Welcome to The Mapmakers Journal
A warm August afternoon in Texas. For the first time in a month the temperature is under 1oo degrees and it’s the perfect opportunity to sit by the water and submit my first entry. If you’ve read the About Me section you know a little about me, and what this website is about. I decided to start this blog for the sole purpose of helping others in a way that I wish I would have been helped. In my 20’s, I started to do something similar but quickly realized I was too young and naive to be telling people how to understand and cope with human existence. I didn’t have nearly enough life experience to be able to connect with other people and help them. I still needed help. I was still learning, growing and observing the world. I had almost zero self-awareness and had an ego that still controlled me in every way possible. I was confident for all the wrong reasons.
On this website you won’t find proper writing “etiquette”. You won’t find APA style essays and write-ups. I put words down the same way they come up in my head. I believe that the way you write is also a reflection of who you are and the way your mind works. I’ve come to love my mind, and use it the way it wants to be used. I used to get frustrated with myself because I always felt like I didn’t operate the way the world required me to, or the way that other people do. It made me feel like I failed as a human being, like I wanted to hit the restart button and try again. For years I tried to make myself something I wasn’t supposed to be and work a way I wasn’t supposed to work. It was like trying to swim as fast as I could down stream and always trying to create new creeks to travel where there were none. Instead I should have just floated in the river while the current takes me with it. I’ve come to peace with being the way that I am, and now understand that just going with the flow of my being is what I should have always been doing. This isn’t to say that I am content with who I am and have stopped trying to grow and improve. We should all continuously strive to be better every day. I identify and acknowledge my faults. I take accountability for them and rectify them to the best of my abilities. So while I’ve come to accept who I am, I still understand that I am not perfect.
On this website you wont find right or wrong answers. You won’t see me telling you that republicans are bad or democrats are bad. Or that one religion is right and others are wrong. I’m not here to tell you that one decision you make is the wrong one and you should have done something else instead. A mapmaker doesn’t chart your path. He charts the landscape so that others don’t get lost. He puts it down on paper so that people can have a clearer view of where they are going, and give them the chance to make clearer decisions. You see there’s no one single guidebook to human existence, no matter what your current religious identity tells you. There’s no single answer to all your questions because there is no one singular path that we should all take. We’re not here to find the answer to why and how. There’s no finish line. This life of ours is not linear. We are here to simply, experience, love and be of service to others.
So while you are here, I implore you to read my short stories and blog entries with an open mind. Allow yourself to read them objectively, and not as a challenge to your current personal beliefs. When I write my short stories, I write them not to entertain, but to get the reader to question and consider different perspectives.
Thank you for being here, and please subscribe to future posts. I look forward to speaking to and with you all.
- The Mapmaker