It’s a cold day but something is warming up and so I guess I need to say a few things, or at least think a few things as the warmth warms up.

It’s not a good warmth, though maybe it is, but that has nothing to do with anything right now… at least in terms of this bit of writing.

Right now I’m listening to some music, so it’s pretty much what I do most of the time, so nothing new there, but I’m thinking about what we do with our time and how we spend our lives and all that stuff, and I can’t help but wonder as to how much time we should spend not doing anything. That said, I also wonder as to all the metaphorical walls we have that prevent us from doing things, such as burnout.

We spend so much time doing nothing and sometimes that’s great, but sometimes it’s not. Should we be more productive in terms of creating things with meaning? Is it okay to engage in the meaningless and waste time? What should we be doing with our time? Who defines what is meaningful and meaningless?

To be honest, I don’t think about these questions enough, but I can’t deny that there’s a good chance that I’m still driven by them to some extent. I’m sure part of it is also fear of not doing much and not achieving anything, but you know… well, it’s a mix of things, I guess.

Of course there’s the desire to do things that mixes with the fear ad all that other stuff, but you get the idea.

So I sit here and I wonder as to what I’m doing with my life. I’m wondering as to how much of what I’m doing has meaning. The job is merely okay; it’s not enough money but it helps me survive, at least physically. It also ends up taking a lot of time, and that’s not just at work. It consumes more of the day than any job should and it lingers on once it is over, moving through and sapping me of my energy and all that other stuff.

It would be good to just quit and do what I want but I’d need to be able to make more money from what I want to do. A long pipe dream at the moment, but slowly getting through. Maybe too slowly, but getting there.

So part of the reason why I’m raising some of this is right now I’m listening to Gift Of Gab and I find there’s something very emotional about a lot of what he did. There’s his skill as a rapper which I quite appreciate; not just in terms of technical, but also in terms of expression. He knew how to balance the technical against the emotional to get what he wanted to get across.

I’ve read that he was quite exploratory and looking to learn in order to better understand life. I can hear that come through in his music, and I can’t help but wonder if he set out to work on things that were meaningful beyond the personal. It’s quite possible that he did at times, or at least created what was personally meaningful to him with the confidence that it would reach other people somewhere out there at some point in time.

Should we strive to create the meaningful on a personal level, or should we do something that’s meaningful for others? When should we do these things and when is doing so too much, if that is even possible?

How do we measure what is not enough?

I have a lot of questions about these things.

I think that, at least on some level we should try to live a meaningful life. I also strongly think that we should try and make things better where we can, and not just for us but for others too.

I also think a lot of thing and these are only two of the things that I think.

So I’m listening to the last song of Finding Inspiration Somehow, which, as far as I’m aware, is currently the most recent album released under Gift of Gab’s name, and I wonder as to how much of it was completed before his passing. I wonder if I’m meant to hear the album just as an alum, or if I’m meant to hear it as something related to Gift of Gab passing. I think that it can be difficult to approach the album on its own terms and maybe that’s okay, but I also think that it’s unfair not to.

I can only speak for myself here; I feel that it’s meant to be experienced on its own terms, or at least not in relation to Gift of Gab passing.

I wonder if Gift of Gab ever got to a point where he was content with an idea of understanding the world around him as well as understanding at least a meaning of life.

I wonder if I will ever get to that point.

Maybe I’m getting hung up on the wrong things and should start focusing elsewhere, but I do feel we can do much better to make the world a better place. We can do more to add a bit of beauty and joy, and a whole lot of things and I think we should try to keep on learning and understanding. There’s so much we don’t know. To think we do is foolish. If we had enough time we’d be able to know everything, but we don’t and that’s good in a way as it makes us strive for more.

That said, maybe we need some meaninglessness on the odd occasion. It can’t be the worst thing in the world. Of course, all things in balance. We should keep learning and growing. We also need downtime, but we should make sure others get that too. Life is fleeting and too many people suffer.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 20:23:23

Yesterday I was listening to Gift of Gab’s Finding Inspiration Somehow which led to a strong desire to write about him, or more specifically the music he’d been part of and what it made me think and feel. Didn’t do that and kind of forgot about it until I was listening to the album again today whilst writing this ramble.

I don’t think I did Gab justice here and in a way the ramble comes off as a clumsy interweaving of writing about him and writing about something else. I think there’s an intent to try and better understand an artist and take influence from them, but I think this could’ve used much better wording.

Written at home.