Dear Tomorrow-Me
What "goals" want to become, at least for me
In this moment I’m thinking about how time slides past so quickly, and how written goals are shown to lead to such higher rates of success for things one hopes to accomplish.
Yet, I also have a personality where goals feel oppressive and weird and like huge lies.
We’ve seen here on this stack that I’m okay with a goal where I accomplish a certain thing every day for a period of time—that’s not what I’m referring to.
I’m referring to the thing where you want to manifest something new, and then you project your mind into the future (often based on what you are aware you might be able to accomplish in the micro) and predict how much success you might conceivably achieve during a period of time.
Ex: by March I will have 100 new Substack Subscribers.
(Wait, why does that one feel like it would work for me? What is happening right now?)
Like, I wrote that example so I could deconstruct it as the kind of thing that usually doesn’t work for me, eg, in the next two months I will make X amount of money, even though I can’t specifically control all the factors that make that possible, and I tend to do better at manifesting things into being by declaring a desire and then releasing it to the winds, then watching it come back to me. I’ve had miraculous things happen for me this way—through surrender. Through releasing my own will and intention and trusting the flow of life to bring into being that which my heart, in clarity, desires.
I find often that when I clench, when I ramp up, when I get intense, things I desire are pushed away. Yet when I trust, when I release, when I know, when I unclench, when I de-intensify, my dreams come rushing into my life with wild and improbable specificity.
I’m sure there is some cosmological, Human-Design-based, personality-tied, neurologics-of-a-neurodivergent explanation for why this is that I have just never encountered. But without that knowledge, I must say: it feels weird. It makes me feel witchy and magical, and it makes the Universe feel, likewise, witchy and magical.
And sometimes it makes me a bit confused about consistency, I guess is the thing.
Desires often hit me with such purity and intensity that I can feel into them totally—and when I say desires, I’m talking about future manifestations that feel so connected to my personhood, to my destiny, to who I am, that they feel nearly inevitable on some level.
But the pings of desire come at me in the most random moments most of the time. Sometimes it almost feels like they can be engineered (when I’m reading poetry, I feel the desires correspondent to my own poetics for example, clearly and very deeply; when I envisage the joy more money and means will bring, I am pregnant with ideas and motivation and desire pertaining to things that feel destined to yield that outcome; when I get enraptured by social media (which I have always loved) I feel the inspiration and desire for continued growth such that ideas start flowing; etc. etc. and on and on) and other times there is no way to engineer it.
Writing the above paragraph has helped me see one important thing: that, at least for me, what I refer to as desire seems to be coupled with inspiration. It’s less seeing a yearned-for-object in the distance and feeling longing for it—a longing that implies a disconnection. Instead, it’s more of a knowing of who I am and what potentialities exist pertaining to certain paths springing forth from my personhood, and then feeling the flowering of inspired ideas and feelings and power and actions that correspond to these respective paths, with an internal sense that the outcomes… just are. Like, they kinda already exist in the future somehow. And when I’m sucked into any one random set of inspirations/desires, I am being shown, or better said I am feeling my way towards the outcomes. And this feeling is life-giving and beautiful and fills me deeply.
BUT, my brain is fickle and the realness of not being sucked into one of these tributaries is just as “now” as when I am in them, such that I almost can’t remember the thing fully—I can remember the concept of the thing, but I can’t feel the thing. I’m not in the pathway of the thing.
Some of this is hyperfocus. Wanna know how I know? Cuz my brain just gave me a clear indication that the fervor that led me to write these words and have these very thoughts has nearly run its course—my mind is about to be called away to something else. And if I don’t press “publish” there is high likelihood that these thoughts will go into a draft that I won’t look at for days or weeks or months or possibly years or even possible ever again. So I really should wrap this up if I want to be conversant with myself about it.
And maybe that is a thing? Conversant with myself? Perhaps this is a letter to myself, tomorrow. Perhaps Tomorrow-Me will feel grounded into this exploration and expansion if I’m able to keep this conversation alive with myself by… keeping this conversation alive with myself.
Thus, I will publish this letter to Tomorrow-me, and Tomorrow-me, I would ask you, if it feels right, to respond, so that the Universe can continue to guide this germinating thought-process to insight—and maybe towards a stringing together the intentions of varied goals into multiples of successes—not just one at a time, but a diverse bouquet of flowers emerging in one Spring—this upcoming Spring, perhaps—or at least a multiplicity of leaves greening on several branches? Maybe?
Driftlessly yours,
Joshua
