{mr franks}

what to do? write about what i know? well, what do i know? i feel that my expert fields are: being impulsive (not currently), being the timid character that i would have hated when i was still impulsive, being stubborn, having dysfunctional relationships with the opposite sex, mostly fueled by my impulsiveness, having gone to a no-career college, having a perfect relationship that started as another one of my incredibly impulsive bad ideas. oh yes, and my cats. i love my cats. i did not think i would even have cats, but here i am, cat lover.

i try to add meaning to my life by having a job. this is probably one of the harder things i've tried and failed at. i've heard the words said, "soul-sucking," "useless," "black-hole," "death," though i mostly dismissed them as drivel. but this is what jobs are! or are you one of those that believe, like in Plato's Republic, that some are made of silver or gold, but most of us are iron (or whatever fucking common metal he used)? That the best most of us can ever achieve is customer service rep at the nearest verizon? deTocqueville was wrong--democracy isn't some boundless power. we don't all get better and better and better. i might feel that things get shittier, but that doesn't seem to describe it either. i would say that we don't change. we might be comforted by our rampant technology, but it doesn't free us to do what we want. it frees us to be bound by some other job. is meaning to be found in obligation?

i've had this conversation with myself and others before. i am beginning to dismiss my own dissatisfaction: as if i could pinpoint meaning as if it were a coordinate on a map, or rediscover it like a pair of lost earrings. this led me to seek happiness with no regard to anything else, which led me to terrible relationships, a career-less degree, and here. but now i have a perfect husband, and two cats. and i am happy, after a fashion. perhaps distracted might be a better way of describing it... i like nothing more than being immersed in a book. they beg me to re-evauluate my world. i wonder if it all isn't just another distraction.

i can't get beyond thinking of meaning as a physical object or location. we all assume it is meta anyways. by which i think we mean incorporeal. however, it often sounds as if people speak of meaning as if it were imbued in certain physical things, like having bucketloads of money, or helping starving kids in africa. almost as if meaning came as a product of doing something that many many people agree as good.

i hit nonliteral walls every which way. is meaning a social question? what does meaning mean?--a philological question? and here is where i stop. wait. does asking what sort of question imply that these logos provide a meaning? is meaning just another way of asking relevant? pleasurable? usefull?

while we were studying the "discovery" of imaginary numbers, a professor shared with us a "trick," as he called it. when you find a unique problem you don't know what to do with given the current understanding/vocabulary, simply make up a name and use that unique problem as its definition. i was livid, but should have known better.

next time i feel this way, i should just pick up wittgenstein's philosophical investigations--its so comforting.
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