Ambitions

What do I want? It's a huge question.

There are different ways to try to answer the question. You can try to divide life up into certain time periods and decide that way, you can try to divide it up into different areas, you can just go with what feels right, you can try to do the logical thing, you can copy people, you can do what you're told to do or what is expected of you, or you can avoid the question. I have always found the question hard on long time scales, but I've usually been pretty good at deciding on things in a few weeks or even a couple of months away. The major problem with that is that the time isn't long enough to do many of the most significant things. Then your life has no structure and tends to devolve into chaos. You can have some awesome adventures, as I have, but you need a different focus if you're going to do more than that. I'm going to try to make some progress on this here.

Logically I know that I need money, but for some reason I have not done the things necessary to get it. I have many thoughts on why that is and some of them even make sense, but I will ignore those for now.

I also know that I feel better when I write, especially fiction. So, I should be doing that. But, I tend to end up writing essay-like things, and I like those too.

Since art, business, and philosophy seem to be things that I both need and want to succeed at, I should try to define what I actually want to do in those realms. Here are some quick notes that I jotted down yesterday on a scrap piece of paper.

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art ambition - remake the literary hero as non-reactionary, change how and why people value literature, make the implicit explicit for all, include essays explaining the fictional representations, expose the idea of structural and stylistic variation, with focus on self-transformation and self-deception, humans need heroes, scrooge and billy bixbee as heroes of self transformation and self deception

business ambition - to be the most important means to the most important end in someone’s life

philosophy ambition - restructure the ideas surrounding grief and meaning in life, invent useful tools and frameworks for living, reframe the study of literature

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There seem to be some major areas of life missing here: family, community, politics, religion, adventure, travel, etc. There are many other things that I want to do, but I think they are all secondary in comparison to the big three.

Now, it remains to be seen if I can stay focused on these things, if I can make progress on these things, and the how of doing it.

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You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com