"What we cannot imagine becomes impossible to accomplish." - Thomas Campbell, My Big TOE

"It is the act of creating the life you want (in big and small ways) that makes you feel alive and imbues life with extra meaning. The fact that you can hold a vision in your mind and then, however imperfectly, bend reality a few degrees in that direction." - James Clear

This idea of using imagination, having a vision, and then committing a long period of time - weeks to months to years - to realize that vision by "bending reality a few degrees in that direction" is so inspiring to me. And something about that metaphor actually in my heart feels like a concrete, true thing my actions are doing.

People often talk about "changing the world" and when that language is used, it feels so big, grand, wide, and unattainable. Change the world? Me? That's fucking bananas. The world is a HUGE place. But the fact of the matter is, your little neighborhood of the world is only a teeny tiny slice. "Changing the world" doesn't mean wholesale changing the world to be a whole new universe Rick and Morty style. It's just bending reality a few degrees in the direction of your choosing.

Almost everyone does this regularly and doesn't realize it. On a Friday afternoon, the week's been long and you're ready to take it easy. You've been there before. It's easy for your mind to imagine the scene that'll provide the feeling you need right now - a slice of pizza and your favorite person's company at a picnic table at your favorite spot. You can see and feel it clearly. Fast forward to Friday evening and you're there. This is a small version of bending the arc of reality your way.

It's easy to imagine this because you've been there before and can easily get there again. The farther out imaginations can be more difficult. The life you want for yourself is probably one you haven't lived and felt before. But maybe you've felt bits and pieces of it. Can you put those different pieces together into a cohesive whole? The peace of listening to the waves lapping on the shore, the energy of bringing creative ideas into reality, the calm of not having to be anywhere or doing anything. Those fractured experiences can be turned into a holistic, recurring event in your life. This is the harder thing to imagine, but it is a legitimate future state that you can actualize. You can make this happen.

I take these ideas and apply them to the professional life I'm building for myself. I've got bits and pieces of experience, I have an imagined destination in mind, and I'm in the process of getting there. The journey is the destination - I know there is no true destination, that implies life stops, and it doesn't. The drive to this imagined destination takes a longer time and is more abstract than the drive to the pizza joint. It's easier to bail partway there, but it's just as real.

My life is on a path. I have a job. I earn money. It works. I don't need to change it. In theory I could ride this straight path for the rest of my life. However, there is an almost certain possibility sometime between today and the day I die, the outside world will shift my path. I could get laid off from this job. I could have an accident that changes my trajectory. I could win the lottery. There are outside forces that could bend my reality. I also have the option to be the one who provides those forces. The outside forces will still be there, but they'll have to compete with the forces I'm generating myself.

Four years ago, I had a vision of doing work that capitalized on my natural strengths, didn't rely on persuading people who didn't want to talk to me, and could be done from anywhere on my own schedule. Today, my stakeholders seek me out because I can build them things that make their work lives better and more efficient. I have something meaningful to offer them, and so the partnerships are stronger from the start. That didn't happen by accident. I imagined it, and then I spent years bending reality in that direction.

I don't want the whole world for myself. I don't want to change the whole thing. I mean, I want to impact the whole thing positively, that'd be cool, but to start I just want to skim a little off the top for me. Make my corner of the world what I want it to be. My vision includes freedom, waking up in nature, working how I want on what I want with who I want, serving the people I love, and being surrounded by those people. This manifests already today. I have to work Monday-Friday, but my work is judged on outputs, not the clock. This is a higher level of freedom than I had five years ago. I spend time outside every day. I couldn't do this when I worked in an office, now I walk out my front door and into a park. I serve my loved ones at Meat Loaf and Mimosa brunch on Sundays. The imagined vision doesn't snap into place, it appears slowly. I see it happening already.

I've gone from mortgage lending to software sales to software engineering to building and distributing my own things. These experiences are all related and the lessons learned at each one are relevant to the next step - partially because they're the skills I've built over time, partially because those experiences created the lens with which I see the world, especially the professional one. Each jump built the confidence that the next one was possible. You don't have to swing for the fences on the first try. Do something small. Realize it. Raise the bar. Repeat.

Imagination is critical. The vision in your mind's eye is a real thing. It exists in a potential future state. By taking right action with right intention, I'm casting little votes to realize that potential future in a present moment someday. The thing is, I have to be able to imagine it. So do you. And once you can imagine it, you and me both are capable of driving the world in that direction by bending reality a few degrees.