I could pick from several subsets in this topic. But there is one that hugely impacted my life and all the decisions and events that followed

My health fell apart 16 years ago. It forced me to make hard evaluations about how I was living and spending my time. I had been at a low point. Suddenly there was a strong impetus to take my problems apart and work out sustainable solutions. It felt like my life might be over. So my wife and I made a sort of pact to weight all our decisions (within reason) in favor of health.

The result was a collective loss of 170 lbs (115 for me, 55 for her). We've maintained that now for over 14 years. Also, a resolution of obesity related health issues for me including diabetes, hypertension and nafld.

This required major overhauls of lifestyle, changes in self-definition, ongoing trial and error and lots of research.

Prior to that, we had many abortive attempts at weight loss that were never sustainable until we were properly motivated to imagine what it would take to put that kind of emphasis on our health indefinitely.

In addition to matters of health, it was an opportunity to see clearly the most important things to us and reorder our priorities accordingly. We chucked the mortgage we had applied for and opted for a much simpler lifestyle, avoiding debt and living in the boondocks where the cost of living is lower.

When I developed skepticism. I used to be really, really into all this mystical occult shit. I was totally convinced that the world was illusory and I was more or less god, having entered the world to transform it into a utopia once an apocalyptic event sort of "tore the walls down". I ignored my body, I didn't work, I'd either be homeless, couch surfing, or squatting more often than not for quite a long time. Even when I did start working again reality took a back seat to my delusions of godhood. I was biding my time, waiting for the end so I could reveal myself to the world and basically take the reigns of reality once things got off the beaten path.

Romantic relationships were literally the only outward thing of importance in life because they represented the unification of a fractured deity. The flavor of Gnosticism I'd subscribed to made the unification of a divine form of male and female the means of liberating the world. Gender was basically the ultimate expression of our collective fractured deific ego. Love, sex, and reproduction represented the redemption of the physical world by return to a primordial state of unity.

Eventually I started questioning it. How could my life possibly be so fucked if I myself was basically omnipotent? I once believed that it was an effort on behalf of the fractured portions of myself (everyone else) to uphold the status quo and keep me from ending the world by realizing my potential. I had auditory hallucinations and intrusive thoughts that backed up this conclusion. Eventually it became a sort of contest internally between the idea that I was on the brink of enlightenment and facing every last line of defense the fractured universe had left and that I was out of my mind and totally absorbed in self-aggrandizing nonsense.

You can probably tell which of those conclusions is more appealing to believe about yourself.

I finally decided it was bullshit after, of all things, a concept I encountered on reddit. Someone brought up Russell's teapot.

If you don't know, Russell's teapot is a sort of thought experiment or commentary on belief. The gist of it if that given the limits of our measuring instruments, there could currently be a teapot floating somewhere in Saturn's rings and we would have no idea. It's absolutely possible that this is the case, at least in terms of our being able to prove that it isn't there. We all know it isn't there, though. Some deluded group of individuals might insist that it does exist, but without evidence this does nothing to increase its likelihood. It would be ridiculous to assume that every cosmic teapot equivalent exists, as we can invent an infinite number of such scenarios, none of which are falsifiable.

When I discovered this concept I immediately knew it was right. I spent some time reading about the null hypothesis, confirmation bias, magical thinking, and range of other ideas about skeptical thought. It was almost immediately transformative. For a while the intrusive thoughts persisted, but now that I knew they were a result of stress and delusion rather than a principalities keeping me psychically shackled, they lost their impact. I was able to identify symptoms, focus on stress reduction, and my life has improved immensely. I've been taking care of myself and my health has improved markedly. I went to the doctor and actually started taking medication for my asthma and allergies, which have always been a huge stressor to me and sometimes actually make it hard to think clearly. I still have some depression from time to time but all the wind has gone out from my manic periods and I'm able to manage stress well enough that I don't constantly have my mental state looming over me. Things are far from perfect, but now I'm able to function like a normal person. I have 21st century human being problems instead of omnipotent deity being harangued by literally the entire world to keep me from realizing my potential problems. Much more manageable, being actually real.

I'd certainly say that discovering and embracing skepticism was the most transformative experience of my adulthood. I shudder to think where I might be today if it hadn't proven to be the door out of madness.

The weird thing for me now is that I knew a lot of people who encourage me to think that way and who actually looked up to me for it. They thought my ideas were great, not a sign of mental illness gone out of control. Those people are not typically very fond of me anymore.

Moving to the Ohio Valley.

Before I moved out here I thought that I was going to live and die in California. Never buying a house, always having roommates, always working two jobs. It it hard to get out that mindset, and if that has been your whole life it is very difficult to think that there is anything else that you can do with yourself. Then, the 30th birthday started to loom on the horizon and I began to look at options. What can I do, what can I learn, "what do you want to do when you grow up?" those sorts of questions. I was putting in my hours and getting a paycheck but that was all I was doing.

Then one of the employers offered us a move to here. Well, OK, not so much an offer as it was a "Move or lose your job, of, and the tech industry is imploding so good luck with that." I took the offer and rolled out this way. I stayed with a co-worker in the new facility and his family for NINE months while I got a place to live and life has been grand ever since. I own a house, got a whole new group of friends to hang out with, my job is doing work that is worthwhile and fulfilling and, for me the craziest thing, the house is going to be paid off in 3-5 years depending on if I keep paying extra every month like I am now.

A completely random offer to move has changed everything about my life. The original plan was to come out here, get paid, go back to California. The new plan is to say here, get paid and retire early.

There was season 1 of True Detective, and then there was season 2 of True Detective....

(wait I actually have no idea how to participate in the podcast. I'm just going to post the gist of what I have to say here because I was just thinking about this in another thread)

I hated science class until high school. Hated it. I loved English, I loved math, I could tolerate history and other subjects, but science always seemed so boring to me. It was just mindless facts to memorize! Or so it felt to me, who didn't pay enough attention in class to know whether there was anything else going on. I was going to become a famous novelist so it didn't matter anyway.

Then one day near the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, we were learning about bonds in chemistry and something clicked. This didn't feel like a mindless fact: there was a mathematical logic that made chemical bonds make so much sense. Having such a satisfying explanation for a phenomenon scratched a previously unknown itch, and I became addicted to it. That moment of coming to appreciate science completely changed the trajectory of my life. I distinctly remember flipping to the back of my chemistry book where they had mini-bios on different kinds of chemists and I was immediately drawn to the ones on researchers. I thought, This is what I'm going to do, and that was that. From that time on, I naturally started devoting more and more time to science, and without really noticing it, less and less time to my other extracurricular activities. In another life, I might have been a novelist, or a ballerina, or a violinist, or a pianist. But instead, the fascination with the question why consumed me, and it hasn't stopped consuming me since.

---

Tangent: In the last paragraph, I mentioned being consumed with "why" instead of with my other more artistic interests, but I don't think that's entirely accurate. It seems to me that asking "why" is of fundamental importance in the arts. The burn I feel is something different, although maybe not qualitatively different. Perhaps this is why so many scientists are also artists.

Before, I was on a steady course to be a successful graphic designer. I had a full merit scholarship, I had a good paying internship lined up with a design firm. After, I worked at McDonald's for a year then went back to school and got a degree in the impractical and brutal field of fine visual art. All because I followed my heart. Don't fucking tell young people that. That's terrible advice for a 19 year old. Don't follow your heart, it's stupid, it doesn't think. That's why it's not in your head controlling everything.

When I was 19 I went back to visit my friends from high school who I moved away from when I was a junior. This is like two years out from that, I'm a rising junior in college because I graduated early from the shitty public school system of Arkansas that gave me an edge transferring from Alabama. Think about that when you choose which southern state to mock. Anyway, I meet this girl who I assume is way out of my league because I'm dealing with serious self esteem issues. She actually does like me, or seems to, and we start dating. In the infinite wisdom of a 19 year old, I drop out of college and give up my sweet internship for her and attempt to move back to Alabama on my own at 19 with no money. But a romantic dream, goddammit! She dumped me in like a month. I think I made it another month before I had to retreat to my parents' to lick my wounds.

There's a lot more going on but I don't want to go into it too much. But this is really the pivot point of my life even 13 years later. Right now I make under $20,000 a year and there's mold on everything because I don't run the air conditioner.

Don't trust your heart and expect everything will work out. Don't even go after your dreams unless they're to be wealthy or you don't find the prospect of $3 dollars being a significant sum some weeks to be terrifying. Young people, there will be time for everything as you get older so if you want to major in ceramics do so knowing you're going to be dirt poor or major in something else and take classes on the weekends. You can write your book even without an English degree and majoring in something you never even heard of in high school might be financially rewarding and not as soul crushing as your punk rock, anti-authority idea of the real world would paint the 9-5 to be when you're 18.

And parents, for fuck's sake learn to talk to your children as they become adults so you can treat them as such when they become adults.

There was before TNG tried to do the drugs podcast....and then there was after....when he pretended he never tried to do the drugs podcast.

:P

Just fuckin' with you. If you aren't feeling it, let's move onto the next one that will (hopefully) be a bit more inspirational.

Our whole lives are before and after.

You aren't the same person you were as a child, or an adult. You're always learning. Last year, last month, yesterday. Tomorrow, next month, a year from now. Your golden years, if you're lucky enough to see them, will be filled with wonderful moments where you were blind.

But that's the fun in it right? We're all explorers in this crazy wasteland.

What you've done. What you're doing. What you're going to do. It's all up to you, and it really doesn't matter. Isn't it wonderful?