Call me Ishmael, I mean Brother Mark

I just realized that I have yet to explain the name of my blog. I’ve been going on this for quite some time and I have been remise in sharing why I chose the name I did.

The name Shifting Shifted Shifty was birthed out of my first year at college. Within the first 2-3 weeks living in dorm I started hanging out with 3 other guys quite a lot. Within another month we had been christened by our friends as ‘Team Shifty” where the root of that term came from I cannot remember but oddly enough it stuck. Soon the four of us were known throughout the school as Team Shifty and developed a reputation to go along with our name.

Since that first year in college the word “shifty” has held a special place in my heart (just to the right of my cockles). So when I started up this blog I decided that there would be no better word help express what I’m going through.

At its most basic shifting, shifted and shifty are how I see my life. As I’ve said, my blog is a place to put forth ideas that I’m working through. It is my place to work out where I may be going on my journey (spiritual, mental, life whatever you want to put before “journey” is fine with me), that is the shifting part. It is also my place to say how I see things. It is a place to express my opinions that I have, whether they are firm or not, they are the opinions I have shifted to after some thought. Finally I also recognize that I may be way off on some of this, I don’t claim, as I’ve said before, to have it all together, and I don’t think I ever will. I’m imperfect and therefore so are my ideas and faith. One might say that I’m a shifty source when it comes to matters of life.

Shifty has also come to mean community. I spent hours with my fellow Team Shifty members my first year, we’d be up until 1 or 2 every night, talking, watching TV or doing whatever else came to mind. With those 3 other guys I was free to speak my mind, work things out with their help and not fear being looked upon as stupid. Team Shifty was a place where I could be open, and that is what this blog is to me, a place where, no matter how stupid, trivial or wrong my opinions may be, I can work things through and express them.

As Paul Graham said in his article which NinjaNun pointed me to:

The trouble with keeping your thoughts secret, though, is that you lose the advantages of discussion. Talking about an idea leads to more ideas. So the optimal plan, if you can manage it, is to have a few trusted friends you can speak openly to. This is not just a way to develop ideas; it's also a good rule of thumb for choosing friends. The people you can say heretical things to without getting jumped on are also the most interesting to know.

I like and want that.

That is why this is Shifting Shifty Shifty.