Behold my humble web page devoted to... ME!

Let's see.

There's got to be some way for me to publicize my totally revamped www.BrianHines.com web site and also make this blog post into something philosophical. Or pseudo-spiritual. 

I'll give it a shot...

When I sat down yesterday at my MacBook Pro laptop, determined to replace my hugely outdated old personal web site with an Adobe Spark page, I started with a blank Brian Hines slate. 

Meaning, I had to decide what I wanted to say about myself. 

Since I've got 67 years of living as raw material, obviously I had plenty of options to work with. An Adobe Spark page starts with a title, subtitle, and a photo. Here's how mine looks.

(The entire page is embedded in this link; click on the "back" button of your browser to return to this post.)

Adobe Spark is free. I encourage you to make your own page about yourself. It's an interesting exercise. 

What do you reveal? What do you keep private? What do you want people to know about you? What would you rather they not know?

As noted in a post on my other blog, Adobe Spark doesn't provide many design or formatting options. It is content-driven. Pretty much, all the user gets to decide with an Adobe Spark page is what text, photos, or video get included on the page, and in what order things get presented.

So what is the Story of You? How do you present yourself in a single flowing web page? 

Obviously there isn't any right or wrong answer to these questions. When I clicked on the first "+" button after the title section, I was faced with innumerable options. Yet it only took me a few seconds to decide what to present. 

Whatever felt right. To me. 

That was my sole guide throughout the several hours I spent working on the Adobe Spark page. Which didn't really feel like "work," because I was enjoying myself throughout the process.

I can't say that this was an enlightening experience. I also can't say that it wasn't. I learned some things about myself -- even though this clichéd phrase doesn't really capture the feeling I had after clicking "share" and making the page public. 

I think it is more true to say that we create ourselves through our interactions with the world, than that we reveal ourselves. There's isn't a Real Me inside myself. There's just a bunch of memories, thoughts, emotions, neuronal connections, and such within my brain. 

Which, of course, isn't "my" brain, because there is no me apart from my brain. So when I created a Brian Hines web page, in essence I added to the ever-changing creative history of what I referred to in my subtitle as a "blip of existence."

I'll end with this.

Fairly frequently, I get comments on my Church of the Churchless blog posts along the lines of, "Brian, you're obsessed with attacking religions. You need to get a life, man."

I always think, Huh? What are you talking about?

Very little of my life is spent writing for this blog. I hardly ever think about religions, or the people who embrace them. Read my BrianHines.com web page. There is a link to Church of the Churchless, and another link to a single post on this blog.

That's it. Criticizing religions isn't a big part of my life.

I have very little concern with what almost certainly doesn't exist: God, soul, spirit, heaven, afterlife. Every day I focus on what is right around me -- my wife, dog, house, rural property, citizen activism causes, nature, outdoor elliptical bike, friends, family, television, red wine, legal (in Oregon) marijuana, and so much else that offers pleasure and meaning to me.

So again, I recommend playing around with an Adobe Spark page about yourself. You'll need to decide what to share about the being called You. In the process, you might learn something. And have some fun.  

Comments

[Juan]

Dear Brian,

Here's the link to new documentary movie by RSSB.
http://www.rssb.org/videos.php

[Jen]

Brian, I admire your humble devotion to yourself lol. The mask is kinda freaky, can't make up my mind whether its aztec, american indian, maori, oh well a mixture anyway!

Juan, thanks for the RSSB video link. Just watched a bit of the film and will watch again later. This thread seems to be about devotion :)

[777]

Brian on "Blog Salem Brian"
Good piece

And the only way to do that,
and which is not religion . . . you reject

Here we go with your own song :
"" The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth,
would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe
through the eyes of another,
of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes
that each of them beholds, that each of them is . ""

777

* I suppose you mean LOVE !