All of this started with an article I read.
Fine, fine, it was a TikTok I watched.
You got me, it was 30 seconds of a 2-minute TikTok I didn’t have the patience for at the time.
But it was profound, nonetheless.
In this clip of a clip, I saw a woman on the screen—I think she was blonde? I dunno, I was also watching TV at the time—who said that she read an article that mentioned Steve Harvey credited his success to writing down 300 things he wanted.
Now, if you asked me to name 100 people whose success I admired, or even wanted for myself, Steve Harvey would not make the list. In fact, until I saw this half of a TikTok, I kind of forgot he existed. Even still, I had to admit this idea sounded intriguing.
In the moment, half watching TV and half watching half of a TikTok (and here I’ll admit I was also eating lunch), the idea of writing down 300 things I wanted seemed like a fun way to spend ten minutes of my time.
I left the room and went to my desk to open my notebook drawer. Yes, you read that correctly. I have a drawer full of notebooks—some completely full of notes, others with spines uncracked just waiting to fulfill their purpose. And on that day, Steve Harvey was breathing life into a burnt sienna spiral bound I had bought on impulse and on clearance.
To be very clear here, I love stuff like this. Vision-boarding, manifesting, goal setting, strategic planning, color coding, resolutions, evolutions, prostitutions. Wait. Well, you get where I’m going. Happy to whore myself out for an accomplishment, I suppose.
So to sit for a few minutes and write down 300 things I wanted felt less like a revolutionary act and more like a typical Tuesday in Meg’s world.
The first ten came easily. My god, I think of those first ten with almost every waking breath. Then, I wrote the number “11,” circled it neatly on the left-hand side, and felt a bit smug that the desire beside it, as well as the following ten beneath it, were all things that would improve the world around me. Given this, I felt no shame in allowing numbers 21 through 31 to be materialistic items I wanted in my life. A necklace I’ve long desired, one of those hideous massage chairs you see at Costco, custom curtains in our dining room. But as I got to #32, I realized the need for material objects was spilling out too quickly, so I decided to switch to trips I’d like to take: Prague, Iceland, Tokyo, and, I can’t explain it, Seattle.
And then, at #36, I stalled.
I sat looking at the blank line, extending out to the side of the circled number, taunting me: Is this all you got?
The bullying of a notebook enraged me enough to begin writing some truly mundane things for twenty or so lines: fix the chipped paint on the window ledge in the bathroom, have an electrician repair the dead outlet in the living room, buy the dogs a new water dish, fix the girls’ closets.
As I rounded out the “s” on closets, I put the pen down.
I rose from my chair, walked to a kitchen drawer, and extracted a tape measure. I went up to my oldest daughter’s room and climbed over, around, and through the piles of clothes that littered the floor, made my way to her closet, tripped over a rogue shoe and landed at the foot of the doorway.
Our house is 90 years old. The closets are dysfunctional for how seemingly big they are. Just a nice open box, two feet deep by five feet wide, and not a useful hook or cabinet in sight. Just one long shelf—too high for my children to reach—and a metal bar for hangers.
But why hang clothes when you can pile them in the open floor at the bottom of the closet? my oldest presumably asks herself. Yes, why indeed? chimes in my youngest, who has an identical floorplan and closet in the room adjacent to her sister’s.
For seven years, these closets have been an issue, and for seven years, I blamed the children. Don’t worry, I still do. But on that day, with Steve Harvey on my side, I felt a vigor I’d not felt before. I climbed into my eldest’s closet, pushing out everything piled in there (my resistance training for the day now complete, a nod to #9: build some muscle tone, you aging bitch). I sat on the floor, looking up and around the now empty space.
I could knock out that shelf? Lower it? Repaint? Put in shelves? Hire a closet company? Tear down the house and start over? Birth different kids? All ideas were available to me until, oddly, the simplest one surfaced: a modular closet dresser.
Now, I know, you’re sitting there in judgment, thinking: Wait a goddamn minute, Meg. You didn’t give your kids any drawers, yet expected them to put their laundry away? You’ve blamed them for the past seven years, but you didn’t set them up for success?
Uh, yep.
Pretty much.
Now, to be fair to me, I did supply them with a variety of half-baked solutions through the years. Cloth bins, shelves that hang off the metal bar, and one really stupid metal grid thing with buckets I got off Amazon (it was a low point, move on). But to your point, yes. I failed them, not the other way around.
I began to take measurements, my tape measure snapping back and forth with the rhythm of my determination. With the numbers neatly tucked into my notes app, right below what appeared to be a Sonic order, a grocery list, and a line that just read: Amy blonde, Jen brunette (written after I met the couple that just moved in across the street), I went downstairs to my computer and started looking for modular closet systems.
When I tell you the excitement that fluttered in my chest when I found a set of closet drawers that just fit the spaces, and that they were on sale, and that I could have them here with two-day shipping…well, it made that trip to Iceland seem kind of blah.
Less than a week (and $600) later, the problem that had plagued our family—nearly driven us apart, honestly—was solved. No more laundry left in baskets or piled on the floor of the closet. No more yelling at the kids (at least not about clothes). No more tripping over shoes or running around in the morning looking for socks, no more tears from my kids looking up at me saying, “Mom, I’m more than just my closet! Please love me!”
I had to admit, my life had changed because of Steve Harvey. Having temporarily abandoned the list of 300 things—partly to work on the closets (#44) and partly because a new season of Bad Sisters was out—I decided it was time to revisit it.
This time, having marked through one thing and feeling quite a hit of dopamine, I soon found my pen furiously writing. No longer worried about categories, I just let my mind go, surprising myself at the things I wrote: Outdoor pizza oven? New faucet for the kitchen sink? A Rolex???
The heart wants what it wants! I thought as I continued to scribble furiously.
Then I stalled again at #112.
This didn’t make sense to me. I can walk into a store, any store really, and immediately want at least 50 things, and yet my mind couldn’t think of more than 112 things to desire? To work toward? To aim for?
Come on, Meg.
I turned to Instagram (are you following me?) and asked for help. My DMs flooded with ideas—trips mostly, although I had more than four people suggest a pebble ice maker (now #142). I asked friends. The kids. My husband. The woman in the stall next to me (Privacy, #149).
Look, I’m no stranger to wanting. If anything, my wants, my unending yearning, haunt me. Contrasted with my husband, who is the most content human I’ve ever met (his birthday wish list, which takes him weeks to come up with, often just says “socks.” And dammit if he isn’t thrilled when he gets them), I look like I cannot be satisfied. I’ve long punished myself for striving for more. I force myself to write down what I’m grateful for every day, not just because it’s a beautiful practice, but because I feel the need to do some proactive penance for how much more I still long for.
And I don’t just mean material things (although some of my items are just a shopping list at Tiffany’s), but things I want to accomplish, experiences I want to have.
Having that realization, I decided to do what every sane person does when an idea strikes: turn to a spreadsheet. I made three categories: 1) What I Want to Have; 2) What I Want to Accomplish; 3) What I Want to Experience.
Then I went through my list—which at this point was only up to 153 entries—and began inputting the data. I watched the categories fill up and was pleased to find Accomplish had the most entries, then Experience, and then Have. Why this calmed me, I’m not sure. Perhaps it showed me that of all the things I want, most of them are things I want to provide to the world—books I want to write, talks I want to give, the lives I want to give my girls. Next, the experiences I want to have centered entirely around my little family, and the things I wanted to do by their side. Sure, I want to swim with manatees, but not by myself. I want to do that with my kids as my husband takes a picture of us doing goofy faces under the water. And finally, the things I wanted to have made a smaller list than I would have originally thought. You can only put so many luxury cars or diamond watches on a list before your mind naturally curves its way back to a train ride through the French Alps, or a hot air balloon ride in New Zealand.
Seeing my desires, first on paper, then in boxes, began to unlock something in me: the comfortability of wanting. I struggled with the list because as I went to write #102: trip to Italy, I found my pen hovering above the paper. I have already been to Italy. It felt bratty to assume I could get to do it twice, when most will never do it once.
Where did the squelching of wants come from? Is this a Biblical thing (forgive me, I’m not religious)? Is it a gender thing (forgive me, I’m a woman. Could a man please explain?)? Is it that wanting for more when you already have so much feels selfish?
I decided that to find the answer to these existential questions, I had to turn to the only person who would know: Steve Harvey.
I searched for the article in which he had said that the key to his success was writing down 300 things he wanted. Only there was no article. Instead, it was within a clip of him on his talk show instructing the audience to do this exercise.
He warned them that at #75, they will get stuck. He says this is because people are not used to thinking outside their typical life. Their typical behaviors. Their typical wants.
This, he insists, is the point. That's when it occurred to me--this is less an exercise in desire, and more an exercise in imagination.
I sat back in my chair. Hot damn, Harvey.
Hot damn.
That’s the value of wanting. Unlocking the potential of our imagination. Our ambition. Our wildest dream.
After all, had I not sat down with my mint condition notebook, broke the spine, and began to write, I’d be yelling at my kids this very minute about their laundry not being put away.
But now, because of my wants, I’m living a life I could have never imagined.
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