person’s hand or not, you want to think of poker on a macro level. If you were to play this exact position with your cards versus your opponent’s range 100 times, how often do you win? You’re rarely, if ever, winning 100 times. But if your edge is one where you’re beating 70% of his range, then calling your opponent’s all in and losing isn’t a bad decision. If your opponent’s range is 88+ and 98s+, and you can beat all of those hands except for AKs, AQs, AJs then you’re beating over 80% of their range. Obviously after every card that comes out, depending on what they do you can eliminate cards in their range so that their range is slimmer by the time the last card comes out. You don’t know exactly what cards they have, but you do know their range and you need to be making decisions based on that.

Another factor that goes into this style of play is how much of a margin you’re trying to push. If it isn’t too thin of a margin, you’re winning 8/10 times this hand plays out and the money you win those 8 times is greater than the money lost in the 2 times you lose. Poker is a lot about variance, this means that you’ll have heaters where you win thousands of dollars in weeks then coolers where you lose for a few weeks straight. Your pocket aces aren’t always meant to win. Your pocket kings sometimes run into an opponent’s pocket aces. That’s what makes poker exciting. The unpredictability combined with the amount of control you have relative to your opponents.

Poker is gambling, but there are edges that you can gain on other players via strategy. Ranges and positions are only the beginning of how deep the strategy is, but there are plenty of winning players live/online that make enough playing poker to live off of. The way poker is played today is completely different than when I started playing eleven years ago. People are much less predictable today. More people understand advanced strategy and the edges in games are a lot more marginal. The fun part is that the game is still evolving, there are different styles of play. New theories and concepts are being thought out to beat strategies that are popular today. If you wanted to look into getting better at playing poker, I recommend playing online. The competition is tougher, but you play hands 50x faster online. You get a chance to play more hands, play more interesting situations and learn poker at a faster rate than live players can. While you won’t make as much money online (in the US), you will gain experience faster and be able to beat the live games much easier.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say today. Cheers, y’all.

Friends

This will be my last personal post for a while.

Lately, I’ve been hanging out with a group of friends that is separate from old main group of friends. Now, this new group of friends is a lot of fun to hang out with. I met them because they are/were friends with my most recent ex-girlfriend. Now, I know what you’re thinking; Jonathan, you talk about your exes a lot (what you’re honestly thinking is, Jonathan, no one actually reads your blog). But the fact of the matter is, both of my exes were pretty large parts of my life. I dated both of them for two years and spent a lot of time with both of them while I was dating them, so obviously I am going to talk about them or things related to them from time to time.

Anyway, the thing about this newer group of friends is that they accept me. I stopped talking to them for a while but, out of the blue, a few of them contacted me to hang out and we’ve been staying in touch ever since. Keep in mind, all of this happened after I wasn’t dating my ex anymore. They contacted me and hit me up to hang out due to their own volition. That’s great. That probably means I’m a bad friend because I was ready to drop them and move on with my life.

From them, I hear that my ex has said all this terrible stuff about me and making me seem like the worst guy on the planet. And truthfully, I have never said anything bad about her. Maybe I’ve said a few things about how I disagree with things that she did/was doing, but it was never malicious and it was only to my two old roommates (two of my best friends). I didn’t really feel a need to tell our mutual friends about bad things about her or try to exaggerate her negatives. She was a person that, at one point in my life, I had a lot of love for. Why would I want to shine a negative light on her? Not only would that make her look bad, it would make me look terrible, too.

What’s interesting is that, she told these bad things to both my old core group of friends from before her (who she is also friends with) as well as my new group of friends (originally her friends). In a perfect world, we could all stay friends and be gravy with one another.

But what I’m scared of is that my old core group of friends judge me based on what my ex said. And this could easily be a character flaw in myself because I am insecure. But sometimes, some of these people (although, the people I wasn’t as close to) really seem like they think of me differently now. And this might be due to a variety of reasons, but I don’t think I’ve been acting differently since our breakup. I really, really feel like it’s because of what these people heard. Sometimes I want to retaliate, sometimes I want to point out bad things about her, sometimes I want to defend myself. But it really isn’t my place. Friends come and go so frequently that there isn’t a point trying to fight to keep friends that judge you without asking you about the truth.

That is why I am glad that I found a new group of friends that accepted me regardless of hearing all these negative things about me. I have love for my old group of friends, and there’s a good chance that they don’t judge me at all regardless of what they’ve heard, and maybe our friendships have fizzled due to not trying to keep in touch on both sides of the coin. But I’m grateful for the new friends, I’m grateful for old friends that I have kept in touch with, and I hope to eventually get over my insecurity of these other people possibly judging me or seeing me in a different light because of what they heard.

Dreams

I talk big a lot. When I’m winding down from a long day, I enjoy daydreaming about moving to new places. I start to look at jobs in other cities, average rent and living expenses, and hidden gems that I might frequent. I’ll tell people about how I’m looking at these opportunities and about how I’d love to move.

In reality, my life is completely structured. I have always followed a set path. I went to an in-state school, found a job, and live post graduate life comfortably. No risks, just a vanilla, by-the-book lifestyle. And I don’t have the courage to pick everything up and leave. I am frightened at trying to make new friends in an entirely alien city; I am scared of the uncertainty that comes with living with a random roommate. It’s fun to dream and wonder about, but realistically unlikely to happen.

But, I have an even bigger dream. One that I often daydream about. A dream that is scarier and that you can’t turn back from once you’ve committed. Sometime down the road, I’d love to adopt a kid. I’d love to be able to make a difference in someone’s life in the way adopting a child would. Giving someone a renewed chance at life while you have the opportunity to learn and grow with them. Adoption is the most beautiful thing in the world and I want to take part in it.

Three Day Weekend

I am on the tail-end of a three day weekend. The best part about three day weekends that end on a Monday is that your work week is only four days long!

Today’s post will be brief because I am invested in a TV show and trying to fit another episode or two in before I go to bed. A great part of three day weekends are that you get an opportunity to watch a little more TV than you normally do. I had a fairly busy weekend, but was able to fit a lot of me-time and watch TV for most of today.

TV Shows that I am currently watching:

  • Friends — This was added to Netflix at the beginning of the year. I had never seen an episode in its entirety until it was on Netflix. I’m already on season 7. I cried at the end of season 6. No spoilers because people spoiled Friends for me, I don’t want to spoil it for you.
  • Sherlock — Only just started and I am watching it as I write this post. Benedict Cumberbatch can act. That’s all you need to know.
  • Fresh off the boat — Watching w/my roommate. We’re both asian-american and a lot of the content on this show is easy to relate to. I’m not entirely convinced that the show is funny or that I will continue to watch it after the next few weeks, but we’ll see.
  • Real World Chicago — Sorry, friends. Guilty pleasure.

Good night, all.

Jonathan

2015

And now, with that post out of the way. I will once again work on publishing posts a little more often. I will also work on making them concise and not 2600 words long. Aside from pictures, some of the text posts that I will be publishing are:

  • poker strategy
  • opinion on mbas
  • favorite websites that i visit
  • book reviews
  • the importance of work in a functional society as well as personal happiness
  • stories from my past (breakdancing, high school, college, underage gambling, etc)

Regards,

Jonathan

God

So much has been happening in my life since last summer. Like I’ve said previously, I have way too many hobbies. I always consider writing a post about some of these hobbies (I have drafted posts about the state of the real-estate market in Chicago, the Chicago start up community, poker strategy, and salad dressing). I never post any of these entries because I want to make sure that the grammar is perfect, the right words are being used to turn complex concepts into laymen’s terms.

But this entry is different. This post is going to be somewhat of a journal entry. I will be typing everything as I think of it. There will be run on sentences. There will be poor sentence structure. There will be ranting. There will be venting. There will be rambling. This is something that I have battled for the last five years. Even though this post is titled God, this post isn’t really about God. It is about my struggle with religion.

Now I’m not one of those people that go, “organized religion is bullshit. if you believe what you believe in and be a good person, then that’s good in God’s eyes.” I strongly believe that church and community are both very important for growth/accountability/etc in one’s life.

My family are very proud Catholics. My parents immigrated here from Vietnam and they believe in the Catholic church. Not only would my family go to church on Sundays, we would go on all other Sabbath days (think national holidays but in regards to the church). I went to Sunday school, I did a short stint with the youth group, and went to a Vietnamese church where I found other people I could identify with. We volunteered through the church, we cooked meals in the kitchen, my parents were integral to the accounting and back-office duties of the church. We regularly had priests over at parties. We would participate in a lot of vietnamese-catholic  traditions, we would pray as a family for an hour of rehearsed prayers then silent prayer.

When I started my first year of college, I was the only person on my dorm floor that still went to church every weekend (granted, I normally went back home to my parents). But I started to meet a lot of new people, a lot of christians in particular that weren’t necessarily catholic. I started to become friends with Muslims and Jews. Sure, plenty of my friends from high school would say they were catholics or say they were muslims but they weren’t exactly practicing. They would go to christmas mass or not eat pork. But that was basically it. Once I got to college, I actually met practicing christians/muslims/jews/hinduism. I was intrigued that everyone thought that what they believed in was infallible due to being born into it. Obviously, everyone gave their own reasons as to why they believed in what they did but the truth of the matter was they were born into it. Then I started to meet people that converted to being muslim or converted to a different christian denomination. This led me to start questioning what exactly I believed in.

People would quote the bible. People would quote the Quran. I started researching this stuff. I remember visiting my first “non-denominational” christian church. It was… different. People worshiping by dancing. People reading bibles off of their phones. A pastor with tattoos. My best friend was a Muslim, I would talk to him about what he believed in. He would talk to me about djinns, going to mosque, and how he largely felt the same way that I did.

I read books. I read a lot of books. I read CS Lewis, Francis Chan, some universalist guy I don’t remember the name of anymore. I watched sermons online because I was too embarrassed to go to a “christian” church because I didn’t understand when to stand/sit. What to say/do. How to sing. While their interpretation of the bible was mostly the same as what I believe/practiced all my life, there were a few things that were different. Mainly bible literalism, young earth creationism, works vs faith (personally, i feel that all sides of the coin believe in the same thing, people just argue for the sake of arguing).

I put this off for a while. I got too involved in college. I stopped thinking about my decision as to what religion I personally affiliated with. In the end, I knew that i believed in God. I surrounded myself with people that believed in God. I practiced what the bible/church that I grew up in taught me.

Then I started dating a girl whose dad was a pastor at a non-denominational (protestant) church. I went with her to the christian group that she was a part of. It was great meeting others that loved Jesus just as much as I did. It was nice meeting people that seemed so grounded in their beliefs; it was even nicer meeting people that went through similar struggles to mine. I was all for it.

I started to talk to some of these people and then talk to my girlfriend at the time about my battle with religion (never actually saying everything that I’m saying right now). We would talk doctrine. We would talk about our interpretations of different parts of the bible. We would talk about our duties as christians. It seemed like all these people, even though they were “non-denominational,” believed in the same things. If I disagreed with something, it would turn into the other person convincing me why this is the only correct answer. Why it cannot be any other answer. Then if I would still question it, I would be met with “I’ll pray for you.”

These people were great but I could never actually open up to them. Due to my beliefs. And also due to their being so religious. I’ve never really been around people my age that so strongly believed in what they believed in. I couldn’t tell stories of my past and I couldn’t completely open up about things I was doing at the time. I didn’t want them to harshly judge me or my girlfriend. Obviously, I was doing things that I knew were wrong. But with my normal friends, I would easily talk about it. With these guys, I almost had to keep up a facade.

I remember one of my first lunches w/my girlfriend’s family, her dad asked me if I wanted to pray before the meal. I froze. I couldn’t do what I normally did with my family, I didn’t know what these people exactly believed in. I didn’t know if I was going to fuck it up somehow. I wanted to make a good impression but I didn’t want to say something wrong. I also didn’t want to lie to them and repeat what I’ve heard others say before meals in these kinds of settings. I told him no. He looked disappointed.

Once things started to get more serious with this girl, I started thinking marriage. My parents would absolutely not support me in anyway (and a good chance of not attending my wedding) if it were not a catholic wedding. Criteria for a catholic wedding are as follows:

  • has to be in a catholic church
  • promise that you will raise your kids catholic (it’s okay if you marry a non-catholic, you just have to promise that your kids will be raised catholic)

There are other stuff, but these two are the important ones for the purpose of this post. Obviously a lot of people get married and forget about these kinds of contracts. But I’m not one of those people. Obviously I’m a little bit of a pussy because I’m letting my parents opinions affect my wedding. Maybe that was because I didn’t exactly know what I wanted.

After being exposed to my girlfriend and her christian friends, I learned that I really liked these people. A lot of the stuff that I learned from these guys and going to their group was totally relevant. A lot of these things aligned so closely with what i believed (in ways that both agreed/disagreed w/catholic teachings). But I was also insanely bitter. I would have to be careful about talking about what I believed in exactly because I didn’t feel like getting chewed out. I would hear stories of catholic bashing. etc etc. I didn’t consider myself a catholic at the time, but my parents were and i found a lot of what I heard offensive. There were just so many things that I heard that were straight up wrong like how catholics prayed to the dead, faith/works.

If it means anything, I don’t really get bitter about any of this anymore. A lot of times, I hear about people’s interpretations of the bible and think to myself “there’s just so much that can’t be right.” Well, if that’s the case, then it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that a lot of the things that I believed in can’t be right. On a macro level, we were all on the same page, though. We love Jesus.

I’m going to take a small moment to talk about what I believe in right now on February 8th, 2015. I believe in God. I believe that catholics  can go to heaven. I believe that protestants (mainline, reformed, evangelical, etc), orthodox, anglican, etc can all go to heaven. I’d like to think that quasi-christians (mormons, jehovahs witness) can be saved but I really don’t know. I don’t know what I think about predestination (calvinism) nor do I think it really matters. I’m iffy on bible literalism. I don’t believe in a young earth. I don’t care if Mary was a virgin or not. I don’t mind that catholics believe in the infallibility of the pope; I don’t believe in it, though. All of these things don’t really matter to me. I believe in the historical definition of christians, “followers of christ.” I don’t agree with the whole “you have to have had a born again experience and follow these X amount of protestant doctrines.” I don’t know what that makes me. But I do think I need to start going to church again. And I do think that I am a christian. Sorry if this offends anyone.

Fast forward to yesterday.

I am no longer with this girlfriend, but I have stayed in touch with her christian friends. For one reason or another, we kept in touch and the guys that I’ve met in this group are all great people. I love them all. I don’t see them too much mostly because I think i’m spread too thinly on the friend side of life and there’s too many people I try to stay in touch with. I don’t keep up a facade with these guys anymore. I like them enough to be honest with them. They seem to still like me even though I’m not exactly the best person. But, when I’m around their christian friends, I’m a little more conscious of what I say, just in case.

We went out for one of their birthdays. We rented a party bus with 40 people total. Most of the people on the bus were practicing christians that went to various non-denominational churches in chicago. And after the night was over, it got me thinking.

I’ve been to small groups with non-denominational churches, with reformed bapstist churches. I’ve been to bible studies at my church as well as the university’s catholic church. How the fuck do I not know what I believe in? Is it because I just believe everything I hear from all the sides? Is it because I’m just skeptical? Am I scared to commit?

One day I’m going to get married. If I get married in a catholic church, what will these guys think of me? If I invite them to the reception and a prayer that is said that might be a traditional catholic prayer, will these guys silently judge me? Will they think that I’m not saved yet? Will they try to evangelize me?

What if I end up opting for a non-catholic wedding. Will my parents come to my wedding? Will my extended family be silently judging me? Side story: about half of my extended family is just as intense as my nuclear family. They even follow the catholic doctrines involving divorce (sending letters to higher ups in the community over in Rome). Will my family consider me a lost cause that’s doomed to hell?

In the end, whatever I end up choosing and following will obviously be of my own volition. It sucks that I’m so easily influenced by all these different things. It’s shitty that I looked into it so much that I am conflicted. Sometimes I wish I could just blindly follow one religion without ever questioning it.

Summary:

I believe that many catholics are christians, many are not. Many protestants are christian and many are not. I disagree with teachings of many churches but the core theology is still christian. I am too lazy to capitalize christians/catholics/other words, sorry.

There were probably things that I said about more than one religion here that were not 100% true. Like I said, this is more of a journal entry than anything so I didn’t really fact check.

A few things that really stuck with me in my journey:

  • Grace/Faith vs Works parallels your pulse. Your pulse doesn’t keep you alive. Your heart keeps you alive while simultaneously causing your pulse. But with no pulse, it is a good sign that your heart isn’t beating.
    • Works don’t save you, your faith does. But due to that faith, it causes the works as a side effect of salvation. And similar to your pulse, if there is no works, it is a good sign that your faith is failing.
  • Anyone that professes that Jesus is their lord is a follower and therefore a Christian.
  • Our time is better spent on things that aren’t petty legalistic issues within the christian brotherhood. Instead, we could work together instead of burning bridges to spread the message of God.
  • God loves you.

I’m not entirely sure what the point of this was. But I thought about it a lot since last night. I’ll make a post eventually if my journey makes any significant progress. If it doesn’t, I promise you all that one day when I’m married and have children, I will teach my children to love God. I will teach that what I believe, what their mother believes, and I will let them choose what they believe. And no matter what they believe, I will respect their decision. I trust that if I instill good values in them and show them the glory that is God’s love, they will make a well-informed decision.

Now to end this long-ass post, shout outs to my core group of friends from college. Many of us moved out of Chicago after graduating so we only get to see each other once or so a month now. But I’m happy we still text, tweet, and talk to each other somewhat regularly. I love all of you for being you. We are the most diverse group of friends that I have ever been a part of. Everyone that I introduce to you guys always point out how we have people representing so many demographics. Girls and guys that are yellow, black, white, and brown. Christians, atheists, jews, muslims, hindus, and people following their own path. It’s great to have a group of friends that are so similar yet so different. My two old roommates were a cultural jew and a muslim and i have learned so much from you two in so many ways.

There’s a lot more that goes into this story and a lot of this is very surface level. But it covers the important stuff. IF you made it this far, thanks.