It was a dreamscape of world stuck between futurist utopia and anarchical chaos. The lows are low, and the highs. -wherever they are- must be beyond our wildest dreams.

My bodyless awareness follows a young man on errands: picking up a widget in an antique shop, collecting a Mother’s Day card, skyrailing to the edge of the sprawling city. He has a wrestling patch on his bag. While he sits, ignoring the beige pillars behind him, he's in deep thought - a silent quick-witted conversation with his own quirkier personality. He smirks. For such an ambitious-looking person, he seems to be comfortably chasing his purpose.

Exiting the train, he hits the ground running. Not because he's in a rush but he just likes to run. Around a corner, a sleek office building comes into sight. There are nerdy and ambitious 20-somethings pitching outlandish ideas to each other, two engineers control a drone with a hunk of metal hardware. A motivational concrete bench tells pedestrians "what will you do today for tomorrow?" Inside the environment is different.

When he enters the building, chaos ensues, people dash left and right with printouts in hand and phones buzzing.

The click of heels echos as a sharply dressed professional woman approaches. She is beautiful, the kind where you can see the intelligence in her expressions. "Intel is here and they are talking about a merger." She hastily tells the man as she passes by.

"Merger?! Abi, what do you mean -- don't you mean acquisition? They're so much bigger than us!" But she was already out of earshot.

He continues to the top floor with a bit more hurry and worry. The suits are finalizing analyses and decks to feed their bosses in negotiation - this is when he really knows he's behind. This is quickly becoming a nightmare - how did Jared not know about this and prepare? Alothough confident in his abilities, his lack of preparedness distresses him the most.

Jared navigates through more important-looking and restless suits clustered around the CEO's office, past the secretary that is holding back the crowd of board members. He bursts into the CEO's office and talks to the back of a black leather chair, "what do you need? I can get a valuation report on each party in two hours and get engineers to dream up collaborations and synergies, but what- what is- what is going on?"

Jared catches his breath and shares the floor-to-ceiling panoramic view with his boss for several seconds.

Then in an instant, assertively and quickly the CEO comes out of thought, spins around and gets to action. "Hey, Jared. It's a good day and I'm sorry I couldn't warn you earlier. But I have already taken the liberty of making those reports. I public declared my stake in Intel and intention to buy as much of this dinosaur as possible to transition our quantum concepts into this brand new operations. I want to show you something..." He continues on but I am stunned.

It's me. An older, wrinklier version but that's definitely some version of me. Jesus - I look like my dad!

I can't believe it. I realize then that I had last gone to sleep in a cruddy roomshare in 2025. I was actively failing at life.

I try to hone back into the details of the room and the writinge on the whiteboard to glean a north star that I could study to ensure that becomes my future. I want it to be my future. So bad. The scene is fading away into the distance, getting dark at the edges. I'll be back in 2025 soon.

I keep my eyes clenched. I repeat my current mantras that push me to trust the process:

'...not just the will to win, but the will to prepare to win that changes outcomes.'

'to be willing at any moment, to sacrifice what you are for who you will become.'

I always get stuck on that one... It is hard to know if I should double down or pivot when not too many iterations ago, I put myself in this position.