The lie of someday

Michael Le · 17 June 2026 · 6 minute read

There is a list you keep in your head. Not the to-do list. The other one. The someday list. Someday I will start the thing. Someday I will leave the job. Someday I will get my body back, fix the money, call the person, write the first page. The someday list feels responsible. You have not given up on the dream. You are just waiting for a better time to go after it. That is the trick. Someday is not a plan. It is a waiting room where dreams sit politely until they die of old age.

I had a big one. For a few years I sat in a safe job in commercial property. Good money. I was good at it, which is the trap. Every Sunday night came with a quiet dread, and I would lie there and tell myself someday I would build again. The building years were behind me, I said, the way you say anything at 11pm. Someday had a nice ring to it. It let me keep the dream and skip the risk. I was forty-three, then forty-four, then forty-five, and someday kept not arriving. Of course it did not. Someday is not a day. It never shows up on the calendar.

Why someday feels so safe

Because waiting costs nothing today. That is the whole con. The bill for waiting does not arrive in the post. It arrives quietly, a little each year, in a currency you do not notice you are spending: time you will not get back, and the slow shrinking of the person you could have been. You think you are protecting yourself. You are paying a debt collector who never knocks.

I know the other version too. I came to this country as a baby with nothing. I was working in a takeaway shop at eight years old. Nobody in that shop ever said someday. You did the next thing because the next thing had to be done. Then later I got comfortable, and comfortable taught me to wait. That is the part to watch. Someday does not breed in hard times. It breeds in comfortable ones.

The right time is not coming

Here is the part nobody tells you. You are waiting for the right time, the spare money, the clear head, the moment you feel ready. None of it is on its way. I quit at forty-six with a head that was not clear and a plan that was mostly hope. I did not feel ready. I have since learned that ready is not a feeling you wait to arrive. It is a decision you make and then go and earn. If you wait to feel ready, you will wait forever. And forever is just someday wearing a longer coat.

How you actually kill it

You make it smaller. Someday is huge, which is exactly why it never starts. "Build the business" does not fit in a Tuesday. "Write one paragraph" does. The day I quit, I did not have a company. I had one page written, then a system built, then a skill learned at midnight. Nobody clapped. The dog did not look up. But the page existed, and a page that exists beats a someday that does not, every single time.

So pick the smallest possible version of the thing and do that today. Not the whole dream. The first brick. One honest look at the numbers. One hard email sent. One walk instead of one scroll. Someday cannot survive contact with a thing you actually did. It only lives in the future. Drag it into today and it has nowhere to hide.

What matters now

I am not finished and I am not rich. But I do not keep a someday list anymore. I keep a today list, it is short, and most of it is boring. That is the point. The life I wanted was never going to land in one big someday. It arrives in small, unglamorous todays, stacked up, until one morning you look around and you are already living in the thing you used to put off.

If you have a someday list of your own, do not throw it out. Just steal one thing off it and do the tiny first version before you go to bed tonight. It will feel too small to matter. It will not impress anyone. The dog will not look up. Do it anyway. Someday is a liar. Today is the only one that ever shows up.