So, after church (which, by the way, was pretty good), I went to Chipotle and ate a burrito. While I was eating it, I was thumbing through a bound collection of sermons that Sylvia Browne gave a few years back. (Even if you’re weirded out by the fact that she calls herself a psychic, do yourself a favor and read at least one of her books. I really like them.) Anyway, I was sitting there with ideas flowing through my mind, fresh from church and reading what she had to say, and it dawned on me that today was the day I needed to start writing my book.

Back when I was 14, I was “called” (as they say.) Some people are called to be ministers or healers. I was actually called to write a book about my spiritual beliefs (not knowing the difference, I called them “religious beliefs” back then.) I even remember telling people this in high school. At one point, while mentioning it to a friend, I remember thinking, “What happens if I never write it?”

The answer: “You will.”

So I’ve had that in the back of my mind for almost 9 years now, knowing that I was going to write it but not quite knowing when. Julia and I decided that today was the day, and I started it. I got all the way through the introduction and got a start on chapter 1. I now have 6 single-spaced pages of what is to become an epic part of my life.

I’ve told some of you that I know my real calling isn’t to run a business (though that’s an important step along the way.) My real calling is twofold: 1) to write a book, which will become an important part of a revelation in Christianity that is to take place in the next 50 years, and 2) to eventually become a motivational speaker and pass on all that I know to many others who can then spread the word of the “new” God; of love and truth and peace instead of damnation, guilt, and Hell.

What’s the revelation in Christianity, you ask? It’s simple. People my age aren’t going to church, by and large. Why? Church is full of negativity and control. Pastors preach “eternal guilt” and “sin” instead of the love that Jesus taught us. The revelation will occur as we slowly go back and immerse ourselves in the core of Jesus’ teachings; the fact that he taught us to love others as ourselves and to make the world a truly better place in all that we do. As we rediscover that Christ and God’s message to us is to love, not hate, and to band together, not enforce artificial separations (she’s a woman; he’s gay; they’re black), churches worldwide will become better places. That will be a revelation to the generation currently in power, but not to the kids who are growing up today, who will grow up in a world that perceives itself as more of a community than we perceive ourselves today.

I’ll post pieces of the book as it becomes a more coherent object. Here’s an excerpt for you to mull over:

-What are ‘surface negatives’?-

The woman smiles. “Surface negatives are everyday things that bother you,” she says. “They are the person who calls you on the phone and is rude to you. The person who cut you off in traffic. The guy who didn’t offer an apology when he bumped into you on the street. As part of your learning process, you have to understand that surface negatives are part of a person’s way of dealing with frustration. You’re angry, so you take it out on someone else. That makes them angry, and they take that out on someone else. You – or the person who made you angry – have created a chain of negativity.

“The first part of dealing with surface negatives is stopping the chain. Learn that surface negatives have very little to do with you and everything to do with that person’s perception of the world. That person has been frustrated by something else – likely nothing to do with you – and is taking it out on you. Resist the urge to pass the negative on to someone else and learn to smile and move on, remembering that even though the person is negative, it’s usually not your fault and there’s nothing you can do about it. The thing you can change is yourself – don’t fall victim to the chain, and instead encourage yourself to step beyond it and create a positive interaction with the next person on your list. If we all were able to just stop the chain of negativity, the world would be a much happier place, but like a cold, it’s infectious. We get it, get irritated, and pass it on to someone else, who then gets irritated…we may have affected hundreds of people by the time it is over. Stop the chain.”

…to those of you who have been following my writings, here’s my LiveJournal. I highly recommend reading it from bottom to top so it makes sense. (Actually, there are 2 pages, so go to “Previous Entries” first and start from there.)

Everything in it is older, but some of it is still good (and hey, some of it is even entertaining.) I’m not going to pull it into WordPress; I just wanted to let you guys know that it was there in case you wanted to read some personal stuff from a while back.

I’ve started my new blog at SlashChick.com. I’d actually had this domain registered for going on two months (ever since a friend bugged me to get away from the “ghetto” Slashdot journal system), but I hadn’t done anything with it until today. I felt I needed to get into a blog system where I had control. I’ll probably end up importing most of my old Slashdot entries to here.

I’m currently trying out WordPress as my blog system. Does anyone have any feedback on that? I’ve never actually used anything (except LiveJournal) before, so I’m not completely familiar with what’s out there. Comments are welcome (since now I have the comment system completely under my control.)

I’ll continue to play around with WordPress. Right now it seems like it will do most of what I want it to do; I downloaded a “theme” for it, and although it’s better than the default, I still want to do my own theme. Watch for that eventually.

I’m headed to church now. I’ve actually wanted to go to this church (Novus Spiritus) for a while, but I just never went. C and I were talking about this last week and it was that conversation that spurred me to go today. Plus, I need to start healing, and this is as good a place as any.

🙂

Note: This post was pulled over from another site where I used to blog and has been reproduced here. Originally posted online on September 10, 2003.

In one of my previous journal entries, Liora made a comment that I’ve been meaning to reply to for a while. She said, “The interest rates pretty much mandate it such that renting is just dumb. Rent is throwing money away.”

This is absolutely true for most of the country. It’s absolutely NOT true for the Bay Area (hence the alternate title.)

Before we go on, I should mention a few things:
1) I rent;
2) I believe that housing prices in the Bay Area will drop about 10% (or perhaps more) in the next 3-5 years.

Why? Read on.

I just signed a 1-year lease for a 2BR/1.5BA condo for $1475 a month. This is the reason why I leased. (Note: link now dead.)

That is a link to a similar condo in Pacifica… a 2BR/1.5 bath, just like I have, and of the same vintage (built in 1972). They are asking $342,500 for it. This means that with a $68,500 down payment, I’d have to pay $1675 a month to own it.

Stop and think about this for a minute. Supposedly, the whole point of owning is that you aren’t “throwing your money away” (i.e. a mortgage payment should be cheaper than renting the equivalent property), but I could put $70,000 down on this condo and have nothing to show for it except a larger mortgage payment than I would pay in rent. A housing price devaluation of 10% or more could completely wipe out any equity that I would have in the house after only a year or so of owning it. As many people learned with the stock market, it’s extremely dangerous to always count on your investments to go up (like many people assumed both now with housing and in 1998-1999 with the stock market.) A lot of wealth was completely wiped out in 2000-2001 with the stock market devaluation. Imagine what any housing price devaluation will do to people who have saved up $50,000 or more to make a down payment, only to watch their equity disappear as housing prices face the same adjustment the stock market did.

Why will housing prices drop? To put it bluntly, they have to. Renting cannot forever be cheaper than owning, or people who buy investment properties will be out of work. People cannot afford to keep bleeding cash on investment properties like they are now. Plus, once interest rates go back up, those first-time home buyers who have been saturating the home-buying market right now will no longer be interested in buying. Thus, housing demand will drop, supply will keep going up (as builders keep building new houses and condos), and prices on houses will start to fall. And they will fall more than most people will expect. I’m forecasting an overall drop of 10%. It could be more, or it could take 5 years to hit 10%. But it will happen. This will wipe out a lot of equity for a LOT of people.

Renting vs. owning is a huge sticking point for me. I would love to own property. I could probably afford to own property in the Midwest. And I probably would own at this point if I lived in the Midwest. But in the Bay Area, it’s not justifiable to own when you look at the numbers.

I’d rather take $68,500 and invest it into my company… that way, whatever return I get on it is directly influenced by me and how well I do sales. I know I can take that $68,500, put it into Simpli, and turn it into a revenue generator of $10,000 a month or more. There is no way I could do the same thing with a house. And that is why I rent.