Before yesterday I’d never heard of Doechii.
Her Grammy acceptance speech showed up in my feed, so I looked her up. I read she’d risen to prominence after creating YouTube vlogs during the pandemic, so I went to her channel and tried to find her earliest video. My internet was being weird and just showed me this one.
She talks into her laptop, eating crisps, saying she’s just been fired from her job and she doesn’t care. She says she’s going to try and get an internship at a record label.
It’s not an interesting video on its own. She gives no context and no details. There’s no resolution, no takeaway. If you don’t know her, and you’re in an impatient mood, you’d likely shrug and say “and…?”
But that’s not the point – she wasn’t trying to “do” YouTube, she was documenting a real moment in her life, in real-time.
Five years on, Doechii has won a Grammy for best rap album, plus two MTV Video Music Awards, a BET Award, two Soul Train Music Awards and the Rising Star Award from Billboard Women in Music.
Five hours on from watching her video, I’d seen it pop up another 10 times around the internet.
Weird.
Two nights ago, I started reading “Manifest” by Roxie Nafousi, a cheerful orange hardback that’s been sitting on my To Read pile for a year. For whatever reason, it felt like the right moment to start making some changes. I read about the science of it, the quantum physics theory that we attract the energy we put out into the world. We have control over that – we can choose to vibrate at a higher frequency, to attract higher frequency things. We decide what we want to do, we put the work in, we vibrate.
Interesting.
Last night I dipped into my blog archives to try and find something well-written and timeless to share with you today1. At random I picked out a piece I wrote in 2020.
Inspired by a podcast chat I’d had with comedian Bec Hill2, I wrote about the need to zoom out from your current busy day-to-day work life to set goals beyond the old-you dream you’re currently maintaining.
A few months after our conversation was published, Bec was announced as the host of a new kids’ TV crafting show. It didn’t happen to her out of the blue – this is something she had decided she wanted, and had aimed her efforts towards. She was absolutely perfect for it, and did a great job.
Did I pick that blog post out because I’d already started vibrating at a higher frequency? (I didn’t see the date til I’d re-read the whole thing.)
Is that also why I suddenly heard about Doechii and found that particular video of hers from 5 years ago? (I don’t usually read up on the latest music news.)
Five years is a good block of time to measure things by.
In five years, Doechii went from being fired from a job she didn’t care about to winning a Grammy. (I look forward to learning more about that journey.)
Five years ago, I had recently ended my solo music project of 15 years to launch a new one, Penfriend, in May 2020. I was living in Bristol, recording music by myself in a colourful attic room. A pandemic was right around the corner. I’d started running twice a week, and was making my third and final bid to complete the famous Julia Cameron book “The Artist’s Way” (I did it!). I’d made a list of ways I wanted to change my life in this fresh new decade, and I was taking positive steps every day.
In February 2025, I’m working out of a different colourful attic studio in Nottingham. I’m still doing my thing, maintaining my 5-years-ago-me dream. And what a gift! It’s still one of my current-me dreams, but I know that I’ve put any future-me dreams on hold to keep the wheels turning.
It’s time to start making some new plans. It’s time to dream big again.
When violent, racist narcissists are causing chaos on the world stage, hurting people every day with their actions, it feels ridiculous to write about manifesting. When genocide is ignored, when our bodily autonomy is in the hands of powerful men, when trans rights are being erased, when tech bros have WAY too much influence and N*zi salutes go unpunished, it can feel redundant to focus on my own supposed day-to-day problems, let alone my future plans and dreams. What do I matter in all of this?
I’ll never forget a post I saw a few years ago that read: “It’s not manifesting: it’s white privilege”.
I’ll carry that reminder with me. It’s important to check ourselves.
But I’m still going to dream big, because I exist too, and I can be more helpful to everyone when I’m vibrating at a higher frequency.
I’m thankful for the life I manifested through my previous actions, thankful for those who make this possible by supporting independent music, and thankful to inspirational figures like Doechii, Roxie and Bec for reminding me that the future is full of possibility.
Where were you 5 years ago?
Where do you want to be 5 years from now?
Let’s dream big together. Let’s take care of each other.
Have a wonderful week.
Love,
Laura xxx
Check out Doechii’s work here, Roxie Nafousi’s work here and Bec Hill’s work here.
- I failed. I found two fatal flaws with my idea of sharing that older piece with you:
1) It contains a paragraph about a recently disgraced author which is central to the point I’m making, and he can absolutely do one.
2) I’d somehow confused the words “infinite” and “infinitesimal”, which are basically opposites, and the sting of embarrassment is too fresh in my mind to consider reposting it.
Oh, the shame.
↩︎ - 🎙️ Listen to my conversation with Bec here. ↩︎
