“What does it all mean?” A very important question. One that that has always plagued my mind. A broad question, but for this commentary, I relate it to my personal struggle to find true meaning of my life.

Growing up, everyone has interesting prospects for their lives. Sometimes even insane ones. However, when we are young, we don’t see the big picture. It’s impossible to do so. We have these dreams and they seem so rational and attainable. It’s no secret that I’m a cynic. I believe nine times out of ten, people who dream big will ultimately fail.

I had a dream that I would become a web designer, and do great things with my “talents.” I hate my talents. They drive me insane. I never like anything creative that I make. I always think I don’t do good enough work and always think I could do better. I even went to college to become a professional web designer. I truly believe it was a flat-out waste of time and money.

This leads me to another area of life that is super annoying: people’s idea of success. What is success? It’s an excellent question that many do not address. Is it making a lot of money? Having a special job that you love? I’ve been asking myself that question a lot recently. I truly do not know what success is. Some believe it’s related to making a lot of money at a job that required special schooling to attain. Why does it have to be that?

I work at K-mart. I actually like my job. Like everyone, I wish I made a little more money for the amount of work and time I put into the job. I’m actually content with living a minimalist life style. I don’t need a lot of things in my life to make me content. As much as I don’t want to be a person who cracks under societal scrutiny, I do. I let what society believes interfere with my life. The thing is, it’s probably my paranoia of potential said scrutiny. I just believe people look at me like, “He does that for a living? What a loser.”

Mindless work has always pacified me. Some would look at what I do as “shitty work.” I don’t feel that way. I’be always liked doing mindless work. My mind always races at 100 miles per hour about other things. So, a little mindless work keeps me out of my head. Web design work is the exact opposite work, and has the exact opposite effect on me. It wears me out mentally and makes me hate everything.

Physical media artwork is an exception. While it does wear on me mentally, it’s much different than web design. Web design is an ever-evolving medium, with set standards as to how it can be done. It requires an ungodly amount of research and time to even get remotely good at it. It’s a constant process that I feel I can’t keep up with. Don’t get me wrong, I know a lot about web design, but not near enough as I should. There’s the programming aspect of it, then the sheer raw talent you need to create intriguing designs. Physical media is linear. No need to keep up with design standards, like those that exist in web design. There is only the visual aspect to worry about. It’s so much better. I can think of something, and just make it happen. No need to worry if someone can see it in Internet Explorer or on a cell phone properly. Again, more headaches involved with web design.

What I’m getting to with all of this is, I need to learn to just do what makes me content. Not necessarily happy, but content. Perhaps my future holds more than what I am presently doing. Maybe I’ll become a famous physical media artist. Everyone seems to like things I make, I’ll never understand it. I like things I make during the process of making them. Once they’re done, I hate them. That could be a good thing. More motivation to sell/get rid of them.