I have so many ideas of things I want to do. They collect in the corners of my mind like the crumbs lost to the folds of an armchair. Indistinguishable bits of aspiration, moldering in the dark.
In my head, I make future plans for refinishing the dining table, learning to sew, growing seedlings under as-yet-unpurchased grow lights in the basement, becoming a person who camps, tending chickens, training to be a doula, and finishing my book. These are things I’ve talked about for ages. I might go so far as to research the doing of them, but nothing seems to actually get done.
We had friends up from the city last weekend, and we walked them through the house, pointing out all the projects we wanted to do but hadn’t yet. We’ll paint these doors forest green. The windowsills still need to be reaffixed. I’ll build a better garden once I get the soil tested. And I thought, how many times have I said these exact words? How long will these ideas exist in some intangible plane before I roll up my sleeves and wrangle them into reality? What is wrong with me?
Ambitions big and small, building up in the crevices, aching for my attention.
It’s a shameful feeling, especially for a Capricorn like me. I pride myself on setting goals and reaching them. The longer I talk about doing things without actually doing them, the more I feel like a fraud.
But I know I’m being hard on myself. It’s a trait that I’m trying to iron out. In an effort to extend some kindness, I try to shed a new light on the thinking-without-doing. Maybe this slow flock of visions, flapping against the sky of my mind, is getting somewhere even without reaching its destination. Maybe it’s a murmuration, meaningful in its formlessness. Maybe an itch is scratched purely in the planning, the way I carry clothes around a store for a while and never buy them, having satisfied some desire without needing to put money down. Maybe something is achieved in the act of dreaming itself.
There is an importance to what lives in our imagination, a utility to the unfinished. Loose threads keep us curious. Unmet urges move us forward. If at the store, I bought everything I desired, it would all lose its meaning after a while—a closet full of junk, indistinct and gathering dust. We need things to exist as aspirations, as dreams, as figments, as desires. As crumbs collecting under cushions, the byproduct of being fed.
One of the friends who came to visit from the city has gotten into ceramics. Over mocktails and olives, she talked passionately about her Sunday nights at the studio. I tried pottery myself once, in college, but I quit after one class because I couldn’t make anything come together in my hands. But my friend is patient with her clay. She keeps going week after week even when there’s nothing to put in the fire. She understands that there is magic in the not-yet-formed.
Maybe someday I’ll have a beautiful chicken coop and gather armfuls of colorful eggs. I’ll celebrate the publishing of my book by going camping in the backcountry, wearing a shirt that I made with my bare hands. Or maybe I won’t. I remind myself that it isn’t a failure to not follow through on every idea, to not achieve every inkling of ambition. I walk this earth a little lighter because of how full I am with dreams.
" I walk this earth a little lighter because of how full I am with dreams. "
I have also been in this process of "ironing out" such unkindness to myself. I try to walk through life and make bubbles of empty time for myself. To wake in the morning thinking of the day ahead with ease. "It's easy, you've done days like this before." And when new ideas, aspirations and plans pop up, I try to release them. They might manifest on their own, but there is no need to push myself around. But how lovely is the thought of giving space and care to those dreams, letting them twist, turn and flex out, without the pressure of completion. Of finding worth in their existence, in giving them space. This feels like the next step in this process.