Sunday evening, very late:

I think about life and meaning too much. I thought I'd have figured some of this out, having started this train of thought nearly 40 years ago. Alas no. Once I began to study existentialism, I found only more questions and few answers. By my early 20's I discovered I just couldn't take anything on faith but the only answers that worked were those I could experience directly. When I was a doctoral student in a clinical program (psychotherapy), at the end of my training program, we had the "roast" of the students in the program. When it became my turn another student observed that while I pretend to learn everything from books, that I actually put myself into situations to find out I truly think and feel about things. I have to experience anything in order to understand it. Which means I then must deconstruct and analyze every experience. Searching for meaning between the lines. I once thought, if there is no objective meaning in life then feeling good was the only reasonable thing to do. Unfortunately making a life of only feeling good, did not work for me. Next came my "living for others" phase, 15 years of looking for fulfillment through service to others. One day that failed to work and I needed to find something else. I went into Information Technology and just worked at something I liked and made money. At this same time I met a college student and my life began to revolve around her and my feelings for her. After that ended I began to look into art as a way to find meaning or at least purpose. I have been taking pictures for the past five years and more recently have returned to playing music. I have begun to think about writing fiction or humor.

Well I have to be up in 3 hours so maybe I can sleep now. Just have too much history running in my head these days.

Monday evening:

Home and exhausted. Up at 5:30 this morning and out the door by 6:30. Off to the BMW dealership to finish the repairs started on Friday. They pulled the codes and saw only one fault and suggested I save the $780 and see if the problem returns. Off to look the Martin D-15 across the SC state line in Fort Mill. Inspected it as well as my skills allow and played it for a while. The guitar has the type of neck I like. I paid the seller and started driving north. I decided to go ahead and take the D-15 straight onto up to Fine's Musical Instruments to get James to lower the action. He needed to keep the guitar overnight to make the adjustments. James said he'd try to get it done by tomorrow. Got home right before the storm. Looking forward to replacing the strings and playing her.
Drove nearly 200 miles today with no problems.