Blueprints Vol 2: To Where (00:00.91)
Hello, good morning or whatever time of day you're listening to this. I have for us a freshly washed face that has been air drying for honestly longer than I would like, but I was running around trying to get myself set up. I also have for you an agenda that is very full. Look at all this teeny handwriting. I'm so excited about this. Welcome to Blueprints Volume 2. Actually, this is a really cute, I'm gonna just posterity, you know?
[ismatu takes a picture of their laptop setup with their film camera] Framing, framing, framing. no, the flash was on. how embarrassing.
There we go. Great. So as you may or may not be able to tell, I have a desire to keep my records. Mostly because this past year has evaporated the…TV-like static that happened in my brain when I had to reconcile my public-facing self with my private self. There was no in-between. I was either pretending that it didn't exist or I was on stage. And that level of fracturing was causing a pretty significant amount of cognitive dissonance inside of me. Now, that cognitive dissonance manifested itself in short-changing my ability to change my material world.
The world? Meh. How much does Thee capital T World actually exist? You know what I'm saying? I would argue that we have a multitude of small infinities encapsulated in this thing that we call the world, which also in and of itself is infinite in its ability to regenerate. That might have been a lot. I'm actually not gonna unpack that. Just, you know, journal about that one later. My world is what I'm trying to talk about. I think that I have the capacity to change my world.
This is what I can do with a little bit. Let me find out what I can do with a lot. So I don't know, somewhere along the way in 2024, my brain just flipped and I was like, I am going so soft. Like I could be going so much harder. And the thing standing between me and the life that I could be living is just increased organizational skills. So one of the things that I have committed to, for 2025 onward is the keeping of my records because I know that I'm only going to be existing in social media in this way until I go to medical school and then I'm done and I'm never coming back. I'm never coming back. This place, it does things to my brain that I don't like. So once I get into that long form study again, goodbye, goodbye. I think that it's incredibly useful being on social media as a bootcamp in communications. It's also,
It's necessary for me to know where the people are congregating because (1) I am the people, (2) I love the people. I want to be able to make sure that things are accessible as they possibly can be and social media is the new TV. Back when TV was being established, especially in the United States, my God, all Hollywood had every single one of their panties in the biggest twist up their ass about it. They refused to have televisions in Hollywood movies despite the fact that most Americans were watching said movie on their in home television, like it was absurd. What I'm trying to say is sometimes, especially if you feel in any way removed from the public, better than the public, more lauded than the public, et cetera, you don't want to be a part of public spaces because they feel common. My disdain for social media was once like baked in elitism, honestly, especially when I was in college, when I had zero social media, not even a Pinterest, man, I was just out here reading.
It's not that I want to be distant. It's that I don't like what this place does to my brain, quite frankly.
All that is to say, ramble ramble ramble, I'm realizing how much I have the capacity to do in the next two to five years before medical school, because these are my last traditional working years, right? Then I go into medical school with the systems that I have built. All they need to happen now is maintenance, and then I also should my trajectory continue on the path that I'm on, which is like...
periods of huge exponential growth and then a plateau while I rest. that continues over the next three and a half years, I will be just like a regular traditional celebrity by the time I'm finished here. If I do everything that I want to do and then some, a regular traditional celebrity, potentially a household name.
I'm realizing how helpful it's going to be in five years for someone who stumbles across my videos or wonders how I did X, Y, and Z to have me going, here's how I did X, and Z. Here's what I planned. Here's what I tried. Here's what I failed. Here's what I did again, et cetera, et cetera. I want to have a safe space with which to be able to do that with you all and a place where I can receive feedback in real time because you all might see something or think of something or know someone that I don't.
So that's what I'm doing here. I think we explained that in the last video. Now, I'm a big fan of acknowledging your trajectory. It's not just what you're doing, it's where are you going with the thing that you're doing? Because everything that you do in life has a trajectory. I was just talking to my mom about this. I need something on my lips. I sound just like her, it's horrible.
I didn’t bring any of my good lip gloss either and I'm so mad at myself about that. My skin has been so stressed out lately. And I'm out here fucking playing games. Hold on, let me open the window. It's warm in here.
To my mom this morning, I said, cause we were doing some stretches to help her regain her posture, her queen-like posture. She's had now like a couple operations in her spine and one really serious surgery over the summer. so I found, y'all know Movement by David. I don't know if you would, but he's a TikTok sensation. That little white string bean man. He's so bendy. He says, “Stay flexy!” He's really cute. He has, some free movement work books available on his website. I downloaded them because I too am getting back into regular exercise and they were way too easy for me but I also was a professional dancer. So the movement that my body requires now to maintain its homeostasis is very intense. So I was like, what am I gonna do with these? But then I'm here with my mom. We had a weekend, having currently a weekend before Christmas. That's where the pajamas come from.
You see the name brand? This is how I know that we have made it. Cause like my idea of luxury, luxury was being able to walk into the mall and just buy Victoria's Secret. Can you tell like what class I grew up in? Right? So when she presented this with me, to me for Christmas, I was like, my gosh, wow. Look at us. So we're doing these exercises, right? And I was like, mommy, you have to think about what you want in two years.
She was like, yeah, the motivation. I was like, no, the motivation is only going to get you out of bed today. And if you have the motivation tomorrow, great. If you have the motivation tomorrow, great. But motivation is not what's going to take you from this to this. It's in two years, I know that I will need this back to do X, and Z. So I'm doing it today. Motivation is not what takes you to point A to point Z. Motivation might take you from point A to point B. It might take you from point A to point E. But it's never going to take you all the way there because there will be days in which you are not motivated. There will be weeks in which you are not motivated and you will fall to the strength of the systems that you built. You'll fall to your habits.
A word, a word that I too needed. Everything I do, I want to think about why I'm, what's the trajectory here. So it's not just for you all as much as you all like to claim how magnanimous I am and how selfless I am. Actually, everything I do is self-motivated and it just so happens that I fundamentally believe that what's good for me is also good for my neighbors, my colleagues, my family, you all, cetera.
Sunscreen. Got to. LA Beautyologist has such great videos about sunscreen and they use for black people. Would recommend. Anyways, so it's not just about providing the public blueprints. It's also for me, I am like, need to be able to track my progress, to talk about my progress.
And to talk about my progress in a way that situates what I will be doing in three or five years now. Like I need to hone these skills. So I made for us, now that I'm done with my skincare.
Y'all heard of the 12 week year? So this is just a regular, regular planner. I don't typically talk about products that I use like on like TikTok or whatever, because y'all don't need any free promo. And quite frankly, I don't like to compel people to buy things that they don't need. You don't need most things. However, this is one that I'm really loving. I think that I'm going to continue to buy it forever. It's Japanese made. I don't know what it's called, but I will say there's embossed like engraving.
I think it's called like the 365 notebook because there's 365 pages um grid-lined love it, okay. I'm a journal fiend. I have multiple different kinds of journals that serve different purposes. We will one day be talking about the different kinds of journals that I have we can get into it but today you know we're keeping things very basic very simple so at the front of the journal right?
I didn't do nothing crazy. Just straight up started tracking. Okay. I got the journal October. said it's October. It's November. It's December, et cetera. I have these drawn out until March of 2025. And then if I flip the journal over, I did it upside down to differentiate. I have what is going on in my day to day. I have my to-do lists. And then in addition to my to-do list, I have added in reflection questions for every day.
So for example, yesterday was Sunday, December 22nd. I wrote down what I did because I didn't get up and I didn't do my to-do list the night before. And so I woke up very like, brazzled that day. But also Sunday is the day that I take off. So it makes sense why I didn't schedule my day. I said, what does today need and what does tomorrow need? And then I put in my thoughts and ideas. OK. And then at the end of the night, I write down the things that I am grateful for or appreciative of. I don't think that gratefulness and appreciative are the same emotion.
So I make sure to record both. Gratefulness, in case you're wondering, is what are the things that I like toiled for that I now have? Like gratefulness acknowledges that there was once a lack for me or a need, an unmet need, a desire. I am, for one, always grateful to be housed. Appreciation. I am also appreciative of being housed, but generally appreciation are the things that I love.
Blueprints Vol 2: To Where (12:49.41)
that have no, that were not once bitter. Appreciated is just like, I love that. Like, I love that. Like, I appreciate this scarf. I have never lived a life where I did not have something to wrap my head if I didn't want it. So it's like, this is something I appreciate. You know what I'm saying? I don't know if that is clear, but we're going with it. Okay, so, and then also I write.
Good morning, Ismatu, and I write what I love about myself every night so that I wake up and I look at it and I go, wow, thank you, me. I love me so much. Okay, great. So in addition to writing down my appointments, my needed correspondence, my primary and my secondary tasks, and also the Brownie Points tasks, and you don't gotta get to this today, but if you do, that would be lovely. But since these things are on your mind, at minimum, you do need to set a date for when these do need to be done. And then my reflection questions that I talked about. I also wrote us for Blueprints Volume 2. What am I doing here? Like what am I setting out to do? What's the trajectory of this? I realized that the question I'm trying to answer here is, so what is my plan for 2025, right? If I'm talking about my projects and my systems, what are the projects and systems that are going on in 2025? What do I want to see? how done do they need? What are my markers of success? There we go. Right.
I think we already talked about this. So just to recap, Primary goals, accountability, because I need to be in the practice of explaining what I'm doing to people and also situating what I'm doing in the trajectory of where I'm going with things, right? That leads to my further expansion. That's another primary goal, where I can see myself grow and also anticipate my growth so I have room to grow in the first place. Like in the same way that you buy potting soil before you need it because you anticipate that your plants are going to grow out their pots, right? And also open source organizing. That's what we just talked about, this whole desire to provide blueprints because I can't tell you what to do in your communities. I don't know you and I don't know your communities, but I can tell you what I've done with mine. So that in case those methodologies are helpful to you, you can go in, edit what you need to, copy, paste, et cetera, and do what you need to do. Great. So.
Blueprints Volume 3 is going to be: what systems do I have in implementation? What has not aided to me? It's basically just like a strong review of the output of 2024 in regards to systems thinking. Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows is the fucking GOAT when it talks about systems thinking. It's so good.
It's such a good book. I feel like I recommend it every third business day. I can't stop talking about that book. So we will be reviewing my 2024 and also my habits in 2024 as a result of the systems that I have in place. We will be making tweaks to those systems so that way we have specific things to measure these blueprints by. Like what am I doing? How did I do it? Am I doing the things that I set out to do? What are my markers of success? Okay. Because it's always, it's very easy to feel like you have failed or that you're constantly failing.
if you don't have any clear indications of when you have actually been successful. If you don't have markers for what you want to do, you will always feel like you're not doing enough, or at least that's the case with me. Great, so just as a little teaser, right? Systems that I do have that I'm incorporating you all into, review on Mondays. Mondays is a day where I get up and I review the last week so that I can set up the next week well. I am a strong believer in taking a strong, honest, no bullshit inventory.
You need to be honest with yourself about what you have and what you don't have, what you do and what you don't do, and why. The reason I write down all my to-do lists is that I can see what I did not do. And then I can ask myself, Ismatu, why are you slacking in your correspondence? Because that's really what's been slacking for me is my email and my WhatsApp is a mess. It's people that love me that are like, did you die? I just can't. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed. Like I talked about in volume one, I get so overwhelmed that I get nonverbal and then I just want to chuck my phone off to the moon. I never want to see it again.
So that means that I need systems to support me in my correspondence when I am feeling overwhelmed because it can't just be ismatu’s at 0 % battery, check back next month.
Review days on Mondays, something that I have historically been very good at and something that I'm going to continue to be very good at because I see the benefit. I also have strong journaling record keeping. Like I said, this is not my only journal, okay?
There is... just as a teaser, cause I'm gonna tell you about my projects later, like in the next one. So there is a journaling course that I've been working on for quite some time because working with clients, I realized like,
So many people, don't know how to journal and B, have trauma that they need to undo with journaling. and journaling, journaling benefits, the journaling meditation, I'm going say it again. And like the journaling meditation, self-hypnosis trio. Yeah. Like nobody is teaching it like that. I don't know why I'm going do it. Okay. So strong journaling. And then I also have the strong ability to actualize potential.
All the things that you see me do, I do by brute strength, quite frankly. My systems are ass. In terms of the day-to-day administrative work, the day-to-day course, but like the day-to-day, so much of organizing is just fucking meetings and paperwork. I'm ass at that, okay? It's usually like I have like a quarterly shit moment in which I realize I haven't done any of my paperwork. I haven't, you know, paid that nominal fee. haven’t figured out the the BOI compliance, cetera, et cetera. And then I'm holding up projects because I don't have strong administrative skills that are set into my day to day. It's not that I can't, I can. It's that I allow them very quickly to overwhelm me and then I just like throw my hands up, pretend I don't see it as if it don't need to get done. Everything that I do, I actualize my potential very easily. I'm just using brute force to do it rather than having systems that actualize potential while I sleep, okay?
while I dream, while I dance, while I do other things, right? So systems that I do not have that I am acquiring, organizational habits, not just skills, because I have the skills. I know that I can do it. I've done it before. put myself through college and grad school, but primarily, quite frankly, by brute force. I want those habits. I want those systems because I have the skills. Administrative excellence means skill plus habit. Skill plus habit equals excellence, okay? Just because you're good at the thing does not mean that you have the system necessary to be good at the thing every single day. You can do it once, does not mean that you can do it 20 times perfectly in a row. Okay, I need the system. I also need systems that allow me to prioritize non-urgent tasks because the non-urgent tasks will kick your ass at the end of the day. You will always get done what you feel like you need to get done. That thing in the morning when you wake up and you're like, my God, I gotta get that done, I gotta get it, you're gonna get it done. You will get it done.
Because you know it's urgent. know, like the consequences of you not doing the thing, you're gonna get it done. The thing that you don't do is Spanish, Spanish homework for me, okay? Like my Spanish is abysmal and there's no reason for that. I keep being embarrassed. I keep being in situations where I'm like, wow, if I had been studying my Spanish, like I told myself that I would all this time, I would not be in this position right now. And then we have, yeah, so non-urgent task priority means that before I do the things that are urgent, the things that I need to get done,
I'm going to do those anyways. The first thing that I'm going to do are those things that are not urgent because they're the things that are going to help you over time. And systems building is all just prioritizing the things that are not urgent because they're the things that are going to build with you over time. Then finally, habit tracking. Because I've been like...
I feel like Pinterest really ruined bullet journals for me. was like, okay, since y'all so big and bad, since you better than everybody else, talk about, you know, checking off when you drink enough water and when you like ate vegetables, but you think you're better than me? That's really how– I'm such a hater. I didn't realize I was a hater until I realized that I really needed to start doing. I realized that the thing standing between the life that I have and the life that I want are these things. Habit tracking, non-urgent task priority administrative excellence and organizational systems. Okay, which means that I really do gotta be writing down when I did shit and when I didn't so that way I can focus. It's not about also I will say I think it was that I was focused on like I don't want to punish myself. So I would rather just like tell myself it's okay. I didn't do it. It's not that it's not okay. It's that you do have to figure out why you did not do the thing. You're the thing that this is me.
I'm looking at myself. You, ismatu:
The reason that you did not do the thing is because something got lost somewhere. You didn't realize it was important. You got overwhelmed. You came across a thing that previously has given you trauma and your first trauma response is just to drop it and like pretend that you don't see it and look away. If you didn't do it, that's okay. I'm not going to beat your ass. I'm not going to punish you in any regard or speak poorly to you. I just need to know why you didn't do it. Cause if these things need to get done, that means we gotta move through the mountains that we got. Okay? That's from me to me, you to you, ismatu.
Really all this is coming from, I'm 26. I am no longer, I mean, yes I'm a young adult in the scheme of adulthood, but the grace that you give yourself, that you're taught to give yourself being in your early 20s, is out. I'm just in my 20s now. It's not that I have to have everything figured out, or even most things figured out. It's that I realize that...
There are some things that I don't want to take with me to 27. I don't. There are ways in which I know that I could be better and I'm just procrastinating on getting better because brute force works. It's not that brute force doesn't work. It's that I don't want to be using brute force for the rest of my life. And I have this mind and this body for the rest of my life. So if I get in the habit of working myself till exhaustion and being in these constant cycles of burnout, because I am using brute force all the time and I have not erected any systems that can help me along with my tasks, what is life gonna be like when I'm 40? You know? Like if I'm willing to take it into 27, I'm willing to take it into 40. This mythical idea of, well, ismatu then we'll have it figured out. ismatu then we'll have it figured out because ismatu now figured it out. I don't have to figure it out overnight, but if I'm willing to… to take it into 27, 28, if I'm like, ah, whatever. That means I'm gonna be willing to take it into 32. I'm gonna be willing to take it into 48. All the black women in my family struggle with stress and have adverse health effects happen to them in their 50s. 50s is young, young. In their 50s, they're getting stress-related chronic illnesses because, I mean, of whatever was stressing them out for me.
I stress myself out with how much I expect of myself and I don't set myself up well for help. Not even just help from external parties, right? I don't help myself. I'm just like, well, worse comes to worse. I can just brute force my way and get it done. Yeah, I can. ...Is that actually the system that you want? Is that actually how you want to be treating your body and your mind? In Krio, we say you wanɔl mɛn. You wanɔl mɛn.
You just have one mind. There's one body. Am I certain that this is the way that I want to live my life?
Word, okay. So I will see you next Monday. We're going to be talking about the systems that I had in 2024 and the systems that I will be building in 2025 to get through the projects that I want. That's probably going to be like a longer video and it's going to require some diagram drawing. So just like, you know, come a popcorn, guess. Have a good day.
Oh, also: I had sparkling water here. Because every time I sit down to do these with tea, I just get to talking, talking, talking. And then the tea gets cold, and I'm mad at myself. Tea is not a talking endeavor. It's not. Unless I'm OK with drinking it cold. All right, have a good day. :)
Works Cited
LaBeautyologist on darkskinned people using sunscreen
Twelve Week Year summary by Dr. Tiffany Shelton