The Sum of All Choices

Life is the sum of all your choices.

~ Albert Camus

Writing is not something that I do on a regular basis. I was never keen to keep a diary, for example. However, I have reached a point in my life where I feel like I have a lot of ideas that I would like to record, so I decided to create a blog. The hardest part, of course, is getting started. Luckily, I'm already a paragraph deep!

The big question that came up was "What will be the title of the blog?" The title, of course, should be relevant to the various topics about which I will write. I want the blog to be somewhat focused. The title does not need to encapsulate every possible subject, but I feel that it needs to serve as a common thread - something that ties most of it together and gives it some cohesion. That is where choice comes into play.

Choice - the ability to select freely from among alternatives and act accordingly - has become a core value for me. Choice is empowering. It is what gives us control of our lives and enables us to steer our fates towards the destination that we want. Without it, we are slaves to the wills of other beings or to chance.

Once choice had been settled on as a theme for the blog, I starting digging around for a suitable name. That's when I came across the Albert Camus quote above, which I thought it fit quite nicely.

Decisions permeate our daily lives. We are constantly making decisions, consciously and subconsciously. From what we eat to how we spend our free time and with whom we build relationships, these decisions determine how we pursue our goals and how we set those goals in the first place.

We all start out in different places (even if you're an identical twin, as I am), and there are a lot of things that we cannot control. Nevertheless, our lives are ultimately directed by the choices we make. Every one of the millions of choices leads us down a path toward a different future. Our current state of being is the net result of all those choices.

Over the past several years I have become increasingly influenced by ideas from various philosophies, including game design and development, libertarianism, and objectivism. Along the way I have had to make some significant choices involving family, friends, and work. I hope to write about some of these ideas and experiences.