More seriously, though,  I had been thinking of starting a blog for quite some time (for reasons outlined in the first post and on the About page.  But for about a year, it seemed like a good idea, not something that I really wanted or even needed to do.

I have been reading blogs on self-improvement,  personal finance, and goals for almost three years now, took the first Men’s Fraternity course twice, and have generally been filling my head with thoughts and ideas that I wish I thought about much earlier.  The concepts of setting goals and living purposefully kept emerging as the front runners from all of these channels of information.  “What do you want to do, and how are you going to do it?” seemed to be the question everyone was asking.

I’d like to think that my mind is a shiny, lighting-fast Athlon X2, but it seems that many processes are being handled by a 486.  In other words, I needed to absorb a lot of information, and digested all of it very slowly.  But, one fine day, things finally clicked.

On a rainy, overcast Sunday morning, driving on mostly empty roads, I suddenly found myself facing a series of questions. “What am I passionate about?”, “What central idea does my life revolve around?”, “What brings me true satisfaction?”, and “What is my life’s purpose?”  Even six months earlier, I would have shrunk from questions like that, or wouldn’t have asked them in the first place.  But not that morning.  That morning, I was reminded of a quote by John MacArthur: “integrity is when every part of your life matches all the other parts.” So, as the question fluttered about in my head, I kept searching for something unifying or universal.  “How should my life be defined, and what do I want to be remembered for?”  Finally, it hit me: “helping people.”  This was my calling, my purpose and my livelihood.  The concept seemed to match well to all parts of my life, and it was a concept that I WANTED to be in every part of my life.

Helping my own family, by providing and taking care of it.  Helping my siblings and parents in their lives.  Helping people I work with, by doing my job well and making their’s easier.  Helping my friends and my church with my time and resources.  Helping random people, if I can.  Potentially helping people by putting down thoughts and observations about life and publishing it to whoever wants to read.  Pretty much helping in any way I can.  So, that’s what I’m going to do, and that’s why I’m hoping to regularly contribute to this blog.

Well, now that I’ve sucked all the air out of the room with my self-importance, this takes care of my “me” posts quota for the next 12 months.  See you in October 2009! 

The What

About page provides basic background, and I will reiterate and expand on it here: my somewhat unique set of circumstances and a multitude of missteps has given me a perspective on life that I want to share, even as I continue learning about it and making (and sometimes repeating) mistakes.  Specifically, my “qualifications” are as follows:

• Have been giving advice for 25 years or so
• Didn’t learn about life in USA from my parents (immigrants), so I’ve had to learn it on my own
• Authored many “don’t do what I did” scenarios

So, my plan is to harvest these experiences, rinse off the specifics, and, hopefully, get little gems of universally applicable wisdom out of them. With a little nugget of an action item thrown in here and there.

The Why

Still, any thinking person can draw from his or her experience, share it with company, finish the cup of coffee and call it a night. Why put this up on the world wide web? For several reasons:

• I have gained greatly from blogs in the last few years (especially good ones will find their way into the blogroll), and like the medium as a means of information transfer
• It’s an easy way for me to share about life with my younger siblings, because the “conversation” is at-will – nobody’s eyes have to glaze over, as I launch into yet another very serious lecture about “what life is all about.”
• Hopefully, a few more people out there will find this stuff useful, or, at least, thought-provoking

I’ll write more about the purpose and planned content of Older Brother Complex later on; for now, I’ve dipped my toes in the water, and it feels pretty wet.