Show notes:
Video from Dr. Tiffany Shelton that guided this reflection
Transcript:
Ismatu (00:03.534)
Welcome to Blueprints, volume three. Today, as I said, we are gonna be discussing what went great, what went not great with 2024 in regards to systems. So just in case you're new here or you missed last week (because I did upload it, but I was not allowed to send it out through the regular newsletter function because Ghost was still approving me), I talked about:
- What is the value in me producing these things for you? And the answer is:
- to keep my blueprints,
- to keep them in a public space, and
- to be able to talk about the projects that I have going on with a mode of time-sensitive accountability.
Helpful for me and also helpful for you! Usually I'm in my pajamas, but today's a family day. So I was out, I was dressed, I was bopping around.
All right, let's get ready to rumble.
We're looking at 2024 in terms of systems.
So that's a little different than, you know, just like a general, did you hit your goals or not? Especially because I didn't actually set any goals in 2024. I had a vibe, I had an aura, I had a general direction that I wanted to move towards. But in terms of tangible goals, as in goals that are very specific, goals where there it's a clear, like you didn't or you did it or you didn’t, goals where your material conditions have changed because of the results of your habits, your actions, your foresight, your knowledge and your execution… I didn't actually set any goals. had like, I had zero going on. Um, the top of 2024 saw me losing Baba Sekou Odinga and that was just, it beat my ass. Wow. I didn't, I did not, I have not felt acute grief like that in quite some time. Like fact, the entire first quarter just kind of like blipped by me. I thought I was gonna be able to just like rebound and get myself up a lot faster than possible based on previous performance. And as I wrote down in 2023, I have an adult body now. I am no longer a teenager. I am no longer an adolescent. I am in the beginning stages of this adult body and this adult body is not playing with me.
So when this adult body says, slow down, we need some time to process grief, previously that has been something that I can just hit snooze on and like, you know, have a system failure later. No, my body does not even get me to the system failure point. It is sit down, we are processing this grief. It's very serious. I didn't know that we were not negotiating!
I wrote down some wins, some challenges, and some means of practicing radical acceptance. So this is coming to you from Dr. Tiffany Shelton. I am going to be talking about this lady for at least the first quarter because I think the things that she has recommended, she is a PsyD. I believe she got her doctorate in psychology and she studies neuroplasticity, production, and what is the difference between people that set goals and get them, the people that don't set goals or set goals and then don't achieve them.
This upcoming year, 2025 for me in quarters is going to be, already is in fact, a goal oriented year. I am about production. I am about meeting my deadlines, my self-imposed deadlines and the ones that are external to me. I am about making sure that the work of my hands passes, not just with ease and with diligence, but with results. So for that, I need to take a really honest self inventory about what worked and what didn't. Honestly, the hardest part about sitting down and filling out the self inventory was the wins. I'm really hard on myself. I'm really, really hard on myself. It was very difficult for me to sit down and go, what did I win at? Because I'm only thinking about the things that I didn't get or the things that I didn't do correctly or the things where I really, really feel like I dropped the ball. So.
It took me like a prompt, multiple prompts for me to be like, no, ismatu, truly you do have some wins, you did do something right. So what were they?
Wins from 2024
My biggest win was that I came back to my body after feeling really acute grief. Losing just one of the best, like most expansive, most incredible people that I've ever met. And then also I think it was about like six weeks after his death, not even… early March, yeah, I got a cute month in at some change. And then I found out that my mom has cancer. So it was really tough. We started the beginning of the year in a little bit of a whirlwind. Someone said I laugh when I get uncomfortable. I want you to have a great rest of your day, whoever said that to me, because I've thought about it since.
This is the first time that I've ever been really sincerely challenged in terms of how I deal with mortality, how I deal with the loss of my caregivers, how I deal with the loss of parents. It's not that this is my first endeavor with people that have raised me dying. It's that this is the first time that I've ever dealt with that grief in healthy ways. It's the first time that I've ever not used one of my vices to get me through that difficult period.
Vices includes sugar. Sugar is my biggest vice. It's the hardest one for me to kick because it's everywhere. It's ubiquitous. Vices includes workaholism, because I can work my body like I'm a bull plowing. Like I, my body will really genuinely do whatever I ask her to in earnest. and sometimes I can abuse that about myself. Vices include alcohol. I don't even like alcohol, but it's just like so easy to get. Vices include cannabis use and any sort of things that like kind of alter my mind and take me out of having to think for a while or having to be responsible for my thoughts. I know that I am only 26. I turned 26 in 2024. This is the most responsibility that I have ever had and also the least amount of responsibility that I will ever have again. Maybe there's a world in which I live to be like old and senile and I am entirely the… the project, the loving work of somebody else, but this is the least amount of responsibility that I will ever have again in my adult life. I can't afford at this point to not be sober.
Like, sitting down and really reflecting on 2024 and what has passed– you good? We're also having a paint session off screen. [ismatu is talking to their family member off screen] Careful. Do you need a new page? Okay, honey, sign your name. What color do you want?
Pick a corner and sign your name.
Ismatu (08:38.473)
Yeah. An artist always signs their work, always. That's an original. Okay.
Ismatu (08:53.223)
I really like my life.
Ismatu (09:04.243)
So, where was I? Yeah, this was the first year where I managed grief without falling into my vices that just like take me out of my body. Now it means that my work suffered a lot, that my work output suffered a lot. And it also revealed to me that my work expectations are based upon my exploiting myself. My work expectations are based upon that I work like a dog, that I don't spend time with my family, that I sacrifice sleep, that I put work above basically everything but God, and that is just not tenable. That was once the life that I had to live to get to a certain point. When I'm thinking about me in high school, there was no way that I was going to make it out of those circumstances alive if I did not commit to the grind and put production above basically everything else in terms of how I allocated my time.
And now it's not even that I don't want to do that. It's that I can't afford to. I have an adult body that needs to be kept in a better orbit than what I previously was doing. Like: I can't work myself sick anymore. I can't miss sleep. I can't miss meals. I can't miss time with my family. Like I have too much responsibility at this point. So there was a lot of work losses this year. We're trying to talk about them. However,
One of the things that I won was breaking this cycle of reactionary workaholism. I also did finish my book. It was like kind of the only thing on my to-do list for this year. And it isn't even necessarily like a to-do list that I wrote down. It was just like what was playing on repeat in my head. I likely would have finished it a lot faster had I just, you know, written down an action plan, but bygones, okay? Where we are implementing new systems in 2025, also starting now.
I finished it not when I “planned," and planned is in quotes because there wasn't an official plan, but when I could. And I do think that I have the best version of this book that possibly exists. I also got really, really excellent work done with DEWY. We're going to talk about DEWY– and I keep saying like next time I want to talk about my projects, but like that needs to be a video on its own.
I got really excellent work done with Dewey. That was hard. You know, like I'm not only am I doing something that's very new, I'm also producing, editing, creative designing. Like I'm wearing so many hats to produce the art that I wanna make. And that's difficult. I don't know why I don't give myself enough credit. I made amazing progress. I met amazing people. I created a really amazing art, like some sets of really amazing art and I'm not even done.
Like shout out to me, truly, ismatu, you did that in 2024. Again, that's going to make more sense like when I show you some like project previews, but yeah, you know, stay tuned. I also got a lot of really cool bucket list items. I don't even think this is an exhaustive list. I would have to go back through my notebooks. However, I had my homecoming. I went to see my father's family. And that was like, I will never experience joy like that again.
[ismatu is talking to their family member off screen] Hold on, give me 15 seconds, okay? You want me to move this? Well, I guess now's a good time, because there's a barking dog, huh? All right, do you want another page?
Well, this one, don't you want this to be on its own so it can hang like this? Can I show this off?
Ismatu (12:54.511)
An artiste!
A couple of bucket list items.
I went home to see my family, my father's family in Numea Village. Because my dad didn't even tell me, we were from a different tribe– I actually found out. I was about to say, “He didn't tell me until 21," but he didn't tell me. I found out. I didn't know to even go to visit them until I was 21. And then to go there, right, you have to like rent your own car. It's, you know, like five or six hours on an unpaved dirt road. You need to know the people that are taking you need to know the people that you're going to see because there's no way that you can like type in an address on Google Maps or something and find your way. So it took me a minute to get all of that in order. But I went this year and that was like, that was one of the most grounding, humbling and orienting experiences that I've ever had. I also got to take portraits of the Ebola survivors that I've been working with.
And that's been a desire of mine since my undergraduate career. So I'm really happy to have that fulfilled. And I'm excited to show you that work. Attending Baba's memorial, as sad as it was that he was dead, that is an experience that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I also met a really lot, like just a lot of beautiful people. I have names here and I'm not going to read them all, but I met some really incredible artists, professors, speakers, authors, just like people that are not just grounded in their craft, have a craft that propels their life, propels their excellence, propels their views on the world. And it was, again, a very orienting experience. It kind of helped me reorient myself to find my true north.
And then also the amount of progress that I have made on rice farming this year, I am so proud of myself, especially progress for not having a concretized plan because I did not really know what I was doing.
In the next– no, I'm gonna talk about it now. There's this, I've been reading the 12 week year and something that they talk about is like this curve of understanding what you set out to do. I can't remember if they call it the curve of optimism or something like that, but it looks like a sinusoidal wave and you know that it's gonna come up and down and up and down. For all intents and purposes, I already understand time as something that happens in an orbit in sinusoidal waves across an axis and the axis is the trajectory of your life where you're going. So time loops around you, time orbits around you, right? I hope that I'm drawing this in post, great. So you have this curve of understanding here between when your energy levels are super high, right? X and Y axis, I'm drawing this for you all. When your energy levels are super high and you are jazzed up and you're ready to go, right? This is your energy levels on the Y axis, your level of optimism to do the thing.
super, super high and here's time. So we start up here, right? Like, because you don't really know what you're getting into. So you're like, yeah, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna be amazing. It's gonna be incredible. You have no idea what you're getting yourself into. So you're starting out super optimistic. And then the more you kind of find out, right? Like you're like, oh, actually, this is gonna be way harder than I expected. And then as challenges continue to come, you actually drop, right? We were like this below that X axis into what the author calls the valley of despair.
In which you're like, I'm never gonna get this done. I'm never gonna complete this work. I don't know what I was thinking. The costs of the life that you wanted come in before the benefits every time. You have to pay up before you receive the benefits of whatever you set out to do. So all of that hard work, all of that gumption, it's not going to pay off until you have filled every single one of those costs. And honestly, I think that's protection from God.
Because if I got the benefits before I actually knew what they cost, I would be reckless. I would be reckless with what I set out to do with my time, with my oaths, with my projects. Like I would be reckless if I tasted all those sweet, fruits before I knew what it was going to cost me. I think that it is a mercy of divine planning that you have to feel the costs of what life is before you feel the benefits. So you're down there in the valley of despair.
You're like, this has cost me so much and I have gotten nothing from it. Do I want to continue? And this is when most people turn around. If you don't turn around, you will come up, right, into informed optimism. You're going to be like, okay, that was really difficult, but I think the worst is behind me. I have a better skill set. I understand more about what I need to do to be able to get this done, to get this thing, to live this life, to have this project, to have this reality. And then you succeed eventually because you will succeed. Your success is inevitable. So once you come to that point,
Once you get back up to the x-axis of informed optimism, I'm optimistic, not because I don't know any better, but because I do know better and I know that I can do it. You have success and it's the best thing. It's the best thing in the world. And then with that success and with that expansion, you begin to want more things. So then you're up here and you're like, okay, I'm about to do this next thing. You enter into uninformed optimism and then the cycle starts over again. Such are the loops of time.
Great. So in terms of challenges, right, especially in terms of those places where I entered the valley of despair, it was about time. It was about how much time I was losing. I think this year would have gone a lot differently if I had just taken an honest self inventory on, you know what, ismatu? You are more beat up than you're giving yourself credit for. You are not like in a great mental space. You keep breaking down. Let's just allot yourself to straight months off so that way you can heal properly. and then get back to work and come back to work with a plan. I did not do that. I just kept crashing, burning, not communicating, getting up, forcing myself to work, crashing, burning, not communicating, getting up, forcing myself to work. And it resulted in, I was about to say it resulted in me not getting my goals, but again, I didn't set any goals for 2024. I had an idea of what I would have liked to see done.
But it had no plan, it had no timeframe, it did not have clear markers or metrics of success. So instead of knowing whether I succeeded or failed at the things I set out to do, I just spent the whole year feeling like I was constantly failing because I had no plan, because I had no plan. And when I don't have a plan, I expect instant gratification and that's a problem.
what worked about my performance in 2024?
So in noting what worked, honestly, work went best, life went best, things went best when I was having fun, when I was not taking myself too seriously and when I was deciding that I was going to have fun while I got things done, regardless of whether it felt good or not. The things that got in the way was how sad I was... not in general, but how sad I was at my vague image of success and how much I felt like I wasn't achieving. Now, did I have a good metric for whether I was achieving or not? No. All I did was say, I'm not doing what I want to do, but I had no plan, right? So of course I felt like I was failing all the time. What I learned was that I need to have habits that keep track of time and I need to have clear markers and metrics of success.
So that way I know when I am failing and when I am succeeding. I don't think it's a bad thing to fail. I have no moral hangups about the idea of failure, about the idea of not doing what I set out to do, about the idea of being honest about those things. I think the best world possible is one where you can fail and not feel like you are a bad person or that you need to punish yourself or et cetera, et cetera. I don't feel that way. And that is not how I live my life. I am very results oriented, which means that I need to have clear markers for success. I need to know when I cleared the bar. So that way I don't feel like I'm just like jumping for the sake of jumping.
It's like I'm jumping high jump, but without a bar. So every jump I'm like, that wasn't high enough. When there was no bar, there was no metric to tell me whether I succeeded or failed.
what did I learn?
All right. In terms of what I learned, I learned that I need to have habits that keep track of time, even when I'm running on autopilot, which means that I need airtight systems, right? My habits need to be things that I produce without even thinking about it. Like I got it, you know, even on my saddest days, on the days where I don't have a lot of energy, on days where I'm not particularly in my body, my habits need to take over, my autopilot needs to take over. And my autopilot right now is...
I just haven't, I haven't, to be honest, I have not programmed an autopilot since I was a teenager. I have a lot of trauma that has been living in my body from how hard I had to work to get to college. And I swore that I would never work that hard again. God will always make you a liar. It's not that I don't want to work hard. I actually really like working at like what I'm capable of. It's that I don't want that work to be exploitative. So as hard as I work at production, I need to work just as hard as the maintenance of my body and the maintenance of my mind.
I think those will be systems that are a lot kinder to me. So here's where we get into practicing radical acceptance. We have themes amongst the challenges that I faced this year, which was really about just losing time, blinking and watching two months go by and realizing like I haven't gotten anything done. Especially around my project with Social Income. That was the hardest sell because it unearthed all these traumas that I was experiencing that I just like didn't deal with. From how difficult that project was to record when I was 19 to how difficult I find it to be feeling like I'm begging for support about something that people don't care about. It was both a challenge to my expectations for instant gratification and a challenge to the sadnesses and the pains that I didn't want to feel the first time. like, just cause you don't want to feel your feelings, actually hot tip, does not mean that they went anywhere. They will wait. Feelings are some of the most patient, they will fossilize waiting for you. Okay.
So I was going through all these things that I thought that I felt 19, 20, 21 that I didn't. That in actuality, writing this book and working on this project, realized I didn't feel these feelings. I drank these feelings. There's a child here. So I will not tell you all the things that I did with those feelings, but it wasn't feel them. Okay? That's not what happened. The themes among the challenges entitled the burnout beast, right? Ismatu gets...
I turn into a giant fire-breathing crab. When I am overstimulated, when I'm stressed, when I'm upset, I, I work until I drop. That's not a viable option anymore. And when I drop, I don't want to talk to anyone. I go nonverbal. I don't want to communicate. I don't want to ask permission. I want to overspend. Basically, the cycle that I pinpointed in the 2024 reflection is that I have an impossible standard set because I haven't actually set a goal. So the standard in my head is perfection. Once it goes through the process of each month to get a pen, each month to take that pen and put it to paper, each month to take these thoughts of perfection and name out what perfect would look like for you, there's your bar. Cause I can do things. to my level of excellence. It's just that I need to have it clear. When it's not clear, it is this ambiguous idea of perfection. And that is not actually something that is achievable, right? If I send you to the store with a shopping list and the shopping list is do it perfect, do you know what to do? No, okay. So that's where I start. Do it perfect. I have no idea what to do. What makes perfect or what makes excellent or what makes a job well done, okay? I procrastinate with fear of an impossible standard, right? I...
brute force progress because I'm like, I can't keep standing still. have all this forward momentum energy that I'm not doing anything with. It's making me exhausted because I'm staying here vibrating and I'm not doing anything. I brute force all my work. I collapse because I brute forced all my work. They don't have any systems in place. I over indulge to lick my wounds and say, work so hard. You know, you that's where the politics of deserving companies comes in and beats your behind. You, you, you work so hard. "You deserve."
I overindulge, particularly with sugar, particularly with vices and losing time and feeling like I don't need to keep track of time, okay. And then I feel imbalanced, right? I know that I could be doing things better. And then I'm like, okay, this is when I would look at the plan that I made and course correct. But because I had no plan in place, I go back to the plan in my head, which is that I expect perfection. It will define metrics of success.
And then the cycle continues, okay? This is the most beautiful, sacred dance to call the burnout beast out of existence. This is what I'm doing. That is who I'm harkening. She gets big and bad. She fire breathing. She, she, she, she about to be like, who, who's messing with my baby? I'm about to fight whoever. What's making you so afraid? What's making you so paralyzed? I'm about to, you know, that's when the burnout beast comes out. Okay. Burnout beast protects me while ismatu the shell of a human cause ismatu has been working too hard, goes and sits somewhere in silence and doesn't talk to anybody for a week. And it's just like, I don't live a life where I can afford to just disappear like that. I don't live a life where I can afford to take a break from my own mind using my altering substances. I have too much responsibility. I don't even dislike that responsibility. It is noted to me that every time that I feel needed and every time I feel necessary, I want to run in the opposite direction. But I don't actually dislike the responsibility. think that I...
I think that I just need to do a kinder job of taking care of myself within the responsibility sustainably, right? So.
What negative emotions did I experience in 2024 in reaction to not meeting my goal?
maladaptive guilt:
I felt maladaptive guilt. I don't think guilt overall is a bad thing because guilt can mobilize you. There's productive guilt or adaptive guilt, guilt that like propels you to be better. Okay, I feel really guilty about like survivors guilt, for example. I feel really guilty about the fact that I have survived into adulthood when people who deserved it, quote unquote, just as much as I did didn't.
And instead of saying, well, I shouldn't feel guilty or, know, I did nothing to earn it. Right? Like, that's the source of the guilt. Why me and not others? That's an impossible question for me to answer with this human corporal body. Instead, I will take that guilt and allow it to mobilize me to make sure that I can create systems where more people live to see adulthood. Cool. that's an example of adaptive guilt: guilt that like helps me correct the imbalances and the injustices, that created the circumstance that I'm in.
Maladaptive guilt, specifically around my ability to just throw my phone into the Pacific Ocean and never talk to anybody again, means that I'm living with all these lies about what people must think of me because I decided not to communicate. Everybody must hate me. Everybody thinks that I gave up on the project. Everybody thinks that's that or the third. Girl, you don't know what everybody thinks. You don't know what anybody thinks. You haven't spoken to anybody. And that's a problem. This is especially true around my communication around fundraising, around slaves, and social income.
Everyone has been inordinately patient with me while I have acted like a teenager. And I'm honestly realizing that I have not had to develop my skills of communication when I am in crisis since I was a teenager. I stopped doing it because, especially when I was in grad school, it's not like anybody did anything different. Like there were no accommodations for me. If I lost family, I lost tens of family members to COVID and nobody really cared. They were just like, damn, that's crazy. You come to class? So it was just like, okay. So communication does nothing. It's not helpful. I'm just going to shut up and do what I want to do.
I'd actually rather ask you for forgiveness than permission because you're not going to accommodate me anyways. So I'm just going to do what I want. Cool. I understand why ismatu acted like that. ismatu doesn't need to act like that in adulthood. You need to learn how to communicate, which means you need to come out of maladaptive guilt and head into adaptive guilt.
exhaustion due to a lack of concentrated export
I also felt exhaustion because I had all this forward energy with which to do something that would just like, that I didn't have a system.
It's like unregulated electricity. Like I would have this burst of energy that had no conduit, that had no channel. So then I would just be zapped and I would feel exhausted and it would stagnate. It would create this feedback loop of feeling really tired and drained all the time.
so like for me, because I'm a spiritually led person, straying from the work that God calls me to isolates me from like true communion and connection with God. Cause I'm like, I pretend not to see, I pretend not to see the work. I pretend not to see, you asking me to take accountability. I pretend not to see you ask me to reorient for whatever reason. I don't want to do the work. The excuse doesn't matter, but it literally, it keeps me from connection with like the thing that orients my life and gives me energy and conducts my vision, et cetera. So I just feel exhausted. I feel exhausted because I'm not using my energy properly. And I feel exhausted because I am isolating myself from the source of my energy. And it's a problem.
fear of my mind / fear of success
We also have fear of my own mind, right? I think the scarier thing than failing is actually realizing the heights and depths of my true capacity. I'm not actually scared to fail. I'm scared to succeed. I'm scared to succeed because that whole, you know, this...
The sinusoidal waves of time, right? The arc and curve of going from uninformed optimism to the valley of despair to informed optimism to ultimately success. When you succeed, it's not like you just stop, right? It's not like you ever win the game. The stakes get higher, the level resets. So whereas you're coming with like these pretty shallow waves over the course of time, as you continue to learn, you continue to level up and you continue to grow and you continue to want bigger and bigger things, the stakes get so much higher. Does that make sense? So I'm like, do I actually want, can I pay the costs, right? Because if I succeed now, I'm going to continue to want bigger and bigger things. And that value of despair is going to be more and more intense, right? The responsibility on my head, the calling of my hands is going to be more and more intense. Do I actually want to submit myself to that call?
Ismatu (42:17.656)
The answer has to be yes, but in my body, 2024 was not a year where the answer was yes. 2024 was a year where I said, please wait, I am not ready. Bless you. I did not know. I've never had a relationship with my Benevolent Divine where wait was a reasonable answer, because the things that I was asking for were basic survival. I had a friend called Jessica who said: it wasn't even sink or swim. It was sink or be an Olympic swimmer. And that is a word. I have never forgotten about that. I couldn't have waited, right?
And now I have reached a level of spiritual, emotional, personal, familial, financial, et cetera, responsibility, maturity, and agency where if I'm not ready for the next thing, I can say, actually don't want to, I need us to pause. I need to consent to this life. And I didn't know the answer was yes. So in the same vein of like challenges, meaning I lost a lot of time and I wasn't consistent and I didn't set goals and I just couldn't reorient myself, it was a win to know that I have more agency. I don't have to like let life happen to me. Sometimes I feel like blessings are beating my a– Blessings are heavy.
There's a burden, right?
I didn't know that I could just ask to pause and that was really helpful to know. So I've been dealing with fear of my own mind, not because of what I can't do, because of what I can. That is a negative response because I ran from that fear rather than talking with that fear. But again, none of these emotions inherently are bad. They were just maladaptive. I was not using them. All emotions are neutral. You either use them or you don't.
You know, so I wasn't using them. was running from them. was hiding from them. I was fighting them rather than just feeling them and hearing what they had to say to me. Then there was also these secondary emotions, right? These are the primary emotions that I just listed maladaptive guilt, exhaustion, and fear of my own mind. There was also shame because I didn't feel like I was doing enough, right? And shame is just about either it's external, like other people must feel, so you're ashamed, or I feel like about me. And so you're ashamed. And then I felt overwhelmed because I just kept feeling a need to compensate.
conclusions
So that's it for the 2024 reflection. In terms of systems, I'm going to tell you what symptoms that I'm implementing. I'm implementing a new operating system called the 12 week year. I talked about a little bit in the last video.
I will be talking about it extensively in the next video as I show you my 12 week year and just like be honest about what my goals are, how I'm completing my goals. So that way we can have like strong metrics of success. So that when I sit here and talk to you all about, you know, how are things going? Where are my projects? We have clearly defined understandings of what is going well, what's not going well and where I need to course correct. I am also implementing a three tier journaling system. Now this is previously what I have lived my life by, but I've been letting systems journaling flop.
So there's a systems journal. there is a, like, this is my system's journal, what I'm reading to you all from, right? This is my system's journal where I not just set my systems, I maintenance my systems. This is, this journal requires a lot of review. You have to go back and read, what you did the day before, the week before, the month before. it has my color coded plans.
It has my ongoing projects. It has my daily, weekly, and monthly and quarterly routines. And you have to carry this with you. I am never far from this notebook. has my agenda, right? It's literally my operating system. It is as good as my phone. Honestly, it's better. I would not cry if I lost my phone. This? I would weep.
We also have my feelings notebook, right? Where I just go to emote. It's covered in dust because I'm sitting outside. I'm going to need a new one of these because I'm wrapping this up. I usually go through about one of these a year. I think I started this one in like April. Let's see. Yeah, April 18th, 2024. I wrote down some goals. This is when I was like tripping. mean, like even just to learn what kind of systems that I need, it took me a while. But basically I come here to ideate and I come here to emote.
And it is always helpful to have a written record of what you were feeling and when and why, so that you can examine yourself as someone who has patterns and triggers and systems of your own accord. It's helpful to be in communion with my emotions like this. Not all of my emotions get written down, but I use this notebook, if not daily, at least several times a week. And then we also have my...
Dreaming notebook, for manifestations, right? Being able to visualize a life that I do not have yet materially. I don't believe that that's how time works, but you know, we're going to get there. Olufemi is using some to color right now. So we'll show you that next time.
So we have the 12 week year. We have my three tier operating system. We are going to be talking about self hypnosis and, and also a physical routine.
All right. I think that's all. I think that's all. Am I missing anything? 2024 for 24? Nope. All right. So that's what we're doing in the next one. I will see you there.
Thank you so much for sitting with me. I feel like I should have a cute sign off. Olufemi, I need a cute sign off. Do you have any ideas? No? How would you say bye to like it friends you had that you saw on FaceTime?
Hmm.
Ismatu (49:13.043)
Like, bye-bye emojis? Okay, how would I make a bye-bye emoji with my hands?
Ismatu (49:20.564)
Show me.
Ismatu (49:25.268)
That's perfect. All right. Bye-bye emojis. See you next Monday.