Hello World! :)

After years of considering making a blog but being too scared to share my ponderings with the world, I finally have the courage to post them! I’m a philosopher (and was a Philosophy/Theology major in undergrad) whose brain never shuts up, an artist and writer who is constantly observing the world in order to get inspiration and learn about how people and things work, a person who has always been “outside the world” in a way where I see things differently than most do, a person with a passion for animation and the media’s effects on people and the culture (which was part of my research focus area in grad school), and a person who is very devoted to her faith. Due to this combo, I tend to ponder everything I observe about the world, especially as it relates to the media and culture, and I often end up seeing how this all relates to how people live out their Catholic faith in such a society. That’s pretty much what I’m going to talk about in this blog.

Now before all of the non-Catholics run away (if you haven’t already), I think you should know that while this will be from a Catholic perspective and directly addressed to a Catholic/Christian audience, most of the posts will still be applicable to people of any religion and even those who don’t have or practice a religion. I’ll be talking about my observations on things fundamental to all human beings, such as love or overcoming fear or figuring out what you’re meant to do in life. Many religions share the same principles, so I hope that even those of you who don’t share my faith can still enjoy reading my posts and get something out of them, even if that something is just learning how someone else thinks or sparking your own ponderings as they relate to your own faith.

I’m going to write these posts in the style that the philosopher Montaigne (or Monty as I called him in my notes :P ) used, which is short essays done in a conversational style and based solely on my observations of the world and all the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years. I feel like we’re trained so much in school to cite everything we say, especially with the internet available to back up or refute every statement we make, that the style of philosophy of simply observing and using your intellect and prior knowledge to come to conclusions (as opposed to data analysis and formal research) has become rare.

My favorite philosophy professor in undergrad, who I took five times, told us that to truly understand philosophy, we had to write it ourselves based on how we saw things using the knowledge we gained from all the years of life experience and formal education. So we did. He gave us topics and we wrote papers making our intellectual arguments based on nothing but our observations of the world and prior knowledge. I LOVED writing those papers and writing a guest blog post for my best friend’s blog a few weeks ago (I’m going to post it here too) reminded me of those papers and how much fun they were. I’ve felt called to be a writer for several years now, but haven’t quite found the writing style I’m intrinsically passionate about writing. So this blog will be me trying out this style of writing and seeing if it seems like the kind of writing God is calling me to do. 

While I'd love to post something every week, I know that life can be hectic (especially during the school year when I’ll be taking classes and have my main volunteer job on top of my real job and other volunteer job) and it can be unpredictable. I'm a firm believer that it'd better to take your time and make something good rather than quickly toss together something just for the sake of posting, and since this blog is for fun and my jobs and loved ones come first, I'd rather only post when I have time to really make something worth your time reading. I also don’t like making promises I can’t keep, so all I can promise is that I will do my best to post as often as I can.

Oh and for those curious, the Philothea part of my blog title comes from my favorite Saint and the patron Saint writers, Francis de Sales. It means “lover of God” and he used it to address his readers. Francis de Sales wrote a lot of insightful things on how regular people can live out their faith, and I hope that through my ponderings about our culture and with the help of his intercessions and Holy Spirit guidance, I can come to some insights about how we can do the same.