Why this blog?

I am a writer, and I like to write. But, despite my current employment as a magazine editor, I have found that less and less of my time is spent writing these days. And when I do write, it is most often about such thought-provoking topics as how to find your way to and around a conference center.

In fact, I have been spent much of my career writing about subjects that I could care less about. Following a year-long stint as the editor of a feminist magazine (which paid a grand total of $200), I wrote for a magazine about pharmaceutical company executives--although I don't take pharmaceuticals and especially dislike their executives--and then for a magazine about western performance horses--even though I don't ride horses, and the cowboys I had to interview brought back bad memories of growing up in a right-wing ranching town.


So, instead of watching another episode of "Lost," I've decided to write just a little about some topics that actually interest me. Like most humans, I have a particular fascination with figuring out the meaning of life. This quest for meaning has led me down a number of paths, from spirituality and religion, to art and literature, to science and psychology, and I've tried to gather some evidence from each of them to build a construct that would allow me some modicum of understanding and a better chance at fulfillment and happiness.

My conclusion: All that motivation for meaning-making and pattern recognizing is just a side effect of brain wiring that originally evolved to help my distant ancestors survive a prehistoric environment. I want to figure out the mysteries of life because my brain is predisposed to solve problems, such as how to trap an elusive animal for my dinner or how to construct a tool that will allow me to more efficiently plant and grow crops. I am here because my ancestors were motivated to figure out such problems, and they passed on that useful motivation.

This knowledge doesn't discourage me, however. If anything, it gives me yet another problem to solve: how to manipulate this evolved wiring of mine to best advantage, so I can feel happy, healthy, and fulfilled even in an environment that my makeup has not specifically adapted to.