January 18, 2026
Life likes to test you.
Every once in a while, life throws you a bone. Finally, you get the thing you’ve been so patiently hoping for, praying for. For months, perhaps even years, you’ve willed it into existence. Imagined every possible way it could come true.
You've built it up so much in your head that it almost feels real. You’ve felt all the feelings without ever having experienced it firsthand. Then life bridges the last gap and finally makes it real.
You bask in the bliss of it. You feel like a fucking winner of the game of life. Like the king of the world. If you can manifest your dreams and desires, how much better can life get?
But after the first few days, you realize the bliss isn't because you're content with what you have. It's because the process of actualizing your dreams into reality is intoxicating. The realization snaps you out of it. What excited you was receiving the prize. The prize itself was worthless.
So now what?
The void.
You sit with the emptiness for a minute. The thing you wanted is in your hands, and it feels like nothing. Worse than nothing, because now you don't even have the wanting anymore.
But here's the part no one tells you: the problem wasn't the prize. The problem was you thought getting it would change something.
It doesn't. You're still you. Same questions, same restlessness, same void looking for something to fill it.
The chase was a distraction. A good one. It gave you direction, purpose, something to measure yourself against. But it was never about the thing at the end. It was about avoiding the harder question: what do you actually want your life to feel like?
Willing something into existence feels powerful. But it's brittle. You get the thing, and then you're stuck with it, exactly as you imagined it, with no room for it to become anything else.
The things that actually last are built differently. Brick by brick. Ugly at first. Full of adjustments, compromises, moments where you're not sure it's working. But at each step, you can shape it. Mold it into something that fits. Something that couldn't have existed in your head because it required the mess of reality to take form.
The best things in life aren't willed. They're discovered. They show up looking nothing like what you expected, and only become yours because you were open enough to notice and patient enough to build.
What do you actually want your life to feel like?
You won't find the answer by willing things into existence. You'll find it in the mess. In the ugly, slow, uncertain process of building something real.
Pick up the hammer and get to work.