VISION

A few days after Christmas, I kept seeing a bunch of positive memes about how it is okay to do nothing for the last week of the year. I tried really hard to take those words to heart, but I’m not good at doing absolutely nothing. As I laid in bed early last Sunday morning, I was already thinking about how I should not spend the day on the couch. Except my motivation for doing the things I believed needed to be done, was pretty low. So, I sat on the couch watching CBS Sunday Morning and cried into my coffee because it was their ‘People We’ve Lost in 2020’ episode. Then I got up and cleaned out my closet so I could justify spending the rest of the day on the couch. And because I can’t do nothing while sitting on the couch, I started thinking about vision boards.

I’ve never done a vision board.

Vision boards have been around for quite a while. Oprah made them famous. Women have built blogs and careers helping others build vision boards. There are psychology studies that show how visions boards can help you reach your goals and there are psychology studies showing how vision boards can hinder you in reaching goals. It’s a thing. It’s a thing I never really gravitated to, but I am not one for cutting out pictures and pasting them to poster board. I did enough poster making crap in my youth, but I’ve just spent a year where my plans got derailed. I’ve started giving away the prints I framed for my art showing and we have talked about hanging the rest somewhere in the house. When plans got derailed, I couldn’t really make new ones. Last year was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of year. This year? This year I think things are going to be a little bit different. I think we can make plans in moderation.

Still…I do not cut things out of magazines and paste them to poster board. Instead, and I felt really environmentally proud of myself for this idea, I decided to make myself a digital vision board. I spent my Sunday afternoon, nestled under a pile of blankets and animals, dragging photos and images onto a blank screen in one of my drawing apps on my iPad. When I felt like my vision board was complete, I posted that crap to Instagram because…well…just because. I needed a witness? I don’t know, but now I look at the vision board and shake my head. There are two pictures of things on that board that I am not already doing. One is a picture of the Grand Canyon because that trip is happening this summer. We are dragging the Cabbage to the Grand Canyon and about five other National Parks in Utah whether she likes it or not. I have no idea how I have made it through forty five years of life with out ever visiting the Grand Canyon. We went all over the place in a camper when I was I kid. Our three week adventure to Florida was epic, filled with moments like Dad driving into a restricted area at the space center and nine foot alligators and Mom’s constant panic about how far out into the ocean we were swimming. Too far. We were always out too far. The camper could not go farther than the Colorado border. We flew to California. We flew to Hawaii…because you can’t drive the camper there, duh, but we never drove West of Colorado. This year, I’m driving West of Colorado.

The other picture is one of a row of small kitchen gardens. I only want one of those rectangular kitchen gardens. I have approximately the same size garden bed right outside the back door. It currently houses oregano, sage, rosemary, I think what might be a citronella plant and half of the leaves from our neighbor’s tree. This was the first summer when I did not have to replant the rosemary. I definitely do not use enough of any of these herbs and they could stand to be thinned out and moved around. That space would be nice for some greens and maybe a tomato plant, a few things we can eat. It would still be small and very manageable. The chickens will eat the the stuff we don’t eat. It’s a win win for everyone. Besides the garden and the Grand Canyon though, those are the only ‘plans’ I can vision up for this year. The rest of those pictures, the yoga, the exercise, the reading and photography, are all the things I am currently doing. An organized desk drawer? I did that last week. Either I suck at creating a vision board or I am already the vision of myself that I want to be.

I am already the vision of myself that I want to be.

Shut. Up.

A friend of mine turned forty last year and she lamented the loss of her youth. I said to her “No no no. Forty is wonderful. It is the age where you truly stop giving a shit about all the unimportant little things.” It’s true. It’s like dumping baggage. Ever since I turned forty, I feel like I have been dumping luggage like that scene in The Darjeeling Limited as they run to catch a train. Big clunky luggage, the kind without wheels, just dropping away as each year passes. Last year, I lost a trunk filled with all the plans I have ever made for my life. I have always been a planner, mapping out my life since childhood. I will do this, this and then this, all in that order and I was never prepared for the events that fell outside of that plan. And they did! So many events that I never planned for! Of course, some of those events were terrible, horrific even, but so many of them were good. I never planned for Chris to show up in my life or this great family of friends that I have. I didn’t plan on Michael being a permanent fixture. I didn’t plan on having a dog that I would fall so deeply in love with that sometimes it hurts. There is just so much goodness in my life that I never ever planned on having.

So really, I guess my vision board for this year is to keep on doing what I’m doing and living a life less planned. Happy New Year to you all.