The future…

Over at Simpli, things are starting to return to “normal” (by whatever metric you would like to define “normal”.) Brandon is leaving on Friday, so we hired Russ, a customer of ours, to replace him. In fact, when Brandon told me he was leaving, I was on the phone not 10 minutes later with Russ, letting him know that the position was available. He decided to move out here from Michigan and take the position, and right now he and Brandon are in some intense training to get him up to speed in 5 business days. It’s definitely going to be an interesting transition. I think it will be successful — otherwise, I wouldn’t have hired Russ — but there will be a couple weeks there where there will be some confusion because of something that only Brandon knew. Fortunately, I will still be able to call Brandon in sometimes if necessary. I’ll send out an email with details about Russ’s hiring to our customers today.

We have more challenges coming up with Simpli, which I will detail in future blogs, but right now things are moving relatively smoothly. Of course, I know I can’t get complacent, but I do more than my fair share of worrying about everything on a regular basis, so I think it’s okay to say “Hey, we’re doing well right now.” And we are. September, 2005 was our best month ever, far surpassing even my best revenue estimates, and we managed to pay down some of our debt and still have a surplus. I’m really grateful that everything went so well in September. This month, we’re actually doing some new promotions and advertising a bit (just so I can try to beat September’s revenue!) That should be fun, too.

On to my personal life. Over the past week, a lot of my thoughts have focused on “What do I really want out of life?” I’m a firm believer in the theory that we shape our own destinies; that anything we can imagine, focus on, and create a path to is within our collective grasp. This belief has changed my perception of myself, first and foremost, and now that I’m doing better with regards to my emotional health, I can start to focus on what I want to do next. That’s not to say that I’m going to run away from Simpli–not at all! I love Simpli and what it’s grown into, and I want to continue running it for the foreseeable future. But I’m starting to have more free time, and I’m interested in exploring and studying things other than computers and web hosting during that free time. Forex is cool and I expect I will continue to do Forex (though I haven’t had much time lately), but I want to understand more about how the world works and (my favorite subject) the fascinating interconnections between religion, spirituality, and scientific pursuits.

I know that writing a book about my spiritual beliefs will be a staggering undertaking. For one thing, my spiritual beliefs are not as well-defined as some people’s are. (But then again, if they were that well-defined, would they truly be mine?) So, if I can imagine anything to be possible, create a detailed path to it, and then achieve it, what is it that I want to achieve with this book of mine?

I wrote a bit about the book in this blog entry from November 2004. Today, almost a year later, I went back and revisited that blog entry. A couple more pieces have come together in the past 11 months. First, although I want to reference Christianity, I don’t want to focus on it. Why? 2 reasons: 1) I want this book to have a wider appeal than Christians. There are already plenty of books out there for Christians. Despite Christianity being the dominant religion in our society, I don’t think it’s necessarily “better” or “worse” than any other religion. 2) I haven’t been a practicing Christian for several years, and I’m concerned that some Christians would discredit any theories about religion that didn’t come directly from a Christian. I still believe that my book should recognize the good things in Christianity, but I also believe I need to write about where other religions got it right.

2004 was all about the study of religions for me. I tried out different churches. I read books about different religions. (I tried to stay in the realm of the analytical books that talked about the religions, but also read several holy books themselves.) I went to different churches, which I think was the most enjoyable part of the whole experience, because I found something at every church to like.

2005 is the study of science and how that interacts with religion and spiritual beliefs. I’m slowly wrapping my head around quantum physics and reading books about it. I’m trying to figure out whether quantum physics and other far-out-there scientific studies can be used to give us a more complete picture of what God looks like. In my studying, I’ve gone all the way from “There is no God” to “I’m not sure” to “There is definitely a God”. I stayed on the “There is definitely a God” track and am now working on expanding that into what God is. Is God simply the collective consciousness of all of us, and we just work together in some mysterious harmonic pattern? Or is there actually a being/presence out there who coordinates it all? Assuming a being/presence, who is this being, and how did it come into existence? Why does it not show itself? Or does it show itself, and we just can’t see it? The questions are endless and have been pondered ever since we realized consciousness. What’s most interesting to me is that quantum physics, which would definitely be on the leading edge of science, is trying to use science to determine the answers to these same questions. This seems to indicate a convergence of science (led by technology) and religion/spirituality. I’d like my book to run squarely in the middle of those two ideas, perhaps fusing them together in a way that could show commonalities between the extreme of “I believe in science, not God” and “I believe in God, not science.”

The other key is that I want to write the book in a way that will appeal to spiritual seekers who are not necessarily well-versed in either spiritual studies or science. In other words, I’d like to explain what other spiritual seekers throughout the ages have thought and how, perhaps, there is something underlying their teachings — a common theme of love and banding together instead of hate and separation.

I know that was a lot for one blog entry, but I have lofty goals. 😉 As I figure out more of what I want to write, I’ll put it here. Perhaps eventually I can stitch my book together by expanding on my blog posts!