The Blueprint After The Collapse

Lying in the rubble of my old life, I stared at my surroundings. Losing my job. Losing multiple friends with it. Being forced to live in a too tiny apartment I swore I would move out of this year; those are my defeats- and they stare back at me.

It takes a special kind of shattering to be here. Where the world around you changed so fast, it’s like the ground slipped beneath your feet and now you’re standing at base 0, again. Years of work socially and mentally accounting to little but experience in your head, and remnants of the life you built now spread out around you. The ache is unreal, like a knife in your chest you can’t quite feel because you’re numb, until it twists- until you are reminded of who you were, who you don’t know how to be anymore. Your biggest fear? That you’ll never be him again.

You know what you want, you want things the way they were, your life back in its comfortable sort of glory. But you know you can’t have that so you take a new step. And fall. BLEEP. Wrong step. And you find yourself cornered, not knowing what to do, but not wanting to wait for things to get worse either.

Here’s what it takes to start building:

Breaking.

A special kind of falling part. A special kind of abandonment, quiet suffering, and unsaid wishes. It takes foresight too see beyond that kind of shit, and you can only envision something if you have that sort of mind that can seek clarity internally before it clears up things externally.

Envision.

Define what you want. What you need. Your dreams, your people. Sure, it’s far fetched. Sure, you have no idea how to get there. But does the thought of having it, building it, living it, make you feel alive? Does thinking about working that dream job everyday make you feel funny? Does imagining having that body make the hair on your neck rise? There’s your vision, a definition of who you want to be (exclude materialistic things.) If you don’t know how to be that- be the person on the other side of the cliff; now you will:

Analyse.

First, prioritize what parts of that vision you want first. Then, observe the shit around you. Realize what your day is missing that is keeping you from having the things you want in your life. Is it a course on crocheting, or a business opportunity? Is it a gym membership, or a game with your folks you haven’t seen in months? Fill in the gaps, and for the bigger ones that you can’t fill right now, leave them behind because some day you will.

If you don’t know what you should be doing, find out from someone who’s 3 steps ahead of you, or take a calculated guess. Once you have an idea of what you might be missing, what you suck at, what you seriously need to get done to get where you’re going; you have enough to move to the next thing.

Do.

Even if they’re small steps first, act on those gaps. Sleep a bit early tonight. Take that extra class because God knows what your professor prattled about last week. Go out and ask that local store if they’d like some free marketing help. You might not get it right when you try, but you absolutely won’t get it right if you don’t. For the days you don’t do, forgive yourself and wait till you can act again.

Stumble, fall, and break.

It’s inevitable, so take it as a step in itself; because this is when you reanalyse. Look around again, what detail did you miss. What did you get wrong. What could you have done better, and what could you have done less. You’re broken, not lost- look around, things are a bit more familiar now.

Try again.

Take a new step, or a little bit of a different one. It won’t be the same this time, no matter what. Because you will be different. Stronger, smarter, and closer to the vision than you think. Like a sapling sprouted through rubble.