It’s the new year, 2023, and I always find myself incredibly energized during this period of new visions, new goals, and new opportunities for the future. The Future. I often understand people by their relationship with time. For some, the past becomes these little patches that they stitch together, making a quilt that they wrap themselves up in. They move through life wearing this patchwork of the past, continually adding to it and memorializing all their memories. Other people are fleeting or perpetually in the present. They are magnetic in the way they hold you and themselves there in the moment. And finally, not to put too much of a romantic flourish on it, but the dreamers. The ones that have stepped through the looking glass into the next realm – a new time, the Future. I’ve never subscribed to the idea that Time is linear. This time of year when you get to turn the dial around to reflect on the past and forward to the future has always held a lot of power for someone like me who tends to twitch with anticipation at flipping forward into the future! (Are you dizzy yet?) 

I recently was enrolled in a program and there was a talk hosted on Human Design. I’m not an expert in this field, but my Human Design chart revealed that I am a Projector. At first, I got really annoyed with this result. Is it possible to be insulted by online test results? I’ve always considered myself a “do-er” – never letting the grass grow beneath my feet, a mover, a shaker, a get it done kinda gal, etc etc. “Projector” sounded like a lazy piece of shit thinking up ideas while all the cool kids, Manifestors and Generators, got shit done. It took me a moment to pause, to not step through the looking glass, but pause and be present in front of it – to see myself. The majority of my life has been about creating a plan.  As a Projector, I see that making The PLAN is what lights me up. Now, “making The PLAN” is different from “planning”. See that’s the Future vs Present people comparison I started speaking about. Making the plan is all about having the vision and being the idea person. I have a theory that if one of your major triggers or insecurities is always thinking that people underestimate you, it’s probably because you are a Projector (in Human Design) or what I (previously uneducated in Human Design) intuitively always associated with “Future People”. People tend to underestimate the dreamers because our society places more value on results rather than vision. But the Future People can see it all and it’s beautiful! We can see how it all should come together. We can see all the promise and potential, and we can’t unsee it. Once that vision has come into focus, once we’ve stepped forward into the future frame, it will take a motherfucking FORCE to wake us or shake us from this dream. 

I’m also a Sagittarius so while I love adventure and keeping things moving in my life, I’ve always resented the idea that the Sagittarius sign is “flighty”. Because at my core, while the idea of settling or being stuck seems to be the cruelest sentence I could face, there is an undercurrent of commitment to most everything I do. I’m guilty of probably staying in relationships too long, or of not turning around on a hike even if I think I’ve gone off course, all in determination to see the plan through and in the hope the future I see pans out. In a heated discussion with my partner on the prevailing gun violence plaguing the US, he asked me, “Where does it come from…this hope, this optimism, this vision for change and a better future? Point to something that would indicate things are improving or will improve.” (He’s very much a Present Person). I responded that “it” comes from within, from inside me. There is this fountain of future hopes that never runs dry. Call it a fountain, a flame, call it foolish but it’s there. And while there’s a great deal of beauty, potential and prosperity on the other side of the mirror, there is equal disappointment for us Future folks when we meet these moments and they fall short of their promise. These disappointments might deter some, there may be a wobble in our determination, but usually we dig deep and tap into that Future fuel again. 

So here we are, back at the new year where Present, Future and Past all seem to overlap. We are here meeting our future visions from 2022 at their present and culminating moment, reflecting and weighing the intention against the accomplishment. Archiving what was the future into our past, either pleased or hopefully at least at peace with what unfolded.

Believe it or not, this was all a very long interlude to my introduction of who I am and what I hope to share here. Buck House + Hold is my vision. It’s my seedling that I have sewn almost 4 years ago now. I found this house and property in Maine and I have a plan to create a place that can hold space both online and offline for ALL who want to come together and explore dynamic and varied interests from well-being to literature, art, music, and design. But part of being the one with the plan is that you’re susceptible and very vulnerable to perfectionism. To be less than perfect or less than prepared felt like I was dulling the dream I wanted to deliver. But I’m letting go of that, and hopefully dropping the “dulling the dream” shit for just being real! So part of my 2023 garden of grand ideas that I’m “plan”ting is to be more present. And it’s not just the cliche “be more in the moment” excuse to not have goals. It is to put myself, my plans, my dreams out into the universe, into the present moment. By sharing them with others (even if there are only a few of us) and not holding back the connection that I want to foster and grow in the future, we can instead begin building today. So while this project has taken much longer and been a lot harder than I envisioned, there has always been an undercurrent of commitment and optimism in my pursuits.