Der Mensch Tracht, Un Gott Lacht
2025 Goal Update
Man Plans and God Laughs
On December 30th, 2024, I published my 2nd annual Year in Review. At the end of that blog post, I listed my 2025 goals for the year. Eight days later, I was laid off from my job.
There is an old Yiddish saying, “Der Mensch Tracht, Un Gott Lacht,” which translates to, “Man plans, and God laughs.” My mother-in-law parrots this adage regularly, and my wife and I regularly refer to it as “getting scammed” when we go out to dinner, but the restaurant we want to go to happens to be closed.
Whatever preconceived ideas I may have envisioned for how the written goals would play out were immediately wiped away as I began to search for a job and network in whatever ways I thought worked.
I came to the realization soon after I began recording episodes for Third Space Indy that I was more quickly heading towards my written goals than I could have ever imagined. I didn’t do it consciously; it’s more that my goals, which I had written a couple of months before, aligned with my ideals more deeply than even I knew.
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Goal zero: get a job?
I want to draw attention to three of these goals in particular:
To join or create a community locally and grow it
To join or create a community (not locally) and grow it
To set a course for life and to reorient the sails to head in that direction
If you are on this blog, you have likely heard of Third Space Indy. If you haven’t, check it out wherever you listen to podcasts. But Third Space Indy didn’t exist in January, February, or March. For more than half of the year up to this point, I had no direction, just a loose idea of “reach out to people I want to talk with and schedule some time.”
When you are recently laid off from a job (and you are interested in getting one), you effectively have two choices of action:
Shoot your resume into the ATS void in hopes you get a good scan
Get recommended or referred to a job by someone
I chose path two. My core thesis, even now, is that the best way to get a job that I want is to talk to people in my immediate environment — to meet like-minded people and to stumble into an opportunity. Except I feel like opportunity stumbled into me, even if a job has yet to.
What began as purely a networking outlet began to morph into something more. I was spending time having conversations with people I chose to seek out. We were talking about community, talking about Indianapolis, and talking about them. This became the format that I chose to begin sharing with others through a podcast. Thus, the goals I shared above were beginning to become fulfilled unknowingly and by pure serendipity.
To join or create — the verbs — a community — the what — locally or not — the where. This is what I believe I have succeeded in so far. I’ve created Third Space Indy as both a community for myself and the like-minded people I get to talk to, and hopefully to help drive Indianapolis to be the more deeply connected place it can be. But I’ve also joined a community that runs deep with creatives, community advocates, and friends aligned with me and my goals. The remaining piece “and grow it” is what I believe is left to be done, and I’m just getting started.
The rest of it
I want to address the rest of the explicit goals as well, and my perception of my progress. The simplest:
Meet my niece!
I believe this is happening next week on Juneteenth. I am just grateful for my brother coming to me at this time instead of me going to him.
To read and, through reading, be able to voice my beliefs more clearly
I spoke to someone recently who asked me if I am a reader. I laughed a bit before I said, ‘No.’ This goal is going poorly; the last book I read to completion was in December. But this week in San Juan, Puerto Rico, I hope to complete one or two, including Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, and Abolish Rent by Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis. I have a third, but I don’t see that happening 😂.
To continue to develop myself and deepen my appreciation for those around me
I appreciate my past self for writing this goal. It feels the most evocative of my pathos for the year. It’s also the most open-ended of all the goals. And again, more so subconsciously, I have been acting upon this.
I feel a deeper love for my wife with each passing day. I have met people in Indianapolis whom I’ve only known for a short amount of time, whom I feel connected to in an unspoken way. I even send appreciative texts and emails to people that I never would have before. Third Space Indy is actively making me a happier and better person.
But I think I can do more. And this ties into all the rest.
I can send more messages, I can be more thoughtful, and I can share more love than I have so far. I like where I am, but there’s so much more work to be done to get us out of this dark hole.
The progress on these goals has been surprising to me. But I think that losing my job was the catalyst I needed to create this scenario. I was thankful at the time, and upon this further reflection, I still am.
There is so much more of the year left and so much more work and Work to be done. Let’s do it — together.