The Story Since Then

By kenraines July 18, 2021 About JW Research, Ken Raines (About Me)

Ken Raines

This post brings you up to date on what’s been going on with me after I stopped publishing the JW Research Journal in around 2000 and the website for it went offline.

JW Burnout & Depression

I stopped publishing the Journal due to burnout on the subject of JWs and the Watchtower. It got too strange researching all the bizarre stuff they endorsed and took a lot of mental and physical energy out of me. I suffered from depression for awhile as a result of the burnout and my sleep apnea. I was sleep deprived and not sleeping well or getting enough oxygen to the brain as a result. Took awhile to get my energy back.

It did provide a trigger for a lot of growth in my life though.

More Than Fine by Switchfoot, a song that helped me through my depression.

AssBurgers

I finally realized (self diagnosis) that I am on the autism spectrum (Asperger’s or high functioning). I took a self quiz after suspecting it. I think I scored around 40 out of 50 which is fairly high so it more or less confirmed it for me. Realizing this has been an epiphany of sorts as it has helped me a lot in understanding myself and relating better to others. As I age, the mild autism characteristics decreases. I can see now how it negatively affected me and how I related to others in my childhood and teenage years especially. It has some positive effects in certain ways if channeled right.

It is why I have an intellectual bent to everything. I have to intellectually study and reflect on things in order to understand or get a grasp on things more than most, especially trying to understand people and social interactions. I also have a tendency to obsessively focus on one thing for long periods of time. Some may have noticed that with my Journal. Which was also a trigger for my burn-out and depression.

Realizing this about myself has been one of the best things in my life that has helped me the most (with my relationship with my wife, for instance). I am broadening out my intellectual interests and pursuits and am now only mildly obsessive about multiple things at once. That’s actually better. See below on my intellectual interests and blog. It’s why I am able to come back to the JW subject without getting obsessive about it. Even though I’m not much interested in the topic as I don’t think the Watchtower is intellectually worth bothering with personally. It is on the level of flat earthism, young earth creationism or the new atheists. That may make me an intellectual snob, but that’s where I’m at with these things based on my current knowledge of them. They just aren’t worth taking seriously, intellectually speaking.

Garage Art Studio

Our Garage, before and after remodeling. Looks like a little house on the outside now.

We remodeled our house and garage. We left the garage interior unfinished as I wanted to finish it myself and use one section as an art studio. It took me a few years to finish the studio by myself, so that may have been a mistake and a waste of time. But I did finish it.

Here’s what the main studio looks like today:

This past year I have expanded the studio space in the garage to include part of the carport area. I am using this space for my acrylic abstracts and the main studio for my alien landscapes and realism.

Above: Some of my alien landscapes.

Intellectual Pursuits

Somewhere along the line I got interested in philosophy after listening to R. C. Sproul give his lecture series on the history of philosophy, The Consequence of Ideas. After reading the Thomist philosopher Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition and his blog posts, I took up his challenge to study Aquinas and Aristotelian metaphysics. I have been studying metaphysics (the branch of philosophy, not new age metaphysics), classical theism, issues in the philosophy of science, etc. Doing this I realized the need and value of studying logic and critical thinking which then led me to start studying cognitive biases in social psychology. That’s were I’m at now.

Einstein, charcoal drawing, copyright Ken Raines.

I have a blog on my website domain (kenraines.com) for writing about these intellectual interests called Expand Your Thinking. I describe it there in the third person as:

An artist’s exploration of Philosophy, Science, Psychology, UFOs, extraterrestrial life, NDEs, conspiracy theories, etc. with whatever critical thinking skills he has at the time…

I also described why I felt a need for this kind of outlet in the About This Blog section:

Being on the autism spectrum (high functioning), I find writing things down helps me to process information and ideas. It also produces a bent toward the intellectual (Philosophy, etc.). This blog is an outlet for that.