I am reading Eric Maisel’s Van Gogh Blues. It is a thought-provoking and inspiring call to action: Rather than looking for meaning in all the world religions, in philosophy, or under every stone, Maisel suggests that we have to make our own meaning. I am planning on putting this suggestion to the ultimate test: To make meaning at my job. Not by redefining why I work (to take lab notes, for example) but by making meaning out of the widget-making stuff I do day-in, day-out. Why does it matter what I do when so many analyses end up as shelfware? I am suspecting that Maisel is also forgetting the system-side: As individuals, we just simply cannot combat the impact the system has on the meaningfulness of our lives. While we can try to make meaning and decide to matter, the reality is that businesses are autocratic systems that consist of little niches of widget-making that are not very meaningful and cannot be because they simply are too unimportant. Hmm, maybe that’s where melancholy comes in: The sadness about the meaninglessness of our jobs could propel us to demand more, to envision ways of doing business that are more democratic and more meaningful to everybody, including the widget-makers.

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