2023-06-15 Journal Entry

🍃 Season: 🌷 Spring 🔆 Weekday: Thursday 🗓 Date: June 15, 2023 📅 Week: Jun 12 – Jun 18, 2023

I’m writing here from the Oakland airport, about to head to Panama City Beach with the family. I’m excited to see everyone, although admittedly I’m not excited about the weather — I think it’s going to be pretty murky, and being stuck inside with three kids for 3 days straight will be pretty exhausting.

I’m also going to use some of this time to do some writing exercises, so those will go here:

Prompt: “I’m afraid to write this story because ____”

I’m afraid to write because I struggle to believe I‘ll write something Great, and that I in some ways must write something Great or else it’s not worthwhile. Not even great in the sort of Western-canon-qualifying connotation of the word, but Great in the sense that it will really speak to at least one person in the way that I really want it to. I’m afraid to write because it means learning a new skill entirely from the beginning (in a way). I’m afraid to write because I’ll be embarrassed when someone eventually reads it. I’m afraid to write because it means I’ll be a Writer and I don’t feel qualified to take that title. I’m afraid to write this story because I don’t know where it’s going to go yet and I feel uncomfortable walking the winding road of pantsing it. I’m afraid of writing this story because I feel like writing is something I’m meant to do but that if I fail then my Meaning is in the dumpster.

Prompt: One thing I feel strongly about is ___

One thing I feel strongly about is that beauty is manifest and multifaceted, and that in some way our life’s calling is finding beauty in the things in front of us, over and over again. Finding beauty is in some ways the act of creation itself — we are the universe experiencing itself, the ultimate act of self-reflection, and that the universe understanding itself is the act of creation. It’s meta-creation, creation creating mental and psychic phenomena by experiencing stimuli from reality itself, it’s creation creating creation, and it is incumbent upon us to create a beautiful world by creating each moment beautifully. Our minds don’t do this naturally though — they can be selfish and narrow and ugly-searching in ways that harm us, and by extension, harm all of creation by creating un-beautiful moments. That’s what we’re here for: to create beautiful moments over and over again. That means experiencing things beautifully, but that also means actualizing our potential, it means following our gut, it means searching for greatness over mediocrity (even when greatness means doing simple things at their highest potential). To experience each moment well, skillfully, over and over, is all we’ve got.

What’s the opposite of that?

The opposite of that is meaninglessness, it’s the vast uncaring universe pushing us down into despair. It’s nihilism, which is emptiness without love. What I’m holding to be true is that emptiness is freeing, not constraining. It’s “oneness,” not “nothingness.” The opposite is a world where actions don’t mean anything, and that we should instead seek only momentary pleasure, should chase after whatever fickle matters our minds push us towards.

Prompt: “The dilemma at the heart of my story is ___”

The dilemma at the heart of my story is the tension and (seeming) closeness between meaning and meaninglessness, between thusness and emptiness. In our direst moments, we can see violence and pain as being senseless, we can see ourselves as being “adrift,” or we can attend to each moment as it comes and unfold into creation as we co-create it.

Prompt: My story is about ___

My story is about seeing how purpose and meaning arises from confusion, how direction comes from wandering first. In more concrete terms, there’s a college student who feels that they’ve wasted their peak, and that in order to rectify this they need to go down in their college’s history. They need to pull a stunt or do something extremely visible in order to be talked about. They notice college alumni always talking about their college days, and they see this singular moment of their senior year as a chance to embed themselves in the nostalgia of others for the rest of their life. In the process, they create the connections they missed during their time in college. In the process, they’re forced to reckon with the complications of memory and public opinion, the importance of self-reliance, and the construction of meaning.

Prompt: What I want to express through this story is ___

I touched on it a bit above, but I want to explore the various in ways we construct meaning through the perceptions of ourselves by us and by others, through the limitations of memory and the ways that emotions modify memories.

Answer the following questions as your protagonist:

If I were to describe myself, I would say that I am ___

I’m introvert who wants to be an extrovert. I’m solitary by nature, but I’m also conscious that we’re social creatures. I struggle to find the distinction between meaning and how I’m remembered — I think a life lived decently but without witnesses is a life without meaning. I’m a solipsist, in short; if a tree falls in the forest and no one witnesses it, as far as I’m concerned it never happened. A world without witnesses doesn’t actually exist. I think far too much about Schrodinger’s Cat and issues of consciousness. I wonder often whether consciousness is a foundational element in the universe, and I hope earnestly that my own consciousness is interesting and unique.

The most incredible thing I ever did was ___

I don’t think I’ve really done anything incredible so far — that’s a bit of the reason why I worry that the years of my life up until now are nearly meaningless. None of the moments up until now are particularly memorable. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of personally memorable moments, inside jokes with friends, moments of clarity and love, but they’ve all been trapped inside my skull. They’ve all existed in my mind alone, and I struggle to convey those moments to other people. The most incredible thing about me, I think, is my inner world, the way I see beauty in the slightest of moments, but I also think in the grand scheme of things that those moments are essentially meaningless.

Everything will make sense when ___

Everything will make sense when I can