This fact once again hit me as I was browsing through the Procreate app on my iPad and stumbled upon a project I made back in November 2019 — my 2020 vision board.

I’ve heard it said time and again; when goal setting, one must make them following the acronym SMART — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

Yet all my vision boards end up looking like the one above: broad, vague strokes of what I daydream my future to be. There’s a cozy pink-and-gray themed room there, symbolizing owning my own house. There’s a studio, a microphone, the Eiffel Tower, puppies, a book, some quotes, etcetera. (I’ll let you figure out what those stand for.) I guess they’re fine, just not specific and measurable enough. Also, I tend to make mental notes about various aspects of the vision board, not spelling them out or noting them in any way, which as a forgetful person does not help one bit.

One thing stood out however, a tiny message on the bottom part, next to the cute puppies. A digital cutout of a digital magazine reads “The year that changed everything.”

How funny, that it indeed turned out to be the year that changed everything! Just in extremely unexpected (unprecedented? lol) ways. I don’t mean that in a bad way either, despite the pandemic and all. I don’t want to discount all the suffering and pain the year has caused, but it’s been one of the best years for me personally.

Something (introspection magnified a thousandfold, perhaps) led to me getting back to my first love: writing. I started this blog, telling myself I’m going to do this one thing for myself, finally, not for any purpose or reason other than I want to. Honestly, this is one of the things that genuinely add joy to my life. This is my corner, all mine, where I am free to say and do anything. Plus, I got back to drawing, reading, worked on getting better with my technique at the uke, and doing loads and loads of writing.

There isn’t really much of a point to this post other than to ruminate on life’s interesting coincidences. It kind of kills me how much I love this vision board — it represents (almost) everything that makes me happy, hopeful, and a dreamer. So no matter how unspecific it is, I’m holding on to it. Here we are in 2021 and I still have the same goals anyway, ha.

Sometimes, we look back and find that we now have things we only used to wish for. Life is so unpredictable — and in this lifetime, in a heartbeat, all your dreams may still come true. ❤️