Plan B.

The benefits of being a daydream believer. Or even ignorer.

Hello!

Welcome back, and Happy New Year!

Got any plans for 2026? That’s what people say, isn’t it? For me, I’m thinking I might acquire a classic K67 kiosk, lovingly restore it, install it in suitable gravelled park, and rent out boule to passers-by. I’d serve espressos, small bottles of Pelforth beer, and nuts for subsistence. In between customers, I’d read and listen to music. Sounds good, doesn’t it? My very own Pétanque Kiosk. It would be paradise.

Except it wouldn’t be, would it? And actually, let’s face it, I’m not going to do it. But it’s good to dream, isn’t it?

Yes, it’s that time of year again. No, not the festive period, but the time when you reckon with the fact another 365 days have passed, and you ask the question; ‘Do I want to do the same again?’ Apparently the 2nd of January, or whenever people return to work, is the date that job sites see their biggest spike in traffic. People the world over, return to their desks and think, ‘I don’t want to be back here’.

There’s every different version of this, realising where you work is just awful, understanding that there’s no particularly exciting future in what you do, or just being in the wrong place. There are the utterly grim and the ‘not quite right’, and some of it’s in our control, and some of it is not. Whatever the cause and however serious the intent, I think most people start to dream a little in these moments. Which is what that job search is about, a tentative glance at what’s out there, to see if you can picture yourself in a new location, doing a new thing, being surrounded by new people.

As an extension of this exercise, I think most people have some kind of ‘Plan B’. Or more accurately, I think they have several plans which they carry around, some are practical, some are talismanic, and some are warnings.

Whether they are acted on or not, I think these little thought experiments a useful for working out whether you’re currently in the right place. Firstly, the creative exercise of imagining yourself in a different situation is a useful thing in of itself, but it also allows you the mental space to roleplay at another life. In sport psychology, there’s a version of this called ‘visualisation’, picturing the thing happening before it does, and in doing so, bringing it into existence. Hitting a target, winning a race. Manifest destiny etc.

Picturing an experience outside of your own is also how empathy works, which I appreciate is a weirdly obvious thing to say, but I’m constantly surprised these days. However, while we’re on the subject, I do have a lot of sympathy for people who are stuck in a job they’re not happy about. It doesn’t need to be extreme or truly awful, but because I’m a ‘live to work’ person, it just feels like such a waste of time. And also, because I was in that situation once. I worked at a lovely architectural practice for the first few years of my working life, but I knew it wasn’t quite the right career for me, and the real problem was, I didn’t know what I should be doing instead.

I dreamed a lot in those days, mentally (and sometimes, actually) trying on different hats to see if there was something else I could picture myself doing. I think most people do this naturally, and they take different forms, as we construct the new projected narrative our lives. For me, I think they take three vague forms.

The Fantasy.

Firstly, there are the pure fantasies, like, imagining I’m a rock star or something. But this is not real. Not becasue it’s impossible to be rock star (although I imagine it’s fairly hard) but because to date I have taken zero steps to get anywhere near the road that even leads to that outcome. I’ve already, on some level, decided I’m not going to do that. So, there’s clearly another part of my brain that knows it’s not for me actually, even though I still imagine taking to the stage whenever I’m enjoying a particularly good record. But not once during my doubtful time as an architect did I think, ‘I’d better get a guitar’. No, I started looking around at things closer to home. Not out of laziness or lack of ability to dream big, but because I hadn’t become an architect accidentally, there were so many elements of design, drawing, creation that clearly interested me and taken me there, so it made sense the nest step might be nearby.

The Last Resort.

The next main type is The Last Resort, and it’s kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum to The Fantasy. In the slightly precarious life of a creative, most people have half an eye on what they would be doing if it all went away tomorrow, and probably now more than ever. It might be to fall back on more commercial work, or supporting what they do with an adjacent part time job, but I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of imagining a different life entirely on those days when you think, ‘What’s the point in doing any of this shit if it’s going to be such a struggle?!’

In moments of despair, I petulantly pluck the least creative, least skilled, low paying, but evergreen ‘work de jour’ I can think of, and announce that I might as well go and do that then. But even in the act of performing that outrage, it serves as the warning that I would not thrive in that existence, nor would I be an asset to that working world, and reminds me to make some version of what I do, somehow, work. Because I’ve just pictured my life if I don’t, and it quickened the blood.

The Easy Life.

Imagining a life in Rome after a trip in 2025.

I think the third main daydream is the ‘charmed life’ or ‘retirement plan’. This is the one that turns up when I’m burnt out, and done with the hustle. It has it’s clichés, and normally takes the form of something like, ‘Maybe I’ll just move to the seaside and open a little bookshop/gallery/coffeeshop’, with all the naivety and assumption that running a little bookshop/gallery/coffeeshop would be easy and stress free. This is my Petanque Kiosk, and in reality it requires a whole other amount or hard work and talent I don’t currently have. Similar to the rock star dream (but with the illusion of possibility), I have also made no movement to try and fill these shortfalls.

Inevitably, when I’ve calmed down, and resolved the issue at hand, I return to my drawing board, and remember it’s where I am supposed to be. But I’m a big believer in these dreams. The practical, the naïve, the mad, the awful…they all operate to triangulate who I am and nudge me this way or that, to make sure I’m still sat at that drawing board for the right reasons.

THE Dream.

I think there is technically a fourth dream for me, but it’s basically an extension of the life I am trying to live. The most perfect version of it. The original, The Dream. Of course, this too is an illusion, and a shifting target. But it’s a necessary one, and propulsive. It still keeps me up at night, and it still gets me out of bed in the morning. And as long as this version of my life stands out ahead of the others I’ve outlined, then that’s where I’m heading. Where I’m supposed to be.

So dream big, kid. And dream small. Dream to the side, and everything in between. Anyway, this is why I’m not opening a Pétanque Kiosk right now. But maybe…maybe one day…

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A Note On Daydreams.

As I write this, I realise how mad it is that daydreaming was so vilified in my school days. I can recall it being brought up as a negative on my report card; the zoning out on a smart phone of its day. Today, I’m sure that most classroom teachers would kill for their children spend even few minutes on focused, quiet, unsupervised and reflective thought. On any subject.

I also realise my whole career is built on daydreaming. And I love it. I know that it’s increasingly going out of fashion, but thinking, imagining and creating in your mind is one of the few realms of absolute freedom. It’s free, and it’s limitless. It’s pointless and it’s vital. I whole heartedly recommend it.

Reading about peoples’ experiences of living under regimes, this concept comes up time and time again. They can take away everything else, but they can never stop us thinking and feeling things. I feel like the tech companies know this, which is why it increasingly feels like they’re coming for our minds first this time, as the numbing wave of AI surges over everything like a vast, heavy, urine hued, blanket.

Sorry about that, I almost manned the barricades again, but it’s hard not to be on a hair-trigger these days. Anyway, let’s be positive, it’s 2026. And who’d have thought we would have made it? A decade on from that fateful 2016, and yet here we still stand. Haggard but heroic, leaning into that bitter wind with gritted teeth. A grimace or a grin. From a distance.

A ten year old drawing of what I was carrying around in 2016.

Okay, I think that will do us for today. Thank you all so much for reading in 2025, I genuinely could not, and would not, do it without you. For anyone who’s enjoyed the KIOSK, messaged and shared it with others, it really is appreciated.

I’ll see you at the hatch for a coffee and croissant soon.

Owen D. Pomery.