I sit down now to a conversation with myself. I don't have anything to say, but I'm going to come up with something anyway. Like.... I don't know. Anyway, I was thinking today about my life and why I'm bored all the time and what I could do to change that, and I hearkened back to my old aphorism that people do things merely to avoid having to think about the truth and reality. So I decided that what I should do is burden myself with things to do so that I have no time to think about whether I'm bored or not. It goes a little deeper than that though.

First of all I have to uncover what it is that I enjoy doing and what is meaningful to me. Not an easy task, but I have a vague idea. Second I have to pursue these things that I find meaningful, which is even harder because I don't feel like doing them. Which brings up an interesting question. Have I really discovered the things that I enjoy if I am not motivated to do these things? Which brings up another question. If I haven't found what it is that I enjoy doing yet, after nineteen years, then will I ever find it?

Maybe I'm just destined to be bored and scribe my ponderings onto a blank page. Eventually my hard drive will crash, I'll lose all my ponderings, and I'll have nothing to show for my life. But is that really all that bad? That's basically what happens to everyone. It's just that some people are remembered for a second or two longer.

So if we're all going to be forgotten, then what do we do? Make some sort of impact that will augment the course of humanity in some way? If we look at ourselves as part of a continuing flow, as part of something larger, then our impact is never forgotten, it's recorded. Not even really recorded. It's more. Our impact is incorporated, chiseled from eternal granite, because forever we are a certain part of the course of humanity. From this perspective, a life lived around personal gain seems rather petty, personal gain including happiness as well as wealth. What seems more meaningful is working to affect the world in some way, doing something on a grand scale. But again, what to do? Help the homeless, save the rainforests, become a politician? It just seems to me that one must settle this issue with himself before he starts forcing it on the rest of the world. I haven't settled it yet, don't know if I ever will.

I never seem to get anywhere with these little undertakings of mine, trying to ascertain the meaning of life and all, but I occupy myself doing it, which is all I think we can really do, distract ourselves until the Lord comes for us. Not that the Lord really comes for us. I just put that in there because it was one way of saying "until we die," and it brings up the whole issue of religion as a possible meaningful solution. But I don't want to go into to that right now.