American Gaijin

  • Rising Above the Problem

    The last week has been troublesome. So much so that I have several posts I’ve left on the cutting room floor, because I was too deep in the problem to make a coherent post. I could have posted those, but they would have caused more damage than they would have helped me. So, having had…

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  • Financial Literacy 101: What Everyone Needs to Know

    Recently, I’ve been learning a great deal about how finances work. It’s a difficult topic, and that’s mostly because there are a lot of people out there with a vested interest in misleading you or even outright lying to you. Let’s be real – I could be one. But I’m just a regular Joe (not…

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  • I Don’t Care what you Think your Identity is

    My train of thought gets kind of complicated – when it’s not derailing. Following on from my last post about boundaries, this leads to another set of thoughts about consent. There is a train of thought that has gained popularity lately that if two or more people consent to something, it’s none of anyone’s business.…

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  • Boundaries are Critical

    There are many lessons that I could impart that I’ve learned in life over the last mumble-mumble years. Most of these lessons are not obvious, and they’re all very hard learned. But I think one of the most important lessons I’ve learned relates to boundaries. How important they are, and how few people actually understand…

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  • You Have no Right

    A couple of posts ago, I posted about how I will no longer discuss theology with atheists. The cliff’s notes reason why is that I consider it to be a waste of time, as their mind is made up and all they ever try to do is beat you over the head with their impotent…

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  • Why I am Now a Disney Shareholder

    Recently, I have decided to get into buying stocks. Honestly, I don’t buy stocks to make money. I think timing the market is dumb, I think chasing the market is dumber, and I’m not particularly interested in buying and selling stocks on anything but a long term basis. So why did I buy a share…

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  • Why I Don’t Converse With Atheists (about Theology)

    Many years ago, when I was a young tsundoku, I used to be an atheist. At one point in my life I had a spiritual experience that turned me from an atheist into a former atheist, but even though I no longer shared their worldview, I would not shy away with discussing theology with atheists.…

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  • The Crisis is Over. Now What?

    This last year has been terrible in many ways. Quite honestly, I never expected to live through anything like that. And I never expected to survive it. The truly terrible thing about the Cov-SARS-2 virus (hereafter known as COVID or the coronavirus) is not that it is deadly or causes severe sickness in some situations.…

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  • The Story of how I was once Nearly Homeless

    I may have mentioned this, but I did not have a good childhood. My father barely worked – partly through no fault of his own, but mostly through fault of his own. My mother had basically minimum wage jobs. We had federal assistance, and help from our church, so we never truly starved, but some…

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  • Like a Daughter

    Ten years ago (give or take), I decided to sponsor a child through Children International.  The first child they assigned me was an 11 year old girl from the Phillipines. For the past ten years (give or take) I have watched this girl, and several others, grow from being a, well, young girl, into being…

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