Breaking Up With Vision Boards
On embracing lulls, and tapping into new forms of manifestation
It's the last week of February1 , and I'm just now changing the vision board phone lock screen I made in Canva to something else. As I look at the vision board, I see where I excelled, where I fell short, and where life threw me for a curveball. I won’t say that 2023 was a bad year for me. It was a standard year in that there were a lot of strides, new experiences, challenges, growing pains, and lessons along the way. Despite entering the New Year relatively unscathed, I have yet to feel that burst of blind optimism that revs so many of us up when the holiday season winds down and the calendar resets, and that may be for good reason.
There is an entire movement of “rest is resistance” warriors who I’m sure would validate this feeling of not having the zeal to enter this New Year enthusiastically. There are also plenty of socially aware folks who would say that witnessing a genocide is more than enough reason to divest from any New Year, New Me delusions. But, we are so conditioned to structuring our lives around the demands of capitalism, that it can feel destabilizing when we step outside the expectation to constantly be working towards personal achievement.
Admittedly, I am a bit of a restless spirit. Though I’m not someone who identifies with #TeamNoSleep or #HustleCulture, I find a lot of personal fulfillment in working on my craft, learning, and reading. As a neurospicy girlie™, I have a pattern of going into overdrive, absorbing a ton of information, and hitting a wall. I like to call these my upload (learning) and download (processing) periods. After I’ve downloaded, I need a moment to just be, take a pause and hit the reset button. Still, it’s been challenging to reprogram myself to be okay with these pauses. We are hardwired to constantly be “on” whether that is through our jobs, our relationships, or our responsibilities. When I take moments of stillness, idleness, or anything that doesn’t look like what Western culture defines as productivity, I have to fight the nagging urge to get up and do something.
I want my goals and movements to be more inwardly expansive than they are externally rewarding. I don’t want to be driven by optimism or pessimism, clarity or confusion. I want just want to flow. I want to move in a way that is in synchronicity with where I am at this exact moment. I don’t want to be hung up on the possibility of what could happen or the residue of what’s already taken place.
There are times when I feel like my impulses are being controlled by things outside of myself. Sure, I have the urge to get up and work on a grant application or edit a script because I really want to get my ideas out into the world. But why do I move as if I can only do these things if I keep a fire lit under my ass? As if, taking a bit of time to lounge around the house instead of working is going to halt the success that theoretically should be mine whether I get the work done today, tomorrow, or next week. I’m not someone who doesn’t know how to accomplish a goal. I am more lacking in the ability to rest guilt-free than I am in work ethic or discipline. So, I have to ask myself is it fear or love that is driving me? Scarcity or abundance? Faith or control? I want my goals and movements to be more inwardly expansive than they are externally rewarding. I don’t want to be driven by optimism or pessimism, clarity or confusion. I just want to flow. I want to move in a way that is in synchronicity with where I am at this exact moment. I don’t want to be hung up on the possibility of what could happen or the residue of what’s already taken place.
Imagination is not finite, so why approach it as something I can put on a board or screen one day in hopes that it will eventually materialize? What I dream up for myself should be boundless and fluid. How imaginative is it to carve out a vision because it’s a specific time of year, irrespective of how you’re feeling at that moment, or if you even have any visions? So, now I have a plan in place, a selection of images to look at to remind me of that vision, and then I spend the next calendar year chipping away at the vision month by month, quarter by quarter, day by day. In the meantime, my ideas could’ve expanded, I could’ve changed my mind or something that exceeded any expectations I had for myself could’ve happened. And listen, I understand the power of manifestation but manifestation is constant. I can manifest through journaling, speaking things into existence to trusted confidants, meditation, prayer, affirmations, dreams, and daydreams. I want to reach a state where walking in my purpose, and listening to my spirit embodies whatever it is I intend to call forth through a vision board.
I was recently put onto The Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde by
. She responded to a note of mine about Audre Lorde/Toni Morrison quotes with a quote from this essay. Something told me to read that essay in full in the middle of editing this newsletter and I’m glad I did because Ms. Lorde had a word for me:Giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.
What we’re talking about is not just radical rest (truthfully, I think a lot of conversation around radical rest and #softlife lacks nuance). We’re talking about tapping into your deepest most authentic feelings and prioritizing them over staying on the proverbial hamster wheel of societal expectation. What I’m tapping into when I fight those nagging urges to work, work, work, and plan, plan, plan, is the person I am when I remove all of the labels that require maintenance and upkeep—my raw humanness. In doing so, I’m cultivating a stronger relationship with the very thing that breathes life into anything I strive for.
READING
The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power by Audre Lorde is a short but potent read. There is also an audio version of Lorde reading the essay herself.
WATCHING
Broken Flowers (2005)
After going to see American Fiction (stay tuned bbs, I will be doing a book vs adaptation newsletter about this soon-ish!), my boyfriend recommended we watch this because it co-stars Jeffrey Wright. The film follows Don (Bill Murray) who finds out that he may (or may not) have a 20-year-old son. He’s pressured (forced, basically) by his Jamaican neighbor (Wright) to go on a cross-country hunt to find out who his potential baby mama is. Honestly, he had me at Jim Jarmusch who directed one of my favorite vignette films Night on Earth (1991) which features this iconic scene of Rosie Perez and Giancarlo Esposito cussing each other out in a taxi:
LISTENING
RAVE:N, The Remixes by Kelela
Kelela is the queen of remix albums and her latest did not disappoint. Her remixes feel more like a reimagining of the entire song, she manages to make them sound fresh and mystical. I was so happy to see Rochelle Jordan featured on this one because she is probably the princess of remix albums, thanks to Play With The Changes Remixed, which I burned a hole through last year. Also, Kelela’s tiny desk dropped today and it’s a stripped-down version of some of her classics. The harp, the 90s/afro-futurist hairdo, the arrangements, I live! What can I say, I love me some genre-bending Black women musicians.
CALL TO ACTION
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LaChelle
It should be noted that I’ve been working on this draft since the last week of January. Something about coming back to edit this line during each pass really validates and reinforces how I’m trying to embrace my lulls more!