About

I wrote this as the introduction to my first blog post:

The name of this blog was selected with a nod to Douglas Adams. The Frogstar is the home of the Total Perspective Vortex, an horrific torture device which somehow provides the victim with a perspective of the true size of the universe and his or her own significance within it, which, needless to say, is so close to being zero that if it were any closer, it would be negative. The end result is that this glimpse of stark reality drives the victim to insanity.

While I don’t pretend to be able to mimic the incredible power of a Total Perspective Vortex, the idea for this blog is that I have a place to take a look at my life, perhaps a Partial Perspective Vortex of sorts. I need someone to talk to, and I don’t have anyone in my life right now with whom I can be completely open, completely honest. I suppose I could write this in a journal, but I wouldn’t want anyone I know to stumble upon it and read it. Since sometimes the best place to hide something is right out in the open, I decided to start this blog. And thanks to you, dear reader, and the teeming masses of disinterested readers who collectively comprise the Internet Universe, my life on the Frogstar will be almost as insignificant as that of a victim of the Total Perspective Vortex. To more fully mark my insignificance and to provide at least a modicum of anonymity, I will not give my name. If you must refer to me, you may simply call me the Frogman.

Although I think that’s a pretty good introduction and a pretty good goal, I can’t claim to be completely unbiased. Nor can I claim to be as open and honest as I wish I could be. I started this blog when I was just coming to the conclusion that the religion I had believed all my life was most likely not true, and it gave me a way to explore some ideas, to allow me to more clearly understand my thinking, and to express some of the feelings and confusion I’d had in recent months.

Since then my life has changed drastically, and I’ve continued to explore topics that are new to me, including atheism and secular humanism, and exploring relationship models and the purpose of life in a world devoid of external meaning. I’ve figured some things out since I first started this blog. But that seems only to have increased the number of questions I have. So I continue. Blogging about my confusion, my feelings, and my attempt to make sense of my life and the world in which I find myself.

The tagline of my blog perhaps expresses it best: “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as told by one who doesn’t know it.” I can only see life through the two eyes which happen to be embedded in the head I wear atop shoulders that all too often I can only shrug. I don’t know very much. Even the things I think I know, I’m probably at least half wrong on over 92% of them. (How’s that for making up numbers?) I don’t have answers, and worse than that, most of the time I don’t even know the most useful questions. I lack perspective. I lack knowledge. I lack understanding.

So here I am. Blogging untruths by default. Sorry, but that’s the best I have.

6 thoughts on “About”

  1. Hey, Frogman, I gave you an award bouquet on my blog because I really like your writing – you don’t have to follow the rules, unless you really want to. Cheers! – and BTW, my husband and I are reading the Hitchhiker trilogy to our 8 year old son right now, so, greetings from another Douglas Adams fan!

  2. Couldnt find an email on the about page.

    Long story short , we have very similar life paths. Both extremely pragmatic and analytical that it seems we have a hard time wrapping our heads around emotional experiences in life.

    Both grew up devout mormons, ( I grew up in happy valley and didnt even personally know someone who wasnt mormon until i was 19) both followed the rules, were the “good” kids in the family, both did the mission thing, both stopped really being the mormon we were “suppossed” to be.

    I don’t remember how I found your blog about 5 hours ago, but I read every-post, beginning to end.

    Oh yeah you commented on some Ordain Women Movement blog post a bunch.

    Anyway. It was a great ride going through the last year or so of your life. Was therapeutic even.

    Do what you think is right, even if you find out your wrong later. Then just re-align to what your new found knowledge is. Thats the point of life, experience and grow. No such thing as mistakes, only lessons. (generally speaking)

    Thanks for sharing a sliver of your life.

    1. Thanks, Kade. That’s quite a gift you’ve given me, reading my blog beginning to end. I’m glad you found it helpful. I know I have. Your closing thought I’ve heard expressed this way: do the best you know how until you know better, and then once you know better, do better.

That’s my truth. What’s yours?