3: Settling into my new home

Blogged on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 by Rachael. Filed in Emo.

This new blog, with its new domain name and new template and design (I’m using Sidebar Widgets too, and I am REALLY loving it), feels pretty good. I’m glad of something different. There is something in me that thrives on change, craves it. So I created some change for myself.

I am trying to find a better fit for myself here online. Whether or not it seems foolish or pointless (or foreign) to you, I spend the majority of my time on the internet. I blog, I read blogs, I upload photos and video and bookmark things I think are interesting. I order gifts online, I use an online calendar. I wrote my NaNoWriMo novel online, and NaNo itself is completely online.

My blog, over at offontangerine, has been mine for the 3+ years I’ve been writing stuff on the internets. I rarely used capitalizaion, intending instead to retain the flavor of casual IM conversations, in which I only capitalize when I’m trying to make a point. I hosted my own photo gallery over there for a while, until I discovered the magical wonderfulness that is Flickr. I had a lot of ideas and dreams for what I wanted to do there - and ultimately, the title of the domain itself felt like it was holding me back. (Those of you who aren’t geeky enough and/or odd enough to understand, I’m sure you’d like to stop reading about now.)

When I registered antithete.com, I did it out of a growing sense of dichotomy. Life is increasingly contradictory, both in its micro lens inside my own mind and in my own small family, and in the greater sense in the entire world, even the universe itself. Before you assume I’ve run away with myself in a grandiose attempt to sound insightful, let me explain - or try to explain - what I mean. I’ll probably fail, though, because the dichotomy that I am attempting to put into words feels too much a part of life’s reality to be able to spell it out in any understandable way.

Everything is a duality, or at the very least, we seem to hold to a set of expectations that are almost never upheld by actual experience. Society has its traditions, its cultural truths, and even though we often parrot them at each other and ourselves, they are not always true for us. Not only society is afflicted by contradiction; in my life and experience as a Christian (even though I don’t necessarily like to use that word, because of its many often-negative connotations), I have discovered that Jesus did indeed turn the world upside down, and still does today. The Church as a whole still holds onto so many little traditions and laws that don’t have much of a toehold in any of Jesus’ words; and this makes it difficult indeed to break through those barriers and really live the life the He intended: a life full of freedom, love, forgiveness, and intentional charity, as well as strength, wisdom, and resolute steadfastness.

Sure, that was a bunch of big words. Maybe an easier way to put it into words would be this: life is confusing and I am still finding my place in it. But it’s better to live knowing that I am still seeking and finding, rather than choosing to exist in confusion for the rest of my days.

If you’ve skipped to the bottom, or are still here through all of that, I will leave you with some definitions of antithetic and its other forms, courtesy of Dictionary.com:

antithetic: 1. of the nature of or involving antithesis. 2. directly opposed or contrasted; opposite.

antithetical: 1. Of, relating to, or marked by antithesis. 2. Being in diametrical opposition.