Single, and Creating Meaning

I embrace being single. I actually do like going home and reporting in to the cat, but not having to worry about someone else. I know, this feeds my tendency toward self-absorption, but it's comfortable right now, and given my 'success' at relationships, it may well be a necessary leg in my life's journey. Besides, no one can completely lose himself in self-absorption if he lives with a cat. Even moreso than a dog, a cat will let you know he has differing items on his agenda from yours, and that some of those differing agenda items require your efforts to get done. "I don't really give a damn that you are watching 'Stargate Universe'—I want the red dot to go; if the red dot doesn't go, I will start pulling books out of your bookcase. We'll just see how fricken interesting 'Stargate Universe' is then."

As I weigh what I need to make my life, cotidie et in toto, meaningful, I am stunned by my lack of creativity. I make no art, and only craft things that I want to have immediately (e.g., bracelets and necklaces). I haven't pursued a creative hobby in years. I would do well to express myself more. Even Manuel will occasionally create 'art' from the toilet paper roll.

I Just Don't Know

Age is just a number. Yes, but human minds latch onto symbols, metaphors, markers and shiny things, and then work with those to try and make meaning in our existences. In just under six months I will have marked off fifty years of existence on this earth. My life to this point hasn't been a big failure, but it hasn't been an unalloyed success either. (Of course there are no unalloyed successes, but my alloys have partook pretty heavily of base metals up to now, it seems.)

I want the next few years of my life to involve a lot of conscious meaning-making. I have come to see that I cannot expect meaning to fall from the sky into my lap. It will not hit me over the head like a holy pillow. I must grow up and make my own meaning for my own life.

I do not know whether or not there is a deity or a plane of existence beyond this one. I have no proof nor incontrovertible evidence. I also have no proof or incontrovertible evidence these things do not exist either. I could spend the rest of my days speculating one way or the other, but it would only be speculation, and nothing more. The truth is I do not know. I admit I am agnostic.

Therefore meaning making falls on my shoulders (as I believe it falls on each individual human beings shoulders, whether he or she admits it or not, and whether he or she embraces it or not). I have to choose the ethics I want to live by, and the meaning I want to make in my life.