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One day when I was probably about 10, I had an experience that profoundly affected my development. And since I can’t keep my long-winded tales of personal epiphany to myself, I’m going to tell you all about it. Hooray!

I had wandered into our guest room in search of reading material and come across an issue of the Catholic Digest. It wasn’t exactly age appropriate, but having always fancied myself on the adult side of childhood, I thought it would do just fine.

Leafing through, I landed on a story that caught my attention because it centered around a woman who seemed like a potential role model. She had finished college and was on a promising career track, going on dates, evaluating relationships, and planning for the life she (and i) had always wanted. According to her, though, God had other ideas.

The article was about the author’s feeling that despite her own personal hopes and dreams, God had called her to serve Him as a nun. The documented internal struggle was long, but eventually she came to terms with her destiny, joined a convent, and lived to tell the tale of how sometimes, you don’t get to decide how your life is going to be.

I will remember this moment until I die: dropping the Digest and fighting for breath as I looked to the scab on my awkward, prepubescent knee for an answer. “Oh my goodness,” I thought.

“What if God ruins my life???”

This story is not about my thoughts on Catholicism, this article, the concepts of God or destiny, or anything like that. I’m telling it because it was in this single moment that I believe I experienced the largest paradigm shift of my life. There I was, trying to be responsible and enlightened, and by trying to absorb all the opinions and viewpoints of the world, I had suffered quite a blow to my (still-developing) conscience.

It happens to all of us sooner or later. You open yourself up to a cause and are suddenly forced to consider the possibility that you will lose yourself to it. Sometimes that might not be so bad (I’m pro- falling in love, even when it makes me crazy), but I didn’t feel the slightest bit good about what had just happened. I didn’t feel stronger or more capable. I just felt like crap. A decade and a half later, and I’m still frustrated by being emotionally punished for trying to do something good.

This is why activism is a hard problem to think about.

One of the last times I was home, my Aunt Anne proposed in a discussion that the best way to tackle our most serious humanitarian problems is to rally around responsible consumerism. Really, it’s a great place to start because there’s nothing to lose; if a company hurts other people in bringing a product to you, even if you can’t stop them, it’s nice just on principle not to support it. The “nothing to lose” bit is key, since anything on a large scale usually requires the participation of a lot of individuals. It seems like a good plan to promote things that an individual might actually do.

I don’t think we have a shortage of activists. We have a shortage of balanced participation. Some people give everything and are tired and frustrated and understandably so. The rest give nothing because there is virtually no way to ease yourself into contributing.

I decided to make my own version of the kind of website my aunt proposed, primarily because I don’t care. I mean, of course I care, but because I’m not as emotionally involved in these issues as the average activist, I hope that I can maintain an environment where one can poke around without reading something that makes them feel depressed or guilty.

So without further ado, I’d like to invite you to check out casualactivist.org, hot off the press.

Feedback is welcome and I hope that as my friends, you will think of me when you encounter an issue you think I should write about. I have a lot of things in the queue but could always use more.

To those of you who have known about this project, thank you for your support, and to those of you who haven’t, thank you for your patience as I’ve been spacey and nonblogposttastic over the past months.