S
Seeking-Christ
Guest
I don't know if I'm going to write more parts to this or not. But depending on the comments I might get, I may need to add some more information. If so that information might be typed up in another Part 2 or 3 or so on...
My writing isn't perfect. I don't want to take the time and effort to make it perfect.
In these paragraphs I'm trying to paint you a picture of my living and social conditions. I hope that by doing this, you will understand why it is that I use the internet for socializing.
I live a ways away from the nearest city. My nearest neighbor, that I could get to is a quarter mile away. My Parents and I don't interact with the neighbors much. Not that they aren't bad people, it's just that we keep to ourselves and they mostly keep to themselves too. When my grandparents were alive they interacted with the closest neighbors more than we do. Since then, some of the neighbors have moved away, passed away, and have been replaced by new neighbors. But over all, things are peaceful between us and them.
There are some housing developments that went in. They took over some of the farm land that used to be around us. By the way, I live on an old farm that is no longer being used as a farm. I would need to write another blog about that, or this one will get too long.
Of course when the housing developments went in, my Grandparents right away wanted to get a fence put up, and some trees planted to keep them off our property. In the back of our place, some of the people have cut the fence and came over anyways, and we had to chase them off. On the other side of us, we have a privacy fence put up, nobody tries to cut it. But there have been some people on that side that have cut down some of the privacy trees, that were planted by housing developer.
So far I've explained to you, why I don't have contact with people at home... Now lets talk Church.
When I was a young kid, I went to Sunday School, and I had contact with other people my age. But i didn't really fit in with very many of them. I basically had just one friend, and another guy or two that you really couldn't tell if they were "friends" or not... When we became 5th graders, one of those guys started tying my shoe laces to the table. The other guy was always wishy washy. He's be my friend one day and the next he wasn't. This pattern continued all the way until we graduated High School, and then even after. I haven't spoken to him in years! The guy who was tying my shoe laces, later came out as an agnostic in High School. He had a friend who was also in our 5th grade Sunday School class, that I later heard that He in High School He was selling drugs to kids. I lost contact with all of these weirdos...
My Church at the time was going through a pastor change, and my dad was working for the church as a custodian. After the pastor change they began tampering with my dad's job description, and He no longer felt that it was the right job for him anymore. Due the attitude of the new pastor and his wife, my dad not only resigned but took us to another Church, outside of the denomination that we were in. The reason He did this because, after learning how things worked behind the scenes, He wanted to go to a Church where He didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. The down side of this was the theology of this church in comparison to our theology prevented us from getting involved. As many more years went on, we gradually discovered that there was more to it then just that. That Church has people in it that don't care about outsiders coming in. They just stick with the people they know and they don't want to get to know anyone else. Even when we tried to outreach to them, they would just shrug us off.
The only reason why we stayed at that Church is because the pastor did really good sermons, over all. And they were better then the sermons we were getting at our old church anyways. Finally someone came calling on us. It was a pastor of a small Church in our denomination. He knew about my Dad's training in Bible college, and the Home Bible study that He was doing. So He thought He could recruit my dad to help him out. This man was in his 70's at the time.
We went to that little Church and helped it out for 3 years. In the beginning the people were friendly, but it was mainly made of older retired people. Some of younger ones, who were in there 30s and early 40s got active with Sunday School, and a few other things. But the main pastor wasn't putting much effort into things, and wasn't always honest, as we learned later on... The people gradually got tired of it, and decided it was time to leave. They even called a meeting with the DS of our local congregation to come in and try and help reconcile the issues. In the end the DS did nothing so the Church split. My Dad asked the DS what He should do, and the DS told him that He should leave. We think that the Pastor started some rumors about my Dad which is why He couldn't get another opportunity in another Church.
We went back to the Church we had come from... Became pew sitters for another 13 years, and made no friends... We decided that we needed to get into a place where we could fit in, and started doing some church shopping. We attended several churches and gave them each at least a year of attendance and some human interaction, before deciding that the place wasn't for us. Then finally Covid 19 hit. That caused us to stay home for a year. When we tried to go back, we found out that the head pastor was asked to resign and those who were in charge didn't want to let the information on why out right away. That made us as a family think back on all the bad stuff we had been dealing with, and were like, if this is the way Churches are now, then it makes no difference if we are in a Church building or sitting at home watching something on TV or the Internet. (Before you comment about this stuff, there is a lot more to the story that I can't add to this blog. It would make it too long. But maybe some day I'll add it another one)
If you made it this far, you will realize that Church is out of my life now.
Now I want to briefly describe my place occupation. I work as a 2nd shift Custodian for a school. It is not a good job to have for social interaction. When I'm on duty working, everyone is in the process of going home. There is a social divide between the Teachers and the 2nd shift Custodians. You are lucky if you are said Hi too. You are even luckier if someone asks you how you are doing. 98% of the time I am ignored by them even if I say something. Only a very few of them, like one or two, that I can talk too sometimes. And I know what I'm talking about! Because I've worked there for 20 years, which means currently I've been at my job longer then some of them have!
So real social interaction at the School, my job, is virtually non existent. And my hours, and learning disability, the way it effects my driving, plus the fact that walking over 10,000 steps every night at work, plus everything else, really makes me tired. Then I get lonely too.
This is why I have been using the internet for social interaction. And the sad thing is, it's crappy. The internet is world wide, you'd think that you could almost always be able to find someone to talk too. And yet, I have spent countless hours just searching to find someone, and when I did, only to get into junk. I could maybe write an entire blog on all the junk I found myself in, if only I could remember it all, and organize it all!
Anyways if you ever wondered how come I get so depressed. I think I pretty much summed it up in this blog.
My writing isn't perfect. I don't want to take the time and effort to make it perfect.
In these paragraphs I'm trying to paint you a picture of my living and social conditions. I hope that by doing this, you will understand why it is that I use the internet for socializing.
I live a ways away from the nearest city. My nearest neighbor, that I could get to is a quarter mile away. My Parents and I don't interact with the neighbors much. Not that they aren't bad people, it's just that we keep to ourselves and they mostly keep to themselves too. When my grandparents were alive they interacted with the closest neighbors more than we do. Since then, some of the neighbors have moved away, passed away, and have been replaced by new neighbors. But over all, things are peaceful between us and them.
There are some housing developments that went in. They took over some of the farm land that used to be around us. By the way, I live on an old farm that is no longer being used as a farm. I would need to write another blog about that, or this one will get too long.
Of course when the housing developments went in, my Grandparents right away wanted to get a fence put up, and some trees planted to keep them off our property. In the back of our place, some of the people have cut the fence and came over anyways, and we had to chase them off. On the other side of us, we have a privacy fence put up, nobody tries to cut it. But there have been some people on that side that have cut down some of the privacy trees, that were planted by housing developer.
So far I've explained to you, why I don't have contact with people at home... Now lets talk Church.
When I was a young kid, I went to Sunday School, and I had contact with other people my age. But i didn't really fit in with very many of them. I basically had just one friend, and another guy or two that you really couldn't tell if they were "friends" or not... When we became 5th graders, one of those guys started tying my shoe laces to the table. The other guy was always wishy washy. He's be my friend one day and the next he wasn't. This pattern continued all the way until we graduated High School, and then even after. I haven't spoken to him in years! The guy who was tying my shoe laces, later came out as an agnostic in High School. He had a friend who was also in our 5th grade Sunday School class, that I later heard that He in High School He was selling drugs to kids. I lost contact with all of these weirdos...
My Church at the time was going through a pastor change, and my dad was working for the church as a custodian. After the pastor change they began tampering with my dad's job description, and He no longer felt that it was the right job for him anymore. Due the attitude of the new pastor and his wife, my dad not only resigned but took us to another Church, outside of the denomination that we were in. The reason He did this because, after learning how things worked behind the scenes, He wanted to go to a Church where He didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. The down side of this was the theology of this church in comparison to our theology prevented us from getting involved. As many more years went on, we gradually discovered that there was more to it then just that. That Church has people in it that don't care about outsiders coming in. They just stick with the people they know and they don't want to get to know anyone else. Even when we tried to outreach to them, they would just shrug us off.
The only reason why we stayed at that Church is because the pastor did really good sermons, over all. And they were better then the sermons we were getting at our old church anyways. Finally someone came calling on us. It was a pastor of a small Church in our denomination. He knew about my Dad's training in Bible college, and the Home Bible study that He was doing. So He thought He could recruit my dad to help him out. This man was in his 70's at the time.
We went to that little Church and helped it out for 3 years. In the beginning the people were friendly, but it was mainly made of older retired people. Some of younger ones, who were in there 30s and early 40s got active with Sunday School, and a few other things. But the main pastor wasn't putting much effort into things, and wasn't always honest, as we learned later on... The people gradually got tired of it, and decided it was time to leave. They even called a meeting with the DS of our local congregation to come in and try and help reconcile the issues. In the end the DS did nothing so the Church split. My Dad asked the DS what He should do, and the DS told him that He should leave. We think that the Pastor started some rumors about my Dad which is why He couldn't get another opportunity in another Church.
We went back to the Church we had come from... Became pew sitters for another 13 years, and made no friends... We decided that we needed to get into a place where we could fit in, and started doing some church shopping. We attended several churches and gave them each at least a year of attendance and some human interaction, before deciding that the place wasn't for us. Then finally Covid 19 hit. That caused us to stay home for a year. When we tried to go back, we found out that the head pastor was asked to resign and those who were in charge didn't want to let the information on why out right away. That made us as a family think back on all the bad stuff we had been dealing with, and were like, if this is the way Churches are now, then it makes no difference if we are in a Church building or sitting at home watching something on TV or the Internet. (Before you comment about this stuff, there is a lot more to the story that I can't add to this blog. It would make it too long. But maybe some day I'll add it another one)
If you made it this far, you will realize that Church is out of my life now.
Now I want to briefly describe my place occupation. I work as a 2nd shift Custodian for a school. It is not a good job to have for social interaction. When I'm on duty working, everyone is in the process of going home. There is a social divide between the Teachers and the 2nd shift Custodians. You are lucky if you are said Hi too. You are even luckier if someone asks you how you are doing. 98% of the time I am ignored by them even if I say something. Only a very few of them, like one or two, that I can talk too sometimes. And I know what I'm talking about! Because I've worked there for 20 years, which means currently I've been at my job longer then some of them have!
So real social interaction at the School, my job, is virtually non existent. And my hours, and learning disability, the way it effects my driving, plus the fact that walking over 10,000 steps every night at work, plus everything else, really makes me tired. Then I get lonely too.
This is why I have been using the internet for social interaction. And the sad thing is, it's crappy. The internet is world wide, you'd think that you could almost always be able to find someone to talk too. And yet, I have spent countless hours just searching to find someone, and when I did, only to get into junk. I could maybe write an entire blog on all the junk I found myself in, if only I could remember it all, and organize it all!
Anyways if you ever wondered how come I get so depressed. I think I pretty much summed it up in this blog.
