“the void has two sides”
”there is no future planning without void staring”

those were two sentiments that came up in the zoom chat of the landscapes session i was a part of this morning, facilitated by . both of them resonated with me because, as some of you may know (if you follow me on other platforms), i’ve been dealing with my fair share of “void staring” this month with the passing of my mom’s cat, my upcoming surgery and even with things as simple and seemingly frivolous as planning my 2025 techo kaigi.

to plan for an upcoming year, while being scared you won’t actually get to see it, causes a bit of a mental scramble, if im being honest. to stare at the void means to stare at uncertainty… while also finding in its depths the promise of endless possibilities.

and at first thought, that might feel liberating, right? but anything endless in our mortal perception brings with it another conundrum- a contradiction thats confronting. we, as we know it, are not endless, are we? barred from any belief system, our physical bodies are not endless and neither is our consciousness. to be faced with the concept of “endless” is, in essence, confronting an “other” and with that comes discomfort. can it be exciting? yes, of course. but what is the line between between anxiety and excitement anyways?

yesterday a rainbow was sent by the universe after having a difficult day full of feelings of grief.

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do you use a system for understanding yourself and those around you? for me, it’s the enneagram and, on the enneagram, i am a type four. for context, type fours are one of the three “past-oriented” types which means our nature is to look (and focus) on whats behind us. i struggle to stay present and even more so to look towards the future. on top of it all, i have chronic health conditions that can completely derail any plans i struggled to establish in the first place.

because of all that, i tend to stay away from “goals-culture”, i’ve never picked a “word for the year”, and i don’t consider myself a “planner”. i avoid that sort of commitment, almost viscerally at times, perhaps out of fear of letting myself down. i, like many of you, are sensitive to self criticism. but this upcoming year, i want to approach things a little differently.

instead of goals: pillars. instead of a word-for-the-year being confinement and prison, it’s a guide. if there is one thing about me you must know, it’s that i love me a good theme. so ill use these mechanisms that failed me in the past and contort them to benefit me wholly. at the end of the day, a system is only successful if it is tailored to you.

to conform yourself to a system is to welcome failure from the outset. it’s a common issue in the journaling and planning community. we see a new journal and it’s so beautiful, we buy it, and try to change our system to fit within the journal instead of finding journals that work for the way we do things best. and there is no shame in that, only the realization that there is a better way to approach things without entirely discarding them.

next year, i want to focus on my art and my writing, which to me are the same as much as they are different- distinct mediums meant to express the same soul. and i’ve been trying to tune into a possible word to use as a guiding light - a north star, if you will.

a word that keeps coming up is DEVELOP and at first i was resistant (as i always am when it comes to picking a singular word to describe a full year) but it kept popping up whenever thoughts of next year’s word would resurface. and so, even though i am stil undecided, if it keeps coming up i think i’ll just listen to the void, that keeps speaking to me in riddles, and go with it.

has the void been speaking to you lately? what has it said? are you open to its whispers or resistant? send me an email or comment to let me know. maybe our voids can be friends.

P.S if you’d like to read a letter i sent out yesterday to my patreon newsletter related to grief and loss, check it out here. free member have access <3 (mind the content warnings before reading, please).