Meaning in Work?

I have decided to reopen my inquiry into the meaning of life, spurred on by the comments of the mysterious neha.

For my third part of the inquiry I want to examine work as a possible meaning to life. Many people find meaning in their jobs, and some even find Meaning in their work. Artists seem to find a lot of Meaning in their work, and I guess writing is what keeps me chugging along as well. I've written six unpublished books, a ridiculous number, and if I didn't have an agent I think I'd start to feel like that idiot kid we had on our football team who liked to run as hard as he could into the concrete lockeroom wall, again and again and again. I've thought a lot about what a piece of work matters if it has no audience, or if your audience consists mostly of ex-girlfriends who no longer are willing to read your newest work. I'd like to think the work stands for itself, that I don't need any pats on the back, that the process of creation was rewarding enough. And to some extent it is. How days have I gone to bed happy, feeling like I actually did something with my life, because I had written five pages?

Yes, writing is how I justify everything else in my life. I keep going so I can write. But is justification the same thing as Meaning? And is creating something what gives a person meaning? (Like kids. or a new zoning ordinance). And what about people who don't create anything, who work at our gas stations and Targets and whatnot? Where do they find their meaning? Do they even need meaning? I've already looked at love and travel as possible answers; but what if you worked at Target, loved no one because of some horrific accident, and had no money to travel? Where would you find your meaning? In moving product? And if you did find your meaning in moving product, would that meaning be on the same meaning level with someone who found meaning in tending to the poor, or in writing fantastic requiems? And if you think all meaning levels are the same, as long as someone can find Meaning in something, wouldn't that itself somehow render Meaning meaningless, simply turn it into a relative value that has nothing to do with Quality (Robert Pirsig style) ?

People are the only beings who really seem to wrestle with this idea of meaning. If you think hard about a lazy cat's daily routine, minute-to-minute, the whole thing seems so meaningless you can only laugh, laugh, laugh. Maybe it would be easier if we were all non-sentient beings. I would like to be a flying squirrel, or a grizzly bear.