journal features

many fat babies

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Kokubunji, 2024.04.19

I discarded some of the many, many fry when they first hatched, but I believe we've got some two hundred to three hundred remaining. I've fallen into the daily routine of growing brine shrimp to feed the little critters, and as a result they're growing by leaps and bounds. They're about a centimeter long now and you can definitely tell that they are something like goldfish with large eyes and short fins and that hop-glide kind of way of swimming. They eat voraciously, and when I harvest tonight's batch of shrimp, I'm going to try to triple my production for Sunday morning's haul.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner