#making meaning

Life is an endeavor devoid of destination

A trek through an unmapped wilderness

Until calamity at last overwhelms vigor

Wrenching ambition from fearful fingers

Impermanence made irreversibly inert

Along the road to nonexistence

Myths germinate in borrowed bodies

Shared around campfires and repeated by mirror people

Purposes and pathways, the most consequential daydreams

Entropy trimmed to fit in the palm of your hand

Breathing amongst their tellers for a time

They dictate action and thought along their threadbare paths

Establishing remote margins of frail safety

From the placid creeping horrors of existing

Until their dissonance rings the hollow tone of the earth

Every voice yearns for a song in the face of nihility

Every story knits purpose from the dispassionate fabric of the void

Let us together then fill the vacuum with songs ringing of humility and empathy,

Drown out the stories of venom that drive pained and flimsy hearts to hate,

Do you still pursue the old thing?

Do both?

Or try for the new thing so much later in life?

How do you even find out what your thing is?

Well, I probably can’t help you find your thing, but I can help you find a thing.

A meaningful life means doing something that you, yourself, admire and perceive to be meaningful. This sounds obvious, I’m sure, and probably a few things pop up immediately like nurses, firefighters, and the cashier at the grocery store.

These are all meaningful pursuits that help people, even save people, but are they your meaningful?

Step one is to consider the people you admire, in life, and in fiction. Not just the people you like – I like General Hux and Grand Moff Tarkin of Star Wars, but do I admire them? Oh no, if they were real, I’d want to punch them in the face. I admire Qui-Gon Jinn. I admire Maecenas.

Step two, once you have a list, begin to compare and contrast them. Pick out the traits, or the reasons, you admire them. I loved Maecenas’s support of the arts. I enjoyed Qui-Gon Jinn doing what he felt was right, even if it was going to cost him positions and power (he could have been a Jedi Master, but…).

Step three, possibly not for everyone – if most of those you admire are fictional, consider the authors behind them and/or actors. You may find your purpose in media, in spreading messages and knowledge, and that’s what you should be looking at.

Step four, or step three for those without a lot of fictional people – now that you know what’s in common, and you’ve determined whether or not media/cultural messages are in your ballpark, use those commonalities to determine your purpose. This may not determine a job immediately, but it could be a guiding light.

Perhaps all of those you admire are kind – so you can find ways to be kinder in your own life, that could lead to being a part of, or creating, a non-profit.

Perhaps they’re all teachers, so you could look in to teaching something, in some way. There are so many tools now for that outside of Academia (youtube, blogs, podcasts, etc), that you can get your message out there.

There is something in the people you admire, that you can foster in yourself to create a meaningful life. I’ve been slowly finding mine, and working on pursuing it. This blog is a major help, as I know I’ve always admired those in the pursuit of knowledge, who also try to offer it, and I like to think writing is somehow a part of this, because of my voracious reading appetite, as well as my love of how fictional worlds can really spread messages in a way we may not otherwise “get”.

Boredom and anguish edge the alternate lines of high into warped time Warp speed from the hyper drive

Pilots and boulder rollers alternately cry About oil spills and chamomile tea Or how most people make bad choices and regret it Or how most people make good choices and regret it

Boredom and anguish, coin flipping To feel something again, or to hide From the feeling that wants to break you

Both from the inside, Ethics and the large intestine Both process bullshit

My intention is not to make you feel bad. But have you looked at the similarities, because there are many. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. You can enjoy the drama and flirtation with redemption and the transformative power of love, and that’s not a problem. I’ve learned through life lived that I don’t buy that anymore, which is why I am unable to ship that dynamic. 

I don’t think that shipping a ship with issues of power imbalances is wrong. I know that I don’t like it so I don’t do it. But, you know, post apocalyptic “anyone can die” action sci fi dramas are one of my favorite types of story.

There is no doubt that those kind of stories are full of suffering and “problematic” issues. This is part of why I watch or read them. Because confronting these traumas and losses and struggles is something important in my life. Being able to process my life and world through the shows is IMPORTANT. Demanding that no one should ever watch or enjoy a show/ship with problematic elements is absolutely wrong. The point of these things is not to decry the ship or show or genre as evil, it’s to UNDERSTAND what the are saying, about the characters, the story, the world, ourselves. 

This idea that we should all be pure and morally righteous and unproblematic is DISASTROUS. We are setting ourselves up for a world of delusion and failure and hypocrisy. 

You are ALLOWED to ship a toxic ship. Even if you don’t see the toxicity. And I am allowed to talk about the toxicity I see. Because we are getting different things out of that ship, whether OTP or NOTP. 

How do I map meaning before words arrive? Making Meaning — Opening a Sketchbook, 2026. I think that’s it. Finding my way in. Then starting to move about the page. Finding another opening. Seeing a shift, a row, an arrow, a direction. Then each line takes shape and organizes itself, much like this drawing was created. That’s how my brain functions. That’s how I find meaning. I’ve always seen…

When I sit in my classroom, I ask students to join me in putting their thoughts on the page. This is old stuff to me. I do it constantly, dribbling out lines that seem to come magically from the pen. They form themselves on the page into what we call sentences, made up of words, phonemes, syllables, letters. And the letters themselves were once ideograms—images, as in Chinese writing—that…