A reflective hodgepodge of missed opportunities.
Have you ever missed opportunities before?
Scrolling through my Google Drive folders, I paused on Vision Boards. Opening the folder, I realized I hadn’t truly made a “vision board” for 2025—I’d made a spreadsheet. I saw my 2024 vision board and excitedly opened it.
Starkly, point blank, staring me in the face: practically a blank page with stiff black letters, LARGE font, centered both horizontally and vertically on the page—
The words:
"Dramatic"
“I win!”
Laughing, I suppose I didn’t miss that opportunity. I met the moment head-on—dramatic, sarcastic, and determined not to fail. With my British sense of humor, I laughed into the veil of life’s fate and declared, “I won, dramatically.” Couldn’t have played out any other way, I surmised.
2023 was a creative collage—a blue background with a blackberry pie, hiking trails conquering tall mountain peaks and rivers of raging waters, alongside technical problem-solving strategies. Images of tractors, cell phones, and old dot-matrix displays cleverly spelling out C E O circled my board. Bethenny Frankel of Skinnygirl Martini lit up part of the drawing—pure inspiration. Because I am going to be like her. All in creative picture formats, structured across the Jamboard. This board symbolized. I can have my pie and eat it too.
Then there’s 2025: that stiff Excel spreadsheet with aggressive timelines…
A few I’ve kind of failed to meet.
According to it, I should’ve been a millionaire by June and have published a Pulitzer-winning book by now.
I’m just a smidge late, HaHa.
Spectrums and humor, right?
All I can do is reflect and chuckle.
Should I be the 2023 version—flouncy and free with ideas but no deadlines?
The 2024 version—throw the dice into the air and tell life to stick it?
Or the 2025 version—spreadsheet-tight and timeline-bound?
Mid-year reflections have always been a part of me, but I’ve never reviewed three years of my vision boards.
But why not? I’m here.
I thought back. What year filled my happiness tank—set my gauge to full?
Easy. 2023. My colorful and playful vision board held my best memories. I twirled and kicked my feet in the rain of White Sands, road-tripped from the East Coast to New Mexico and back again, meandering off the interstate for local cuisine, downtown coffee shops and boutiques—even museums, spattered here and there.
In 2024, I finally flew out to meet a friend of four years I’d never met. We first connected while writing a script. I was writing, doing a bit of scouting—just playing around. She was our producer. Somewhere in the mix, she became my business coach on another endeavor. We clicked. Same politics, same faith, kindred souls. We fell in as friends long before any project had ended.
I escaped, on a whim, never telling anyone. I felt like a kid sneaking out at sixteen. My friend picked me up at the airport, and as friends do—sleep took a very back seat in a stretch limo. IDK what time we went to bed, but we talked into the night.
2024 was dramatic on more than many fronts—career, family, friends.
Such a whirlwind, I can’t remember the year.
Perhaps I should’ve written more than a single page.
But I liked my dramatic page.
“I win.”
And yet—in 2025—that Excel spreadsheet.
Detailed with biannual, quarterly, monthly, daily, and hourly goals…I’m not kidding, color coded too!
I’ve made more progress in the past six months than in the past two years combined.
Reflecting on these boards…
Geez, I thought—is there something to this vision board magic?
Do the images we choose shape the energy of our year?
Now it’s July. I’m halfway through.
And while I’ve accomplished a lot...
My happiness meter is on empty.
Empty.
Yes, Empty.
Finland—Finland is the happiest country in the world.
The playfulness of my 2023 Vision Board, and I’m not sure if it was the smart-a$$ness or defiant tone of 2024, but I can see now…
The excessive structure and work of 2025 drained me.
Maybe it’s time to change 2025 to a board.
No — not maybe. I will.
I’ll build a new one: bright with pictures, full of intention —merge them all.
Take the beauty and wild joy of 2023: the bluesy New Orleans music drifting through humid streets, the sweet smell of desert rain, the thrill of discovering an Alamosaurus’s bones in a New Mexico museum, and the long, long dusty backroads that pass through downtowns forgotten by those who race down the interstates.
I’ll splatter in a sarcastic blank page or two—just to twist toward the unknown—while keeping those winding roads on a definitive destination to success in December 2025.
Why not?
I want to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning author—what writer doesn’t?
But I’ll never trade my happiness for success.
I’ll not let my sarcasm turn cynical just because I missed a ride and had to run though the storm with my bag pack wet. I’m still singing.
I’ve found a happiness station—and I’m filling the tank.
I’ve missed a few opportunities this year, and became too frustrated. I wanted to give up. Drop a goal by the wayside while elevating another. But I knew—if I didn’t persevere just two more months, I’d sabotage myself forever.
Maybe 2025 was the year for my spreadsheet.
But I forgot to add in fun.
Or maybe—it is the visual format.
I’ve missed chances this year to smile.
I missed concerts.
I missed seeing SNL’s Andrew Dismukes and James Austin Johnson perform right here in my own backyard.
I missed time with family and friends
My happiness meter is nearly empty.
Time to refill it.
How?
Boutique shopping.
Kayaking and rafting.
Hiking outdoors.
Dancing, DJing, writing, volunteering, working smart—not just hard.
I’m rebuilding Vision Board 2025: Version 2.0.
So here’s your reminder too:
Don’t miss life’s opportunities.
Create | Dance | Write | Explore | Be Beautiful
And yes, plan—but leave space for the unexpected.
Life is, indeed, spectrum and humor, right?
Lira Wren
© 2025 Lira Wren. All rights reserved.
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