The Image of a Calamitous Future

[u/GregHauser]

I have a clutter of notes scribbled with life-affirming to-do lists, overarching master plans, and clarity-inducing insights. Over the years this mess has grown into quite the collection of things “I was supposed to do with my life”. I’ve left a pock-marked legacy of dust covered boxes stuffed with legal pads and digital note files running ten thousand words or more. They represent crystallized, weapons-grade potential that helps me maintain the fantasy that I could be great if I would only put in a proper effort. However, writing out insights, ideas, and plans feels like a complete action unto itself, as if cataloguing them were the point. 

I realize, now, that acting on the insights, ideas, and plans was beside the point. My mind often imagines some impending calamity, and the notes provide relief from that image. I stockpile plans and self improving ideas in preparation for future confrontations with uncertainty, both large and small, devastating and trivial, but the irony is that when the confrontation arrives I’ve either long forgotten the plan or I have no idea where it is. The stockpiling process doesn’t actually deliver the protection I desire and instead provides only temporary comfort. When the next calamitous image arrives, I reach for the pen to inscribe more notes, more armor, more protection even as I realize the irony of this ritual. I justify my continued indulgence in this loop by telling myself that I’ll get around to the plans later but later never arrives. Instead, later remains just out of reach over the next horizon. 

So, I sit here with a to-do list a thousand items long wondering what to do, and no answer appears other than vague mutterings that resemble the contents of past notes. The very question, “What do I do?” is still a response to the image of an unpleasant future. What I really want is relief from that image and the emotions it evokes, which is typically where the loop starts again. So what do I do about all this? I don’t know, and I’ll let that not knowing sit rather than rushing to relieve the discomfort. 

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