Gunter's Logic 5 Years Later.

Dragonfly Delight by Graffiti Paintbar 

Five years! I can't believe that five years ago I was in the library just typing to whatever was on my mind to now having a blog with over 40,000 views! I must say that I have changed a lot over the past five years and as the years have gone by I take pride in what this blog has become to the readers. In this post I want to break down my other posts and what I was going through when writing them. This is somewhat over an overview on my blog, but I will hopefully be writing new posts in the near future. 

Willy Wonka and other analytic pieces.

My very first post (and 25,000 views) comes from comparing Willy Wonka's main characters and the seven deadly sins. I was discussing with a friend how both topics correlated to some degree, but since I could not find any concrete comparison online, I decided to make my own. Even though my post received lukewarm response to many of my friends, this post has the most views on the blog to date. My friend pointed out that many of the views could be coming from people plagerizing my material for classes, but I want to believe that if someone has the same discussion that I had with my friend, then they can read my blog about this topic. 

Other analytic pieces such as Ratican and 13 Reasons Why were more directed towards giving the people what they want in my blog. People enjoyed the Willy Wonka post so I wanted to provide something fresh for that audience while writing on something I personally enjoyed, or in the case of 13 Reason Why, something I hated.

When discussing my experience at gay pride (On the Other Foot) this was originally a project for my culture psychology class, which was expanded upon in my presentation at the student psychology academic research conference (SPARC) where I presented my research to a group of students, professors, and friends. The room was to the limit and students began to stand outside the hallway just so they can hear my presentation. I take pride in my presentation because it focused more on my subjective experience over objective data.  

Thought Provoking

If you know me personally, you know I like to start fires. Not literally fires, but to get people to start talking about heated topics. I have a couple of these post scattered throughout my blog with the latest one discussing the Emmett Till (Censorship) painting that struck up a bit of controversy. 

In the post (you cannot win) and (red eye) I was frustrated of what social media can make people write and fight about politics. People gripe and complain about a specific topic which leads people to fight on something that does not change everyday life. I am a firm believer in fighting the good fight and wanting to make a difference for the better, but I don't feel that great people in the history books 50 years down the road will have a famous quote start with, "I'm usually not political on Facebook, but...".

Another one that had discussion was where I discussed my faith (a little faith). At this time I was involved in a group that was fans of a Christian rapper by the name of Lecrae, who had a colleague by the Hopsin. This rapper Hopsin published a series of tracks known as the Ill Mind of Hopsin which in his last song he is denouncing his faith in God due to the lack of evidence to back up the proof of God. This was also going hand in hand with my psychology classes which focused on existentialism which would discuss the topic of death and what happens to us when he die. All of these at once gave me a loaded question, Why do you believe in God. Luckily, without a lot of reading, praying, and meditating, I was able to discuss my faith and how through my faith I believe in God. I used a lot of existential philosopher Martin Buber's I and Thou which discusses how to have a more subjective experience with God and people in our lives. Personally, this is one of my favorite books and I strongly recommend it to anyone who is interesting in having more intimate subjective experiences with the people we interact with on a daily basis. 

Finally, one that goes a bit under the radar is (The Pancake Parable). I wrote this post due to the topic of human trafficking and how my community responded to this issue. I movement known as "End It" is a non-profit organization that has a primary focus to stop human trafficking. Their logo is a red x which many people would mark their bodies with to show that they were standing up against human trafficking. I'll admit a noble cause, but the issue comes when I would go to a church event where everyone had a red x on their hands, which some people didn't really understand why they had the red x on. When viewing social media that night, everyone had to post their pictures of the red x. The whole point I was trying to portray in the pancake parable was that raising awareness is great, but that action needs to take place after the problem was addressed. Unfortunately with so many people just wanting to get the red x on their hand, the whole purpose was pushed aside to meet the latest trend.

Story Time

Oh boy, where to begin? My first story time was (The Balcony) where I discuss my first time I liked someone without holding their past against them. I was 16 at the time and this was really a story that taught me that people are more than their baggage. Even though it think the story is lame, this was the kick starter back to me blogging because I took a year after my first two blog posts due to the lack of interest in writing. A lot of this post comes from Childish Gambino's song That Power, where he stops rapping and gives a story about a girl he also likes. Everyone in this story is true. I don't really know what they are up to these days.

In (The Tale of Victoria B) was a prime example of how odd I can be at times. My blog can be of a heavy conversation site with topics on religion, suicide, delusions, and I wanted to add a comedy piece to my site. I have never really written comedy before so this was my crack at it, and surprisingly people enjoyed it. Victoria B is really a close friend of mine through college who one day knew about my blog and wanted me to write a story about her.

Some Advice

I am in no way trying to say that my word is gospel. In (A Sense of Narcissism) I was trying to separate narcissism with self confidence which I don't think I made my point as clear as I would want to in that post. Narcissism is a real issue and the millennial entitlement that is sweeping the country is the nation so I can under why people can claim a lot of people have narcissism. The big issue I have seen lately is taking something to an extreme, such as sadness is depression, mad is anger, and self confidence could be considered narcissism.

In (The 5 perspectives that could make life kinda sorta better...maybe.) and (Mental Health) I was wanting to give a different perspective on certain things in our lives. That's about it actually. I enjoy giving out my thoughts on these topics, because I want these topics to be discussed in everyday life especially mental health.

(Relationship Status) was me trying to find the silver lining of being single. Showing the positives of being single and how the thought of not having a relationship partner can be looked down upon especially in the south, but this post is supporting the idea that being single can have positives in your own well being. 

Rants and Gripes

My second post on the blog, (Rejections and all it's Consequences) was just me complaining about being friend zoned by someone I liked at the time. This is expanded upon later with (The White Knight Complex) with me looking back at how delusional I was about going for someone who clearly had no interest. Speaking of being delusional, (The Delusional) was a post for a specific person at the time. This person was crazy about someone who was using them. I felt empathetic because I know exactly how this person felt. The delusional was a broad sense of how we always change our perspectives to fit what we want to believe.

(The Foreground) was really the breaking point between college and post college me. A lot has changed since I got out of college and this post was to set better goals in my life after college. (You cannot (re)do) title was based of Neon Genesis Evangelical reference, but was the starting up of my blog post again. If you view the dates of the posts, you can see that I took a year hiatus before restarting my blog. This post in general was trying to send the message to own up on the past and use them as learning tools for the future. 

(Within and Without) was the downer piece to a new year which was 2016. I wrote this to understand that we may find issues impossible yet they will be small when we can overcome these obstacles. At the time, I was going through a serious issue that I needed to overcome. Well, long story short, I overcame that issue and it was something I didn't even know why I worried about it in the first place. 

Probably the hardest piece I had to write was (Who watches the Watchmen). This was the check your ego post. I can admit that I am cocky and that I think highly of myself from time to time. This was the post that brought me down a few notches. At the time, I lost someone I really love, and it was because of my personality. After this post, I wanted to change for the better and be more humble. 

(Reflect) was a post of utter most frustration of people, me included, not taking responsibility for their actions. We don't want to say we did something wrong and that was the irritation that I had to focus on with my friends. Someone would tell me an issue, yet not want to change anything about it. This did give me the revelation between sympathy and empathy. Sometimes people don't want advice, they just want to be heard. Like how this sound like I was angry at people like this, but formed an understanding of why people do it? Anyways, Reflect was a piece of the time and it really helps me now with my line of work.

  

The Odyssey

I took a break over last summer cause I joined a blogging site know as The Odyssey. I enjoyed writing with not that many restrictions on what I could and not write, but the whole point of the Odyssey was for whoever had their article shared the most, received 20 dollars for that week. I never wrote for the money, but I was always prompted to share my article post more and more even though I didn't write just for everyone to share my post. I lost every week to another writer's "An open letter to my ex" or "Why you should rush". I felt I didn't belong due to the audience of the Odyssey not having any interest in my topics, which I understood completely. The Odyssey was primarily for college students and more towards the female audience. There is nothing wrong with this blog site, but I knew that this wasn't for me. Also I had to post one article a week, which eventually led to rushed work that I should have put more time into. To check out any of my post from The Odyssey, just check out this link. https://www.theodysseyonline.com/@jacobgunter

The Animals

The animals originally started as people at an organization I was involved in during college. Each animal was believed to be one specific person for each animal, but it was different groups of people in the organization. People wanted to be an animal, yet being an animal wasn't really a good thing in the long run. I know being animals in the forest were not considered good, but people really enjoyed the animal series. I want to think of the animals as more of archetypes rather than certain people. I will say that each animal is a certain person that I knew and for the readers that don't know me personally I was in fact the bear. There are other animals that I never posted which did represent others, but I have been away from the organization for two years now and I feel like that is a book that I closed a long time ago. For the reader though, I feel like we can put a face to each animal in our life forward. You may work with a wolf, you may go to dinner with a dear, you may have a friend who is a hawk. I personally enjoyed writing the animals because it started me getting into fictional writing. 

Dear Elizabeth

My magma opus. (Dear Elizabeth) was the first story that didn't have any background meaning to the story. Friends and family were wanting to know the story behind the story, but there wasn't any meaning behind this post. A lot of the story has been inspired by Shutter Island, but other than that Dear Elizabeth was a story that I was thinking of writing for a while. Everyone from family to co workers were talking about Dear Elizabeth and I enjoyed giving the reader the option of stopping at letter 9, but I knew everyone would read the 10th letter because it was there, even though it turned a happy ending to a sad ending. This is by far my favorite piece that I have written on my blog and I would love to write more stories like this one. I have always took into considered expanding on the story of Dear Elizabeth, but half of me wants to leave the story how it is. I would hate to continue to the story and make the story more than it should be to the reader. Dear Elizabeth was only 10 letters yet you know the complexity of each character and the ultimate fate of the protagonist.

The Future

Well, for readers who may not know me that well, I'm engaged! I get to marry the woman of my dreams next year. I am also wanting to go to master program for clinical counseling next year so I am going to be pretty busy, which mean less blog posts, but know that I still want to write for the blog. I have changed so much since I started my blog and I can truly say that Gunter's Logic has changed a lot just as I have in myself these five years. It's crazy going back and reading my earlier posts and thinking of how different I was back then. I always wonder how different I will be 5 years from now. I am currently working on (On the Mountain Side: Templar) which is the second part to the Mountain side series I posted a couple months back. I also want to write (The Black Knight Complex) which is the opposite to (The White Knight Complex). I wanted to expand the animal a little more, but like I said earlier, I feel like that is a story I should leave behind for the time being. Other than that, I have some stories and rants in drafts that I would like to finish and post for the readers. 

Thank you to everyone who have been reading my blog for the past five years. I always love the feedback and discussions from the people who enjoy my work. I want to continue to write for you guys and I will continue to keep posting at least one per month. As always, feel free to comment on your thoughts of my blog and what you would want to see in the future. Here is to 5 years of Gunter's logic, and lets keep this blog going!

Thank you!  

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