Between Maps and Meaning

What a year 2025 has been for me. In my personal journal I’ve referred to it as the year of healing. Which is very true, but the tricky thing about healing is there’s always more to be done. There’ll be a time when I reflect fully on what happened to me this year and see how far I’ve come. I will also be critical as I’m not as far down the road I set out for. In some ways I feel I’ve barely moved while in others, I’ve completely surpassed what I thought was possible. By now either I’ve caught your attention or long bored you away. Truly though I imagine my eyes will be the only to read this. Enough of that though as there’s much to cover and although I wish to write about much of what has been alluded to above, there’s more pressing things to discuss.

Why write this? That might be a good place to start, and I suppose I do hope someone’s eyes other than my own reads this. Although I’m not sure what good it will do them. For myself I do enjoy going back and rereading old journal entries, and this is a way to make that a bit easier. It’s interesting to read something you thought many months ago. Over this week I’ve gone back and seen some of my former entries in my personal journal. Part of that process motivated me to start this. It’s interesting, to think at some point in the year I was in utter despair, but in other weeks full of hope. We can often recall the peaks and valleys of our lives, but to remember exactly what we thought and felt is maybe more unusual. I can smell a feeling from a page, some of those feelings send a shiver down my spine. I would hope to never feel that way again. I know unfortunately though because of what I’ve been through this year, that I will feel those feelings again. The good news is I’ll feel the good ones too. And maybe the best news, is that most of my life won’t be filled with much news that’s worthy being read. And that is why this blog much like my personal journal won’t just be about me, but things I’ve found interesting. Something I read, something I watched, an idea I need to play with on paper (or between a keyboard). I intend to occasionally post essays, mostly short, and other write ups that might seem incomplete. I find that I often don’t spend enough time on a thought and might drift into something entirely different by the end of page. It will be interesting to see my style change, my feelings, and have a place I can store ideas good enough for me to think to write down.

I suppose I will end my first post with the reason for the name of this blog. Between Maps and Meaning. I am a geographer in my heart, and it is even my trade since I work in the field of GIS. One thing I love about geography is how many other disciplines it touches. I find history, archeology, cultural anthropology, and science all relying on geography in some way. This has led me to enjoying a broad range of topics since I can be drawn in by the geography only to be kept down the rabbit hole of some obscure issue that these other disciplines are filled with. In my true nature I am also an over analyzer. Instead of trying to get rid of that trait I’ve found it a useful and likeable quality of mine. I can watch movie with little to no meaning to anyone else, but find small details that make it special or memorable to me. I’ve always been less concerned with plots, and more attentive to quotes that make my mind spin. Hence the name of this blog. I will share things I’ve enjoyed, I will over analyze things that may not matter, and of course when my life calls for it write down how I might feel.