Moving Forward

When I was younger, maybe five or six, I used to imagine my future self thinking back at the specific point in time that I was having the thought "my future self will be thinking back to me thinking about my current self". This was one of my favourite thought games as a kid - to try to predict the future by manipulating the variables in such a way that I could control them. And of course, it would happen that in the middle of some kind of mindless task my brain would trigger a: "here I am thinking back to when I had the thought that I would one day think back on!" response. Inevitably leading to the conclusion that yes, I was right.

Of course, I wasn't. And of course, I couldn't really predict the future. 

But it was fun to think about at the time.

Now, I generally spend too much time anticipating the future to brood over my past, but recently I've felt quite forced to reflect. This upcoming month is full of changes: at work, at home, in school. The adrenaline and caffeine are equally responsible for keeping me afloat (and for that, I am eternally grateful), though it's been slightly trying given that many of the tasks that I have been called upon involve me to consider aspects of myself that I would otherwise like to forget. Feeling like i have no solid basis upon which to build my future vision has given me this weird bloated feeling, like a helium balloon rocketing towards space with no direction but full velocity.

I feel full of energy and void of purpose.

Those that know me well will likely think that this is rather peculiar - rarely do I dwell on things like "purpose", or "calling", or these sorts of things. But being asked to constantly provide evidence - either through performance reviews, grant applications, you name it - that I do have an internal drive pushing me towards some "greater goal" has had me doing a lot of mental reviewing and a lot of value-inventory.

The funny thing is that I think about the future a lot. From my mind games when I was a kid to a slight obsession with speculative fiction and sci-fi, I seem almost unhealthily fixated on thinking about a world after capitalism. But I still can't picture myself in it. I've been trying to create little scenarios in my head and play out what the next few months or years will look like, but I just keep drawing blanks.

So this is where the reflection begins. And i suppose that I am writing this post because this reflection makes me feel uncomfortable, and it makes me feel vulnerable. I am trying to hold myself accountable by posting something that is technically public, but for all intents and purposes quite private. In an ongoing attempt to use this adrenaline and caffeine-fueled buzz to my advantage, I'm going to try and be deliberate in my world-building and use this blog space as a platform from which to start exploring a future that I haven't yet wrapped my mind around.

And I would be remiss to do so without a soundtrack.