I love, love, love making vision boards. Probably too much. I wasn’t allowed to tear up my mom’s magazines, and I didn’t want to ruin mine, so I never made collages as a kid. Now that I have a digital journal and all of the internet for inspiration, with a simple copy and paste, I can make all the collages I want out of anything I want. If I can dream it, I can slap it on my vision board. I’ve even talked about the merits of making a vision board in a past post.
I think my love for vision boards stems from my love of dreaming. As an ADHD-haver, daydreaming about the future comes naturally to me. But lately, my daydreams have become day-nightmares. All I can think about is how things are probably going to go wrong eventually, no matter how hard I try to avert disaster. These anxieties range from small in the grand scheme of things (like me not getting my internship) to really fucking enormous (like “The Handmaid’s Tale” coming true and me and all my queer friends get lynched).
It’s hard for me to see a light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t a racing freight train. I want so badly to control the future, but I know it’s simply not possible. I just wish I could fast-forward and know that everything turns out the way I want it to. That I will have my successful music therapy career and happy life with my two soulmates and our child, and we will be safe from all the evils of the world.
Maybe the trick isn’t to stop dreaming altogether, but to dream a little more loosely. Instead of planning everything out meticulously, as I tend to do, maybe leave a little wiggle room for when things don’t go my way. I might not get the internship I want, but I can always apply for different ones. Perhaps I’ll have to move out of state temporarily, but I’m blessed with a wife who’s willing to travel with me and the means to do so. And even if the very worst does happen—
—well, I haven’t thought that far ahead. I guess I have to come to terms with the fact that when it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go. It’s a reality everyone has to face at some point. I don’t want to live all my life afraid what comes next, but I don’t think I’ll ever be free of the nagging fear of death until it finally comes to take me.
But as much as I want to quit ruminating on the future, I don’t ever want to quit dreaming. Because when you quit dreaming, that’s when you really start dying. I always want to strive for something more, even when I’m at a place of contentment. I never want to settle. There’s always a new mountain to climb or a new sea to sail, and I think that’s what makes the future exciting.
JESSA JOYCE 