Paul Ford's Followup/Distraction article has been rattling around in my head for a few months:

It is a wonder of the world, the Web. I have facts at hand by the thousands about everything from the different kinds of government to the names of the stars of television shows I've never even seen. I'm smarter, then, with my computer on, but not much deeper. I worry that my knowledge of the world is actually growing shallower, in fact, because for every idea there are a dozen articles and Wikipedia entries to read that allow me to avoid thinking for myself. And it's not like any of that is going away, nor will I be staying away from it. Just putting it aside for a few hours a day so that I can think without the world humming in my ear, sitting in front of my blue screen with gray text, or stretched in bed with my little portable keyboard, a working setup so bland it's actually inspiring.

I've been suspiciously absent from MSN lately, due to a few newfangled ideas, namely hanging out with real-life friends, going to work regularly, and actually going outside. Now that I live downtown and my neighbourhood is somewhere people actually GO, and the weather has been super-nice, I really have no excuse. There are so many trees in bloom! I've been reading novels and poetry instead of articles on the web, and journalling, and taking photographs, and sitting down and laughing with my housemates. There's something cleansing about putting a pen to paper instead of typing while staring at a bright screen in the dead of night.

Things have been good, I'm feeling happier lately. I'm feeling more vigilant lately about monitoring myself for any recurrence of depression and anxiety, but I think things are still good. It's been almost a year since going off anti-depressants, and I'm still feeling as normal as ever. There are some times when I feel a bit weird and worry that I'm regressing, but they're infrequent and brief. Paranoia, I rejoice in your absence.

I got offered another job last week, with a prof that I absolutely adore and who be incredible on my resumé should I ever apply for graduate school, and I found out today that my tax return will be enough to cover three months of living costs. Woo, extra money that I didn't figure into my budget! Sweet mammon, you will sit in my savings account and collect interest. :)

I discovered Killing the Buddha today, a collection of essays and articles about struggling with various faiths, whether they be Buddhist or Jewish, Catholic, Pentecostal, Muslim, whatever. Articles for people who love God but don't find their answers in traditional religion. Or, as they put it:

Killing the Buddha is a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the "spirituality" section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God. It is for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine, but for good reasons are not and do not. If the religious have come to own religious discourse it is because they alone have had places where religious language could be spoken and understood. Now there is a forum for the supposedly non-religious to think and talk about what religion is, is not and might be.

Jesus and I Broke Up is a decent description of the heartbreak involved in deconversion. My Holy Ghost People explores the Pentecostal tongue-speaking world from a familiar but outsider perspective. In The Temptation of Belief, a Buddhist woman describes her reaction to immersing herself in American evangelical culture. I think I'm going to be checking this site out rather regularly.