I’m very task-oriented, so in high school, I parsed out my career needs into tasks:

1. Find a career you like.
1a. Will you make enough money to survive?
2. Make a plan to get into that field
3. Climb up in that field until you’ve reached the pinnacle
3a. Can you strike a good “work/life” balance?
4. Be happy.

It’s a caricature, but it’s also the basic outline that many middle-class teenagers know. Recently, though, I’ve added a key element that I’ve thought about but never dared to add to the list:

What does this mean to you?

It starts out somewhat shallow — something maybe about helping people or creating beauty or doing something you love. But quickly it challenges your beliefs about the world. Finding meaning in any action, especially in the quiet comfort or your bedroom, can be difficult. Most of us spend a third of our lives in some type of job, and doing these actions simply because it’s what we do is, well, sad. There needs to be meaning for there to be any chance at happiness — at least for me. No matter how many philosophers weight in on the idea (and many have tried), everyone gets there on their own.

I’m lucky enough that I don’t wake up every day thinking about how to survive. But for so many of us, that means we wake up each morning and perform some hollow task that makes the world go round in just the way some powerful person planned for it to spin, because we’re still biologically programmed to believe it’s part of our survival — that we do our every day tasks so that we may live. But there’s a friction between that and our knowledge that, even if we stopped doing what we are doing, we won’t die. We are still conditioned to survive, yet most of us have nothing to survive from.

So I find there are three types of people in the world (as far as this is concerned):

1. Those who don’t think about meaning in their lives, and are in what is essentially The Matrix.
2. Those who understand this — and have found meaning in what they do.
3. Those who understand this — but have not found meaning, or can’t work their mind around it.

A lot of homeless people I meet are in that third category. They are very in-tune with the world, but it’s overwhelming to lack meaning beyond basic survival. Because of this, I’ve waded between No. 1 and No. 2 — too afraid that if I push too hard into the second category, the momentum will push me into the third.

I presented my thesis this week, which means my graduate school career is over. Which also means I’m likely done with school forever.

Humans don’t easily comprehend the idea of something being over — mostly because we don’t easily comprehend the idea of permanence.

So I don’t know how to deal with my current situation. My school, ITP, has been a home to me for the past two years. I’ve left homes many times in my life; once you leave, it turns into a house you can’t go inside — a house that used to be yours, but isn’t anymore.

I’ve recently become interested in watches, especially mechanical ones, because I’m amazed by the engineering it takes to make small pieces of metal oscillate at a consistent rate. If you consider each oscillation the same thing — which, characteristically, they are — then this isn’t so mind-blowing. But if you consider each swing of the balance wheel different — which it is, because each tick can only happen once in the universe — then this is a deeply philosophical and technological marvel.

So on the bright side, when I’m reminded of permanence it’s a reminder that the universe is marvelous because things end. But when something stops oscillating, it’s always terribly sad.

How lonely it felt
in my first New York apartment.
No internet, phone, power or furniture.

Just me, an air mattress
That cold hardwood floor.
And one cozy right-angled corner — for warmth.

Growing up, I’d often say:
I want to run to the woods
Write and think, like Henry D.T.

The world in front of me.
Everything possible,
Nothing required.

In retrospect, though
That air mattress was
My cabin in the woods.

How great that time was—
No responsibility to any task
No accountability to any one.

One air mattress away from starting a new.

.

But since then, I’ve applied layers upon layers
Until I looked like an onion
With skin so tightly-wound
The foreign parts are indistinguishable.

But maybe back then
I was a shallot
Maybe back then
I had more than an air mattress.

The world started to get boring, and then I remembered the day before my grandmother died.

She was in her hospice bed, unconscious for several days, when she opened her eyes and looked at us. We yelled, “Grandma, grandma,” but her only murky eyes showed signs of life. Then she asked to be carried into the living room, so I lifted her fragile body and tried to hold her, but she was slipped. Before I could panic, though, she reached up with both arms and held surprisingly tight to my neck. We made it to the living room chair, just barely.

Then she talked about something — I don’t remember what; I just remember her voice. And then she wanted to go back to bed. So again she held tight to my neck, and again we barely made it to our destination. I plopped her down and she breathed heavily, her protruding chest growing and shrinking with great range.

And that’s when she asked for the luggage. She pointed next to her bed — where her luggage apparently was — and insisted we help her get it, because she was going to be late; she had to go to the airport. She said, I have to go now. It’s time.

She died the next day.

It’s been several years, but I still don’t know what to make of her invisible luggage. I don’t know what was going through her mind, or what chemicals were passing through her brain or what cosmic forced were at work. I’m not sure it matters, though, in the same way it doesn’t matter how much paint was used on the ceiling Sistine Chapel; it only matters that it makes you weak in the knees.

I’ve drawn this chart dozens of times. I draw it every time I explain my thesis.

I first thought to make this chart because, in my other life, I write about hockey analytics. And charts make it look official — and intellectual. They articulate ideas.

My thesis project tries to help homeless people. And sometimes, it’s hard to figure out how to talk about homeless people, because most people want to talk about the one or two homeless people they know — and the love/hate relationship they have with them. Which is fine. So the chart helps create a framework with which to have a conversation. It’s good in that way, I guess.

But when I come home, the chart makes me not care anymore. Because, frankly, this chart is irrelevant to Kevin or Richie or Donovan, who are on the streets right now — and have been for years. Sometimes, charts forget about humans.