06/04/2026
☕ A year ago, I created a playlist called:
I Desire - I Have Arrived
Not because I had arrived.
At least not in any way that anybody else could see.
And I couldn't even imagine how I was going to get through the next few hours, let alone build a future. Again.
Yet I know myself.
And of course there was no other choice.
The playlist wasn't accidental.
The title wasn't accidental.
I knew exactly why I was creating it.
I knew exactly why I was exposing myself to many of those songs, those ideas, those emotions, those possibilities. That title and subheading. On repeat.
Others arrived through suggestions from "the universe" here and there throughout my days.
Some were the soothing and safety that I couldn't cognitively repeat to myself convincingly even one more time that day.
And this was all day, every day.
No exaggeration.
Minute-to-minute support of my internal state.
Others were just enough stretch.
Just enough expansion.
To — leap.
It was part of my passive and not-so-passive cognitive rewiring. My somatic care. My nervous system care.
Not forcing. Not convincing. Not pretending.
A deliberate practice.
A deliberate environment.
A deliberate decision to repeatedly spend time with nothing.
With possibilities that did not yet have physical evidence in my life. People tend not to believe you've arrived until you become.
That's the misunderstanding. That's the trap.
They assume the becoming comes first.
That evidence comes first.
That permission comes first.
That certainty comes first.
But arrival happens before the becoming begins. You must participate before there is proof. You must move before there is certainty.
You must spend time with possibilities before they have evidence attached to them.
Many of the very things we are taught to distrust are often the doorway.
Imagination.
Participation.
Experimentation.
Practice.
Exposure.
Repetition.
Fallibility.
The possibility of being wrong.
Not flaws in the process. Part of the process. Fallibility is often the secret sauce.
—
This playlist was different from the one where I processed my anger.
I intentionally created two separate experiences because I intended to shape and protect the associations I was building with my healing.
—
One environment was for processing.
One environment was for becoming.
—
This became, and still is, the playlist I work with while creating, writing, spending time in imaginal spaces, exploring future-oriented states, and working in expanded states of awareness.
It was a deliberate environment.
🧭 A deliberate orientation. One which has continued to both shape and be shaped over time.
A deliberate practice of repeatedly spending time with possibilities before they had physical evidence attached to them.
This playlist began almost entirely with gentle tones and instrumentals.
That was all the whole of me could handle. All four bodies.
Mental. Emotional. Physical. Spiritual.
That version of me could not have tolerated the playlist it has become today.
The nervous system wasn't available for it. The emotional body wasn't available for it. The physical body wasn't available for it. The capacity simply wasn't there yet. The identity was remembering. Becoming.
—
If you've been following along or participating in my work over the years, you'll know that the music changed.
The tones changed. The emotional intensity changed. The scope changed. The activation changed. The playlist grew as I did.
What began as something soft enough to be survivable eventually became something vast enough to support a much larger version of myself.
Tonight, after opening Applied Reality Mechanics™, I found myself listening to that playlist again.
And what struck me wasn't the title.
It was remembering that this wasn't a playlist Spotify handed me. I named it. A year ago.
A year ago, I created a container for a future version of myself.
Tonight, I found myself sitting inside of it.
Not because everything is finished. Not because there are fireworks. Not because I've reached some final destination.
But because so much of what once existed only in imagination now exists in reality.
The membership exists.
The book exists.
The architecture exists.
The conversations exist.
The rooms exist.
The work exists.
And the bit of pressure that I imagined would be here tonight largely doesn't.
Instead, I'm not sitting here listening to music, actually thinking about bed earlier then I have all week, looking at what has already been built, and remembering that arrival rarely feels the way we think it will.
(That will never not get me — How we simply cannot know what we don't know until we know it. 🙃 Physiology.)
Sometimes it's quiet triumph — Gratitude.
Usually it's in the "still becoming," especially once you receive that you've already arrived.
That you never actually left all along.
🩵
And now I'm curious if you'll ask yourself:
As you wander the interwebs tonight...
What song feels like the soundtrack of your life right now?
🎧
🩵⇄🧭
