Major Changes Underway
In the past two weeks I got married, went on a cruise for my honeymoon, moved out of my brother and I’s apartment (and in with my wife), and recently undertook potentially my largest creative endeavor to date. This newsletter will mostly be a life update peppered with some insights I’ve gathered over the course of these changes.
First, I got married. Everything leading up to it the wedding seemed rapid. My wife and I knew each other only a few months before I proposed to her– we met on a dating app, both of us years without luck– after our proposal we planned the wedding in less than three months. Everyone thought we were crazy, mostly due to the timing of it all. By the modern, rational standard perhaps we were. But it doesn’t hurt to take the occasional calculated risk.
We planned a modest wedding, went to pre-marital counseling with our pastor, and spent a lot of time thinking and praying about our decision.
“Are you nervous? Sad to be losing your freedom?”
This question was extremely common– it literally seemed to be the only thing people asked me for up to two months beforehand, and everything else seemed to be tedious logistical questions.
But I wasn’t nervous, and as far as I could tell neither was she. I’d spent my youth thinking of relationships in an entirely wrong way, seeking to fulfill my own set of arbitrarily set standards. It was only after sacrificing my standards in favor of a biblical worldview that all my relationships began to flourish.
Though annoyed, I wasn’t surprised when my secular friends expressed veiled concern at the thought of getting married at 24. After all, what can the secular, 21st century American concept of marriage offer us individuals? In that worldview there’s no reason to postpone intimacy, or cohabitation, or even to make the vow to never separate no matter what. Everything is “as you like it” and whatever pleases your immediate, selfish idea of what’s “good for you.” Side note: why does “living my best life” always secretly imply “having a terrible time maintaining long-term relationships”?
The Christian concept of marriage is really the only one that exists– or at least the only one that could be considered a “marriage,” at any rate. Anything else is something you truly should be nervous and perhaps entirely skeptical of, as what it entails and means are entirely up to speculation and re-evaluation at any moment.
But with her and I, and our insistence on understanding the biblical meaning behind this ancient institution— particularly it’s symbolism of the unity between Christ and the Church— there was no sense of a lost freedom. In fact, there was quite the opposite feeling. We moderns tend to confuse shouldering responsibility with losing freedom, and avoiding responsibility as having gained it. The truth is, both are a means of subjecting oneself to servitude— the only choice you get is what you’ll end up serving.
We went on our much-anticipated vacation the same night once the ceremony ended. The next morning, we were boarding a five-day cruise. While touring the ship, I reminisced on a David Foster Wallace essay I had read long ago during my period of infatuation with his writing. The essay was titled A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again, and it was a gut-wrenchingly depressing review of a cruise liner not all too different from the one we currently sailed on, Wallace recounting with great angst the nihilism resultant of a week spent at sea aboard a ship designed to keep you endlessly entertained, fed, rested, relaxing, and pampered.
While on board, I compared his experience to mine. It was somewhat relevant– the never ending pampering, the inexplicable malaise the result of a labored pursuit toward perfect leisure. Restlessness struck. The workout options on the boat were slim (a pull-up bar and dip station) and after a few days endless ice cream and alcohol became less appealing than it had initially seemed. As I paced the upper decks, searching the ocean horizon for something that piqued my interest, I could only think more and more about Wallace.
My thoughts, when finally grasped, were found clouded— the purpose of my life seemed more murky than they’d been during my past year or so as an entrepreneurial bachelor. I concluded a routine week at work would’ve left me feeling better than being on the ship. My wife agreed. This vacation had been so long sought by her and I in the preceding months (we were both overworked; her in school and me between client projects and trying to build my own business)– and yet we both complained that we missed home. It sounds ridiculous, I’m sure, hearing honeymooners complain about being on a cruise for five days of vacation. But somewhere along the line the concept of escape from work found itself entirely called into question; a sort of lie sold to me long ago which I only now felt the hollowness of.
Back on land, we immediately began to pack all our belongings into a truck and haul them away to the new place where we’d begin living together. Once home, she opened a door to a tiny room. The room featured a singular window looking out into the street and nothing else. “Welcome to your new office,” she said, smiling at me with her big brown eyes. I shuffled my desk, my books, my electric drum set, my filming equipment, my workout equipment into the tiny space. Sitting in my rickety wooden chair at an old repurposed school desk I pulled out some post it notes, scribbling concepts and to-do’s to be plastered on the wall.
Heidegger’s Being and Time glared at me from the top of my stack of unread books, which rose from the floor up to about chest level (while seated). The text had defeated me within a mere two chapters at my old place. There were several books beneath it I had never quite found my way toward.
In my old apartment, just outside my door, I often heard the thumping of my brother’s bass guitar while writing, reading, or filming– sessions were quickly abandoned with the temptation of a jam session imminent. In that previous city, there always seemed something more immediately stimulating than my own creative work. But here and now, a married man in a wholly new space, disenchanted by the idea of escapism, I felt a new form of anticipation at what I imagined possible in this new, little corner of the earth I’d found. I seem surrounded by reminders that I am exactly where God wants me to be.
On that same Wednesday I received a call from one of my favorite content creators in the philosophy space (I won’t yet say who, in case things fall through). We talked for about 25 minutes, and he commissioned me to do some collaborative content with him in the upcoming six weeks. This comes on the heels of a recent creative challenge I undertook with a friend of mine– I agreed to produce 12 hours of videos for my Youtube channel before September 6th, 2024, in the spirit of my newfound practice of setting stakes for all personal projects I desire to see completed. Whether my involvement will help or hurt the completion of this goal (I think it will help) remains to be seen. In short, my life just received some massive shifts, and you expect more (specifically video) content in the coming weeks.
Peace. ☮︎
