When a situation has no meaning, you should make your own meaning.

Just like whenever you can’t predict the future, that means you can WRITE it.

Sometimes, the unknown is the best gift you could hope for, because it means nothing is decided — and everything is at your fingertips.

Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash

I’ve been on a reframing vibe lately. A lot of things happened that messed with my feels, and I had to reframe them in order to stay sane. Out of that effort, came this article.

Today’s lesson applies to many scenarios, but I’ll just use one for illustrative purpose here: my difficulty with finding a committed friend / business partner.

So, let me explain what I mean by that, since my problem isn’t immediately identifiable. It’s not that I have no friends. On the contrary, I have many friends, for whom I’m grateful! But all we do is… stay on our own lanes. We do our separate things, live our separate lives, and talk to each other often (hence the friendship). There’s no friendship in my life that I can look at and say: “this person is someone I’m working together with on something bigger than us both”. AT MOST, my friends agree to go to the same events with me — but again, these events are just shared moments. They aren’t something we (Lucy and, say, Anna) are building together and putting work into and “birthing” for OTHERS to enjoy. That’s the essence of my wish: actively join efforts with a friend on a joint endeavour. Merge our lives. Build something where there’s a “we”.

It’s comparable to, say, wanting commitment in love. So, if my wish was about love, let’s imagine I had a boyfriend or girlfriend but couldn’t get this person to put a ring on my finger. Boyfriend and girlfriend (or insert genders here) is “I” + “I”. Any of them can walk away at any moment, the stakes aren’t high, nobody is betting on the other. However, husband and wife (or husband/husband, wife/wife) is a “we”.

I hope I made it clear.

So, the problem in my life has always been that my friends don’t want to commit. As a result, I’ve never had an easy time DOING anything together with another person. Not even school projects. Oh, god, don’t remind me of the school project trauma! I was always alone. Forgotten. Not chosen. Team sports were a bit better, probably because the sports already existed and we were all just playing them — and I have some athletic talent — so I did get picked. But for anything innovative, anything where people would have to “bet” on whatever we invented together working out… people shied away from collabing with me. They’d have these experiences among themselves, but never include me. The nerds got together to work on inventions for science fair, the popular kids came up with events and whatnot, the girly girls came up with fashion trends among themselves… And I was the outcast. The one doing things alone or not doing them at all.

You get the picture. You probably have the soundtrack, too.

For the most part of my life so far (luckily only 3 decades — so I have many more to go, I hope), I’ve considered this problem a curse. Something I just couldn’t defeat. I would play victim of the circumstances and lament that this problem, which was so much more powerful than I, was taking my happiness away from me.

Well, I’m not all that more optimistic today, but one thing has recently shifted:

I started seeing the failures along the way not as a “punishment” from the Universe, but as… practical jokes from the Universe which can come in handy in finding my way to what my heart desires. I’ve been putting a lot of intentional effort into deciphering the lessons they bring.

I’m not just saying the obvious: “oh, failed attempts are lessons, keep trying”. Yes, I know, Captain Obvious! But I don’t need encouragement to “keep trying”. What I need is a roadmap. And I think I’ve just realised I’m the one who will put this roadmap together, step by gruelling step.

Eg. I’ve decided to cut contact with people who just pretend to be interested in joining me for my projects, but in fact wanna waste my time.

The latest iteration of that has been a so-called “friend” (more like frienemy) who fit all the criteria for the oracle, seemed not only willing, but also eager and excited to work on it with me, and gave me all the right signals… Until I proposed something concrete (a piece of work they’d have to do to kick-start this partnership. Nothing crazy, just something that’d require their attention and focus in a committed way), and that’s when they backed away and started DESPERATELY clinging to every excuse in the book not to commit.

Maybe if this person hadn’t come into my life in the context of the oracle — which is what I hold dearest to my heart — I would have just regarded them as “another one” in a long list of people who say all the right words but never put real commitment into what they claim to wanna do with me.

Ya know, it was just like the actress/producer who said she wanted my camera, lighting and editing expertise in order to make short films together… Only to invent excuses every single time we were about to set out on an actual shoot, so our short films stayed forever on paper.

This was like the musician who said he wanted to collab with me on a collection of children’s songs which never happened…

The artist who also wanted to collab, USED MY WORK and almost got away with not paying me — eventually she did pay because she found out exactly who is willing to defend me in court here (it helps to have friends in high places, I suppose lol); But yeah, it was bittersweet because I was hoping for a partnership, and in the end the project just ended up being a thing she presented on her own for her audience as if I never existed… And all I got was the money for my part.

The list goes on… And on… And on.

If I take a victim perspective while looking at these stories, it’s very easy to feel sorry for myself and spiral into misery; as if life was working against me; as if I didn’t deserve any part of my wish, because the only people who seem to flock to me looking for a collab are dishonest and like playing with my feelings.

Well… I’m NOT thinking of myself as a victim anymore, but yeah, the story playing out is still the same: it is true that I attract frienemies who seem to enjoy leading me on and stabbing me on the back later on. But something shifted now in how I’m dealing with these situations.

Perhaps I didn’t do anything about my reaction to this kind of disrespect because the projects in question were just “nice things to do” that I didn’t deeply care about. But the oracle, I DO care about. I pour my heart and soul into it. HOW DARE anyone disrespect it like that.

Truly! HOW FUCKING DARE this person do that! A “no, I don’t wanna” would have been fine. It’s respectful, it doesn’t leave me hanging. A “I’m looking into the feasibility of this because of A, B, and C” would have been fine too. It’s specific, practical, and shows consideration. But no. What I got was excuses; vagueness; emotional weirdness.

I was livid!

But this anger ended up bringing about something constructive.

You see… I used to give these people chances for YEARS. And this time, I’ve decided that as soon as I notice they’re afraid of commitment (not truly weighing the pros and cons; that’s fine, but afraid of commitment, from a wounded attachment sort of place), I’m cutting contact straight away. I don’t wanna hear excuses. I don’t wanna hear elaborate stories. I LITERALLY DO NOT CARE how reasonable their justifications sound. They’re justifications all the same; designed to waste my time; to keep me hoping eternally and never getting what I was promised.

No.

Wanna vent about your emotional resistance to commitment? Bitch, DO THAT IN THERAPY, not to me. I deserve decency. I deserve consideration.

From now on, I’m only giving away time and energy to people who PROVE, INSTANTLY, WITHOUT DELAY, that they accomplish what they promise. I don’t care if they’re gonna be impulsive decision-takers, I don’t care if they have a zillion flaws to tackle. I want this ONE thing from people: commitment. And if they give me commitment (not half-commitment, not almost-commitment, not commitment just for a day and then panic-quitting. Commitment! It’s not rocket science. They should commit for enough time that we can actually create and offer services or products together. So, a year AT THE VERY FUCKING LEAST)… I’m taking that.

Is that to say it will be perfect? Hell no. Maybe I have a lot more learning to do in order to one day have the kind of partnership I’ve always dreamed of. Maybe it’s my life’s mission to learn how to get there! I don’t care. I couldn’t be arsed, seriously, I’m just going to keep trying and keep reading in between the lines of the challenges that come my way to find the lesson in them.

So…

To the person who almost made me spiral, almost made me lose my fucking mind: a huge THANK YOU.

I know you wanted me to fail. I know you wanted to destroy my hope in this dream, by “sucking” all the time and energy I have, so that I wouldn’t be able to use this time and energy with someone more worthwhile. And at that, you failed miserably. I’m laughing at your face now. I hope you find karma many times bigger than what you attempted to put me through.

The meaning of this repeating pattern in my life probably doesn’t exist on its own. I have to make it. And what I’m deciding it means is: a dare.

These people who for some reason (which I can’t know why and don’t even wanna know) want me to fail are DARING me to succeed. And I fucking accept that challenge, bitches. You’re gonna see me shine whether you love it or hate it. Front-row seats.

So by all means, keep creating that resistance. I’m using SPITE as a fuel to take me where you don’t want me to be. Even if it takes a lifetime, that’s fine — in fact that’s PERFECT. The process is what I want. The trying. Because every step I take will be in defiance against the likes of you.

This is the last piece of junk I’m leaving behind in 2025.

Happy new year.