Joe & Alan: I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but for me the "poke in the armpit" feeling has never gone away. It's gotten better than it was at first, but whenever I flex that muscle reflexively I have the same sensation. It doesn't happen during the course of a normal day -- I noticed it, though, when riding a roller coaster this weekend when I'd grip my seat restraint during turns.

I tore my left pec two weeks ago. No sure yet how severe. Bruising down to forearm but pain has reduced alot over the few weeks. However the sensation of someone poking my armpit / muscle too short is a real bother. Does this stay forever or will I notice an improvment over time

I ripped my right pectoral major tendon. It's been 2 weeks. When does the poke in the armpit feeling go away?

Hi, I'd like to thank you for posting about your injury, your feelings and updating with your recovery. My son is playing D3 football and has just been told he requires surgery for a pec tear and he is devastated. Your post has given me insight as to his feelings and some questions that I need to be asking the doctors. Thanks!

Hi, I believe I have a partialy torn left pec. I had bruising and broken blood vessels under the skin.The swelling doesn't go down much even with icing.I'm sure its do to the fact I still try to exercise it.I feel no major pain or lose of range of motion.I have tried to lift heavier weights since it didn't hurt much and about 2 monthes went by, but that lead to some more bruising.I would love to ask you some questions if you had time like how did you know when it was ok to lift again? Anyway thanks for shareing your progress and I hope all is still well with you.

I'm glad you'll keep the discussions here for us to look back.

Rather than Plotinian theory I believe in the old theory of Kyndly Enclining, the theory that starts with Plato and runs in currents through Boethius, Chaucer and all the thinking of the Middle Ages and is still lively in both Bacon and Chaucer. A truth still apparent but now mostly disregarded that things move violently to their place but calmly in their place. Simply put everything moves to it's right home eventually. This has happened to Monadology.net now.

Thanks for the work you out into this site Nate. See you on Twitter.

P.S. I kept meaning to initiate a discussion on Leibniz and his relationship with Bouvet and the I Ching but never got round to it. Maybe on a different forum.

I didn't comment much, like three times probably, but I enjoyed reading your posts.

@Sammy: Yeah, it's hard to complain too much. Twitter's a blog killer (for me, at least) because Twitter's awesome.

@Napoleon1066: Well, in all seriousness, I think that's part of the reason it's time for Monadology to end. I truly believed in the unifying principle when I began writing this blog: in a Plotinian unity that drew us mystically toward the divine, however it be understood. I do not, in any sense, believe in such a thing anymore.

Does this mean we'll never learn what the unifying principle truly is?

I'll miss this, but I'd take a tweet every few hours over a post every few days any time.

I ripped my left pec 9 years ago and just ripped my right one 2 weeks ago. I'm a knuckle head. Did everything wrong. Slightly dehydrated, didn't stretch out enough, gym was could, blah, blah, blah. My black and blue mark came down over my biceps and even went into my forearm a little. I believe it to be blood internally pooling, just like last time. The muscle ripps then bleeds internally. I'm waiting for benefits since I don't have them now and will be getting an mri and surgery asap. I had surgery last time. 365lbs on the second rep. I felt like a million bucks. My body gave out on the second rep. Then I felt like 5 bucks. This time it was the first rep with 325. Did 275, 315, didn't wait long enought, bit off more than I can chew, Lousy form brought the weight down to fast. I'm going to get the surgery though. I'm hoping it was a clean tear off the bone. Looks like yours might have been slightly down the tendon or maybe that's your biceps natural curves. Hope all is well and good luck a year out.

hi. same thing happend to me with bench press. except my spotter goofed up. he did not spot. i told him i can do the lift off and he waited and after that he forgot to hold the weight. so it dropped on me. my left pectoral and my tendent look funny. i dont know what i am going to do. i hope i can get the same strenght again. my shoulder is fine. i went to physical therapy. and she think i am fine. but she said i should see a orthpedic. there might be a tear muscle. i was lifting 405lb. i am 160 lb. it was a mistake. i wished i had not done it. how ever i did it many times before. but never brought it down all the way. and with a dumb spotter who was like a military guy about 6 foot 7. who could not do anything. was a real lost for me.

Here's, essentially, what I tried to do when I realized that though I was raised Christian, I never actually believed that Jesus was more than an interesting man whose words were worth considering. I don't really know how this compares to your experience--realizing that you've been deceiving yourself (and consequently others) about your beliefs is different than having beliefs change over time. But certainly I shared and continue to share a sense of pain and loss over this realization and the effect of it on some of the people I love. In many ways it might continue to be a year of ritualized grief with little you can do to change this or your feeling of being on the outside, and I suspect that will last well past this year. Let yourself grieve this loss and struggle with these changes. But also try to find and focus on what memories and moments you can wrest from your past that are not connected to faith. Some of mine seem quite trivial, but hold great emotional significance and resonance for me. At the Christmas eve service at our church, we sang hymns by candlelight. The hot wax dripped on my skin as the candle grew shorter. Though this was couched in the church experience, it's something I've come to love outside of that context. (Incidentally, they recently got new candle holders at church so that this no longer happens, much to my entire family's disappointment! As though a physically uncomfortable sensation should not be a part of worship!) I'll burn candles on my own and shape the wax on my skin. This example seems weirder and less helpful the more I write about it. I know it's not much. But what I mean to get at is this--can you think of little things like this in your own experiences? Can you think of just a few new, nonreligious ways to incorporate them into the holiday seasons to ease your grief just a little?

Having had a similar change a few years ago, I can see how this is a tricky area, especially during the holidays themselves. I was highly involved in Church (on a more informal level) during my middle and high school years. As that changed, Christmas services and events. became more and more awkward.

I guess an important thing to note is that I never really enjoyed going to Christmas services anyway. It always seemed like something I had to do, not something I wanted to do.

Anyway, as I leaned away from the church and more towards a more introverted view on faith, I started to find Christmas more enjoyable. I began to think that if Christmas had been reinvented through out the years, why could I not reinvent it for myself. I did not leave behind the traditional Christian elements of the holidays, but I did decide to leave behind a great deal of the formality.

I began to look at Christmas from an emotional and spiritual perspective, as opposed to the (what I considered) rigid celebratory aspects. It's a time of rebirth, of gathering together... basically all the stuff Dickens said a crap ton better than me in Rebekah's comment.

So "Is there a Christmas worth resurrecting from Christianity’s ashes?". Yeah, I think so. But for me it took separating faith from the church and ceremonies themselves. It seems that those were really essential to you, so perhaps there is something else to focus on that help create the same type of separation.

An honest atheist would spend the 25th of December reading 'A Good Man is Hard to Find'.

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say... Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round-- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that-- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not of another race of creatures bound on other journeys."
- Fred, Scrooge's nephew, from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Nick: My one Christmas spent oversees made me intensely nostalgic for the season, more so than I have ever been since. Hope you make it home some year soon.

Dan: It's interesting that you focus on church, whereas I talked purely about my own faith in the post. Would you go so far as to say that my beliefs are not about me? Or that my relationship with a church is not about me?

What vanity! Individual "loss of faith" after obsessive attendance at Church? Sad but boring. It may be hard to realize but the Church is not about you. What is truly sad is that displays of "faith" by such people deceive the innocent faithful.

This tells a little bit about why Christmas is December 25th.

Any case, despite being an atheist, I really enjoy Christmas (Thanksgiving, however, is a close second). Despite my parents and grandparents being Christian, Christmas for me has always been more about getting together with your family (my grandparents alternate between visiting us and visiting my cousins). I love seeing other people prepare for Christmas, buying presents for their kids and decorations for their house. Everyone seems happier because they are looking forward to Christmas and we are all connected because we are doing the same thing (strictly speaking, not true since not everyone celebrates Christmas, but whatever). Even going to Christmas Eve service does not remind me much of Jesus' birth (I'm not sure it ever did). Instead, I enjoy being part of a community, singing some songs, and participating in a tradition I've been part of as long as I can remember.

That said, I have not been hope for Christmas since college. Even this Christmas I am going home late because my parents will be with my sister who is in Syria. So maybe I'm just nostalgic.