The Chronicles of Dan- Volume 1.1

Life is a crazy thing. A huge continuum of choices, each one affecting the next to a greater or lesser extent- creating the opportunity for new choices, making others impossible. Each choice also affecting the choices of others- starting with those closest to you and rippling out from there- a huge web interconnecting all of humanity. As John Donne might have said- any man's choice affects me, because I am involved in mankind.
I started this blog because of a choice I made which, I believe, will have a deep impact on the future of my life, and possibly those close to me. The first few entries, accordingly, will be geared towards bringing any readers up to date on where I now stand.
If you're reading this blog chances are you either know me or you're stalking me and have stumbled upon it, which is pretty cool- I didn't know I had a stalker.
If you know me then you probably know, at least to some extent, who I am and what I believe. You might know about my crazy life, each third of which was spent in a different continent. Well, this blog is about the next bit- the fourth continent.
But again, let's start at the beginning:
After four years of arduous slacking, I graduated from the film studies program at York University in Toronto, Canada, in April, or possibly May; June at the latest, in 2003. I spent the rest of the summer and some of the fall working at film festivals and helping friends with their independent film projects; and thus realized, after several years of pursuing a career in film, that a career in film was not, in fact, what I sought.
So after spending several months jumping from festival to festival, project to project, and then coming to this drastic realization; i decided to take a little breather to consider where I stood, and thus sought something a tad more stable, which would give me some time to cogitate.
I found the stability I sought in my next job-working in Human Resources with a company- TPI Inc.- in Etobicoke, ON (once a small town in its own right, now swalloed by the Greater Toronto spread and a part of Toronto).
Over the next year and a half, stability- or possibly comfort- became the defining characteristics of my life. My work with TPI kept me busy during the week-work-day, but I had evenings and weekends completely to myself. The job paid relatively well for someone just out of University. I shared an appartment with a friend from church, which was a constant weekend hangout for friends from the Youth Group, and a perpetual crashing-place for close friends. I was leading the College and Careers group at church, and involved with a couple of other ministries. Surrounded by good friends, entertainment, and other nice things; life was rosy, and ambled along very smoothly. And yet, something didn't sit right.
So I sat, and I thought, and decided that what was missing was ambition. I had settled into a very comfortable niche, but had nothing to challenge me, nothing to aspire to, to attempt to achieve- no great dream. The obvious solution, of course, was to get one, and so I decided, having done allright in my undergrad degree, to pursue a career at Law. It would make for a comfortable living, be a challenging experience, and give me a dream.
And so I borrowed some LSAT (Law School Application Test... I think) preparation material, and began to study, but something still didn't feel right. I seemed to be focusing so much on myself, my comfort, my ambition, my dreams- investing my life in the pursuit of things that were so temporal. I kept coming back to a little phrase that I often heard from one of my youth-leaders as a teenager- Life is short, 'Twill soon be past; Only what you do for God will last. (see a. Linda, the things we say change people's lives!)
That little phrase kept coming back to me. Here I was, professing to hold to a worldview that believes that this life, this physical existence, is not all we have. That there exists an omnipotent, omniscient Holy God who desires a deep and intimate spiritual relationship with us, and who loves us enough to have ensured, at terrible cost to Himself, that this is possible. Here I was professing to believe that this life was but a seed, but that there was so much more to come. How then could I reconcile this belief with the spending my life in the blatant pursuit of my immediate comfort?
This, I believe, was one of the few stressful points in my otherwise largely carefree life. Having had very little previous experience in dealing with this kind of existential stress, I did what any 23-year-old would do- I went out and bought myself an X-box.


What happens to Dan? Does he go bonkers? Does the X-box placate him? Does a meteor randomly fall on his car while he's stuck in traffic and crush him instantaneously, thus mercyfully ending his horrible dilemma? This and more shall be revealed in his next post! Stay tuned.