Wait and see

If there’s one thing I know about people, that’s been hard-won and really worthwhile to learn, it’s this:

Wait long enough, and people will show you what you mean to them.

Some people are forthcoming, and by that I mean, they express your worth to them to the extent and within the timeframe that you yourself expect, or more and sooner. We get frustrated with people who take longer to show us or do it by different means - things we might struggle to see meaning in. Sometimes, of course, you can ask and get reassurance, but it’s never quite as reassuring as things that are shown to you spontaneously.

Now I am not the kind of person to need anyone to value me - I go where they do and make the most of it. But I had my doubts about someone recently, and I sat back and waited, not saying anything, and it took them showing up at my door (my inner poet was delighted) and saying out loud: “I don’t want you to feel like I’m taking you for granted” to really start to make it clear to me that I mattered to them. It means the world to me that those two things have happened without my prompting. And the thing that clinched it: me pouring out how I’d felt and them simply saying “that’s all OK with me.”

That which makes you stronger

I’ve had so many conversations recently - meeting new people all the time, still, which is a wonderful part of what I do and who I am.

And we talk about the journaling and this writing habit/addiction I’ve had now for over 25 years, and the collection of journals, and whether it’s a weird or a wonderful thing.

I’ve always written, mostly stream-of-consciousness or conversations with myself. I love the physical feeling of doing it and the process, mentally, for me is helpful in so many ways.

I started writing because I couldn’t talk to people. I had nowhere else to go. I didn’t feel like anyone would want to listen.

Now that people do seem to want to listen I still don’t think anyone wants to hear the whole lot - who has time to take on someone else’s life, history and complexity in their entirety? So now I write to honour myself in full and shed light on the parts of me that no-one else knew. I write to preserve the record. And because it still helps me.

I was depressed, messed up and it took me a long time and so, so many words, so much help, to figure it out. To find a way. To understand what my brain and nervous system were doing, enough to be able to wield it to my advantage. To seek out my place. And I’ve always felt that the process in itself was a sign of how crazy I was - who would ever need to write so much?

But today for the first time I really felt grateful, that it took me so long to figure it all out. Not just because I was able to figure it out at all and build a life that goes from strength to strength rather than an endless spiral of destruction; but just because the process I went through and the lasting record I have of it really feel like assets to me now. They are my foundation. I am unique - not that there aren’t millions of others like me - but my story and my survival are something to be proud of. I don’t understand it in full yet but I no longer feel like I’m on the back foot for having needed to have done it this particular way. I am so grateful for everything that’s brought me to where I am and although it was difficult, I know nothing in life will test me that much again. So I have all my joy and strength to look forward to.

So: even if you think there’s no point in writing down how you feel, just give yourself twenty or thirty minutes and try it. It could change you in a thousand ways.

Self-sacrifice

[Just a journal post today.]

So much of love is about wanting to make sacrifices, about giving yourself up to the whole.

It makes me blind, how people don’t realise this. The way we long to lose ourselves. That it’s only by giving up our sense of self that we really know love.

I could fall in love today, I have that choice, and it might be the greatest love I’ve ever known.

I needed to feel small next to him. To let my feelings for him consume me.

Transfigured in my worship of him.

And he loved me back, though I doubt he knows it.

So write that story into everything you do. Live by that light. Let it be the path. Be the best of yourself everywhere except the place you go to lose yourself.

What you wish for

I gotta be honest here: I am not knocking it out of the park.

I got the life I dreamt of and I still have days where I’m less than effective, less than decisive, and full of doubt.

If you have a mental rift, it takes time to heal. You try to keep your thoughts elevated so your mind can heal enough that you don’t keep falling into the same thought-ruts. You keep daydreaming. Stay hungry. You keep forgiving yourself for each moment of shame as it arises. You give yourself second chances. It takes time to leave behind the way of life that was punishing you.

I’m doing OK though. My biggest challenge is combining all the things I want to do within the time I have. It’ll take days, weeks, to play out, but I will get there. It’s just the passage of time, that’s all.

Do I have something different, something miraculous, that I can do for myself, with this time, through small actions that accumulate?

Do you?

Writerly Days

Sitting down to write today.

Roll up, roll up.

Which of them wants me? These ideas? Which of them wants the time?

It doesn’t matter what you decide, it’s a world you conjure.

It takes time to get into it. The writing is always down there but it’s a deeper level and you have to delve for it, strip away the upper layers first. It makes you feel sleepy even if you’re not.

The Attractive Unexpected

Honestly, I think my problem with being in relationships stems from something much more fundamental than being unable to commit.

One of the most exciting things to me is waking up not knowing what the day will hold.

Not knowing who I’ll meet.

Not knowing exactly what I’ll choose to do (I do have an idea but I try not to fix hard schedules much more than a day ahead, unless it’s unworkable). I move my tasks around at will, mix things up, follow my nose.

I’m free to make spontaneous decisions about where to go and when.

And so much of that is just incompatible with stable relationships.

Waking up to the same person (even someone that I really, truly love) - it’s just too predictable, to find them there.

I’m sure I will meet someone else who understands at least that part of it.

Focus on the What

…and let the how take care of itself.

A lot of the things I’ve been starting to do lately I have had absolutely no idea how to do. (Sometimes I don’t even have any idea why either but that’s a whole other matter!)

I’m getting used to just making a start and figuring it out as I go along.

Things that you are meant to be doing will always:

• be in your imagination, on your mind, difficult to ignore/forget about

• come with an obvious first/next step

• come easily to you, once you start to take action

• feel inspiring

• come with a certain amount of pressure or urgency that pushes you to act

Defy the part of today’s culture that tells you you have to be an expert at something before you can do it well or that it can be important enough to make a start on before you know all the hows that will take you to the ultimate dream you can see. Knowing the what is enough, and you dream it for a reason. Heck maybe the reason is it, that it’ll be more important, or happen more easily, than you could have dreamt of - so it’s just better you don’t know!

Make a start…

Something Exceptional

This year, as a collective species, we’ve all been through something pretty exceptional. A shift on a global scale that’s affected pretty much all of us in some way. Our lives and routines shaken up. Things we took for granted for so long, disrupted for extended periods of time. Our physical proximity and access to places and people we love, blocked and regulated. Unusual daily lives for which we were unprepared.

Now that we’re starting to make our way out of it I’m starting to notice how much people have started to recognise and honour the unusual or exceptional in themselves too. I don’t think it’s just me; I’ve been on a very unexpected journey coming to terms with and in some way magnifying ways that I’m different from what might have been seen as the “norm” before. Maybe there is no more norm and we’re just starting to see more clearly what was always there: the ways we’re each diversely and wonderfully made.

None of your attachments are real

You don’t need them

It’s not wrong to be attached to things, to like to have your life a certain way - your home, your job, your relationships - but it will hinder you if you don’t keep in mind that all things are bound to change.

It serves us better to remain cognisant of this propensity, or pull, even, of everything towards change; everything that’s certain now is unravelling into a different future. There is no way around that, so the more you can allow change to be a positive thing - learn to trust your own skills and responses, embrace the unknown and the unexpected, look ahead to expressing yourself and living out your essence in new ways - the easier and smoother life will be for you.

There are a multitude of ways to do this but here are a couple:

1. Update how you think about pain and failure. Everything in life is an opportunity for pleasure or an opportunity for learning; occasionally things are both (yay!) but it’s not possible for something to be neither. The things we see as negative are always lessons, opportunities to learn; start calling them that and stop calling them disappointments, misfortunes, losses, pain, shame, failure.

2. Be deliberately grateful for each random or unexpected occurrence in your life, before you see it as “good” or “bad” express gratitude: for its uniqueness, for the diversion to a better path, for the information it provides, for what it has to teach you. This will feel like utter nonsense to start with (saying thank you when **** happens) but stick with it: eventually it comes naturally and it will change your life forever.

Own sense of nonsense

A few times lately I’ve been having conversations where I’ve ended up saying things like:

“… that would make sense to me.”

For instance, yesterday I was having a conversation about physical passion, and how it would make sense to me that I’d be experiencing an upswing in passion at a time when my life was taking a dramatically positive turn.

A similar thing happened last year when I was describing my emotional reactions to a friend how asked:

“… and is that normal for you?”

I don’t mean it like, it makes sense definitively, or it’s normal, definitively, reasonably speaking, rationally.

There’s common sense, as in the sense we all agree on - approved socially, at large.

(The thing you’ll find about common sense is how few people actually agree on it. We love to say this about other people, how we would have expected them to do things differently by applying common sense, ie what to us would have been The Most Obvious Approach).

But really, there’s so little that people agree on.

And there is a power in the things that make sense to you, right now, just because they do.

That’s your intuition. It’s your internal law. It’s your view of the world, your reality, the synchronicity that you see between cause and effect. In some ways, most ways, this matters more in your world than common sense does - because you believe it. It’s your individual logic. It may or may not be “realistic” in the extent to which it chimes in with “reality” at large, the laws of physics, “logic” at large, “common sense” at large. It may or may not “work out” for that reason - ie, have the results you anticipated. Sometimes that matters and sometimes it doesn’t - it depends how attached you are to the results. You may get different results from what you expected, perhaps even ones that you can work with better, and that’s fine.

My friend gave me an enormous gift by introducing the concept of normal for me.

As opposed to:

• normal for other people, my friends, my circle

• normal for the world at large

• normal as I’d perceive it coming through popular media

• crazy, for me

• unbalanced, for me

• unhealthy, for me

• dangerous, for me

• bearable in a functioning sense, for me

Truth is* you have no obligation to perceive reality** the way you perceive other people perceiving it.

“Normal” is a construct, the way that “success” is a construct, “acceptable” is a construct.

You have no obligation to be any of these things. You are not a construct. You’re you.

*(there is no truth) **(there is no reality)

The First Day of the Rest

This is just an update as I haven’t really got much declarative to say today.

I’m back! I made a start. I made my first tentative steps into my new life and did the first basic things I was hoping to do.

I allocated focused time to focused projects and measurable work got done - so that seems like it will work. More to the point, it was absolutely joyful and I just loved living it.

I had gotten a bit focused on relationships & social matters towards the end of my break, so it makes sense that those would be less important today, except for fuelling artistic and mental endeavours.

I am going to have to be really smart with my time to pack in as much of the other around-the-garden tasks in alongside the main fun juicy project work. I feel like I have an unending list of stuff to be done but: it’s day one. Let’s not get overwhelmed just yet. I have systems in place to deal with all of that in time, trust the process, tweak the systems.

Tomorrow will be completely different and I love that about this life. I am only responsible for myself and my own outcomes and I love that too. I am not going to get tired of this or run out of energy and I no longer have to plan to take days off at the weekends as I’ve noticed already that I’m happier doing this work than when I was on my break, although I admit that the break was very necessary. So that’s a good sign that I am happy with the life I’ve created for myself.

And tomorrow will be different! And wonderful again, no doubt. I am learning each day. There will be days when I have more energy to tackle more things. Today I allowed myself to be lost in the wonder of it all.

The Last Day of the Beginning

It’s hard to believe I’m here, but my life changes forever tomorrow.

I’m going to stop working a day job for a wage, and make it so that I never have to do it again.

From tomorrow all I will have, all that will matter, is the life I’ve been living here, my own little world, with me at the centre of it.

For such a huge change, I feel remarkably at peace.

I’m breaking the mould, and I will find my way.

And for the start of it: rest. Go inwards. Listen to my intuition like never before. Think about what I want. No structure. Or don’t even think, just exist. Wake up, Wander. Discover.

Grounding: Tempering the Swords

I’ve been trying to solve this little puzzle: call it all the Swords in my readings, or all the Air in my chart.

It’s O V E R thinking.

And it’s counter-productive.

It’s also a way of life.

I’ve been thinking about my suits and elements and how to balance them - how can I strengthen the rest of my elements to counter all the air? My chart is awash with water and air and when I started reading the tarot I found myself really enticed by chasing wands, finding my fire, and then started to notice where it was in my chart. And I suppose all of those things help to some degree, but what I’m really lacking is earth. (And why I’m naturally drawn into relationships with earth signs I suppose.)

I’ve got so little earth going on. Mars in Taurus in III (plus Chiron and Fortune but I haven’t learnt that far yet!) and 12th house cusp in Capricorn. So if this theory holds true, that strengthening my earth factors can help balance out all the thinking that drives me crazy, then these might be the things to focus on: anger and action particularly in communication (find ways to enjoy/sink into it?) and then possibly spirituality or delving into intuition/subconscious (which could be why I was drawn to the tarot in the first place, why it calms me down and brings me joy).

I’m just throwing things out here. I still think balance is the key. Paying attention to the shadows and giving them their time in the sun. Digging out the lesser-known things about myself so that I can feel more fulfilled.

A Reading for a New Year

Gorgeous Fountain Tarot - https://www.fountaintarot.com/

So today is the first day of my fortieth year.

As you’ll know (especially if you’re here from Instagram) I do a morning tarot 3 or 4 card draw and this was today’s. All major arcana today, which I think is the first time since I started doing them, and a load of lessons that I expect will stay with me through this whole (hopefully major) year.

The Hermit - is a lot to do with quiet contemplation and journeying inwards, which is what I’m about to do with leaving work and devoting my whole life to my creative projects, really losing myself in my own internal world and in bringing it out. It doesn’t have to mean this but I think there is an element of physical isolation as well - lockdown has been good for me in a lot of ways, and I’ve been getting other messages about not pursuing relationships (it doesn’t stop me trying! but I get how they’re less helpful and even distracting at a time like this). Run fast in the other direction and love will chase you, seems to be the message; but you don’t need anyone else to be able to live this amazing year to its fullest.

Strength - obviously the path I’m about to embark on is going to require a lot of strength and resilience, as I’m expecting some doubt and possibly self-loathing to be inevitable at blind spots along the journey. In this deck, Strength is about self-acceptance, incorporating all facets of the self and taming your inner fire. I’ve been working on my fire (wands especially) and I know my creative fire has the pull of madness hidden within it, which will need taming - I’ve never planned to give myself over to it as fully as I’m planning to this year but also hoping to stay grounded and structured enough so that it can be incorporated into “real” life in a balanced and productive way.

The Magician - he’s the one who shows us what’s possible and what resources are available. A year of Magic is exactly what I’m hoping and planning to bring about. A year of seeing what I’m really made of.

On the bottom of the deck I got the Tower which I think goes to my underlying sense that things have to fall apart to fall together. I’ve got the feeling that I’m stepping into the life I was always meant to have, a magical, enchanted, captivating day-to-day that was always waiting for me once I cast off the shrouds of depression, indecision, misaligned expectations, and mediocrity.

Although they were just cards for today, I think I’ll come back to these themes repeatedly over the coming year. And maybe at the end of it I’ll be 40, sitting on my own personal rainbow.

A Physical Challenge

I know I probably don’t talk that much about physical things and, admittedly, I find my relationship with my body to be something less than straightforward - still an area of learning for me. From time to time though I’m able to hear what it needs and this has been one of those times.

Exercise during the lockdown has been a conundrum for me as I’m sure it has for everyone else. I used to get a fair bit of walking done as part of my commute to work, although as soon as I realised I could just go to the lakes each day instead of pounding the pavements of the city and soaking up all the heat from all the concrete I was happy enough. I used to swim, and was just getting back into a daily swim routine when the pool got closed. When I couldn’t swim I would gym, but obviously that’s closed too. There are other options and things I could buy (I’m not ruling out a bike later) but for me now and my level of fitness and the weather and the time available, it’s really walking that’s going to do it for me for now. And I’d done fairly well with the walking on lockdown having plenty of routes near the flat, but it was more chore than challenge and not as consistent as I needed it to be to feel really good about it.

So when they eased the lockdown rules and said we could go out as many times a day as we liked, I started committing to 20,000 steps a day (this is on my phone, it may or may not be truly accurate but it’s a relative measure of doing more vs. less) which works out (again, supposedly, with my little legs) at about 10 miles a day and takes about 3 hours +/- steps around the flat at home. And I got through the first week and decided I wanted to try and commit to 20 days (so 400,000 steps or 200 miles) in a row and see if I could give myself a bit of a boost physically. I’m not here to offer anyone else advice on their physical health but I know for myself sometimes I need a bit of a push and some discipline to level up and that having an exercise challenge does wonders for my energy and motivation.

I can tell you though I have been THROUGH IT with this one! I was tired, I was cranky, I was splitting it up in to two or three walks a day and racking up steps any way I could manage it and going out last thing in the evening and curses curses…. I was achy pretty much all over and then there was The Toe Incident last week just to really make it even more awesome… I have had to really persevere. But I got past the two week point (I’ve completed 16 days now) and something just clicked. I started wanting to go earlier in the day, and I started (where daily routine would allow) wanting to do the whole walk in one go. And things stopped hurting (so much). And I started sleeping better (a bit). And I had a bit of that sense of achievement that a 6am swim before work would have given me. And now since I’ve been planning these 3-hour routes I find the effect mentally, while I’m out there, is just so incredibly positive - I’ll start daydreaming and get all these reassuring visions about both the immediate and the distant future and come back in like a thousand times better mood than when I left. And if I’m tempted to not go I’ll feel antsy until I do go.

So I’m hoping I’ll stick with it now, that I’ve cracked my activity needs for the lockdown (however it lasts) and can start adding in bits of jogging and some lifting and so on. But one piece of the puzzle that actually finally seems to work. I just kept thinking if I kept walking eventually I would have to feel stronger - so if you’re struggling with something and it’s taking a while, keep focused on the outcome because you might be nearly there.

Feeling Loads Better

Just like that, as if by magic.

I’m not even sure what happened. I went through a protracted breakup with my (admittedly not very long-term) Person, right before the lockdown restrictions here were eased; so I was dealing not just with losing him but with losing the one thing I’d really been looking forward to all through lockdown - the time we were going to spend together afterwards. So I was flailing about for a couple of weeks. I’m also leaving my dayjob in a matter of weeks now and that’s also been a bit of a strung-out, exhausting process. Even though I’ve been working from home and not been having to expend energy on commuting and office interruptions, I’ve been ready to turn my back on it for quite a while and trying to get into that institution’s headspace over and over each week has been weighing on me. So, a lot of endings, a lot of being able to sniff my freedom but not really knowing what to do with myself, kind of half-heartedly taking care of myself, and my weekends have been a bit hit-and-miss, and for some reason I’m also just exhausted physically, out of sorts, and some days just plain angry at nothing. Oh and then I thoroughly stubbed (read: practically broke) my toe on Tuesday morning!

But this week was more fun at work, I’m mostly done with the logistics of handing over and spending the last of my time just chatting to people I’ve known in some cases for 10 years. I’m three weeks away from the biggest opportunity of my life and at the very least a really fantastic few months of chasing my own dreams. And my toe is nearly better ;) And it could be the new moon or the start of Gemini season or the unexpected funds that showed up or the not-completely-hostile message from the person - or just a combination, but I know I’ve turned a corner now and I’m coasting towards the end of work and the longest day and all these luscious long days of May and June that I’m going to truly enjoy. I’ve gotten on top of so many tasks that I wasn’t even attempting to do before the lockdown and I shifted a bit of furniture around (I suppose mentally as well as physically) and it feels like there’s so much more space here now and I’m moving more freely. Things are sure to keep improving.

There’s one thing that I’ve discovered as I’ve gone along here - and I think it’s that thing of hitting rock bottom (or in this case a bit lower than usual!) and becoming acutely aware of what it IS you want. I’ve got this sense - and had several practical lessons - of how life could be, if I was just following my intuiting, doing the next right thing creatively and productively. I don’t need that strict a structure (I will keep some because it’s helpful) and I certainly don’t need the distraction/time sink of the dayjob. As long as I’m staying active, I know what the next right task, the next priority feels like when I approach it - often it’s stuff I’ve feared or postponed, often it’s a totally new idea that suddenly comes right up within my reach, and they’re all things that happen easily once I act on them. Honing that instinct for what to chase next and which direction to pursue. And I think that’s going to be invaluable going into this completely free and unmonitored period of my life, something to guide me. I’m not going to call it passion just yet but yeah…

Sunday Reflections and birth-chart oscillations

There was a pretty interesting discussion going around on a friend’s FB recently about how Sundays feel different to other days - for a lot of people of course it’s Sunday Blues and anxiety/anticipation of having to get up and go back to work on Monday, but a lot of us are not in that position at the moment. I haven’t worked Mondays at the day-job for several years and so I don’t think of this as applying to me but I do feel differently on Sundays.

Partly I think it’s because the world in general is quieter. Things outside are less hectic, people tend to lie in, take things at a slower pace or not even go out at all. I wonder if there’s still some overhang for many of us of Sunday being a day for family or religious observance, but it does seem to be energetically a little bit different - even in a life where every day is pretty much similar in terms of daily doings or work or routines. For me, at the moment I find it’s a day to go seeking internally, I don’t really want to socialise in a rowdy way or have interruptions but it’s also the day I’ll be most aware of being alone. Part of the new challenge for me in having free weekends is deciding how to use them to feel good - even if I don’t have to have anything to show for them.

Anyway, I do have a bit of something to show for yesterday’s contemplative time! This is a prime example of using some kind of understanding of my birth chart elements to my advantage. I’ve got a lot of oscillating energies in my birth chart - things where two sides of the coin alternate or different energies are pulling at the same time. I’ve got the Gemini facing-both-ways quality of not just my sun, but Mercury and Venus as well. I’ve got (like a lot of people my age) Jupiter and Saturn in Libra trying to balance things out within themselves and also, with a 3-degree conjunction, with each other. And I’ve got Uranus as a ruling planet throwing in unexpected twists and turns, sextiling them both. I’ve also got north node sextiles to Sun, Jupiter and Saturn.

I looked at this in quite a lot more detail than this but essentially the question I’m always trying to answer with my birth chart is: what do I need to do or know to marshal these forces? And what became really clear to me yesterday is, it’s a chart full of oscillations, seesaws, back and forths, balances. The equal opposite of what I’m doing is also the right thing to be doing at any one time. I shouldn’t get too hooked on any one feeling as it’ll flip as time passes - Jupiter’s expansiveness or Saturn’s restrictions - they will play themselves out given time. That Jupiter/Saturn relationship feels crucial to me and accounts for a lot of the push and pull, the running ahead towards my dreams and then cutting off my feet, that wastes my time and energy. However the answer to getting these oscillating energies to work together is in the sextiles - with my north node I can push on to my destiny, lay the path, and ebb and flow of Jupiter/Saturn will work to my advantage. It is down to me as Sun to decide on the direction though. So I’m using this practically now when I’m working creatively: sometimes I will feel like anything’s possible and sometimes I will be more practically minded and aware of just how much work lies ahead and the need for persistence in order to succeed. What matters is these are both good times to get to work, in their way, not reasons to get paralysed or stuck in limbo.

Self-care

Little Tree in the god rays

After everything I wrote yesterday about waiting until after the Gemini retrograde to start opening my personal life back up to people I’ve kind of freaked out today about what that means and what surviving without affection is really going to look like for me, how it causes problems with how I see myself.

So I’m going to be really turning my radar to self-care and will report back on everything that crosses my path that speaks to this - if anyone’s got any tips I’d be glad to hear them.

Deferred Deliberations

This might be a bit long and a bit personal. I’m going through some MAJOR shifts in my life at the moment - from some really limited, negative beliefs to a completely new kind of life. My mind is spinning cartwheels and I know it’s gonna take a pretty big leap to get there but then life will be like it should have been all along - so it’s the last push for me.

I’ve got a few areas where I’m deferring decisions just so I can make some space to have a bit of a mental break and also because major parts are shifting right NOW and I can’t worry about everything - this is what I’ve in the past called a Worry Holiday.

1. Worrying about acting on everything at once. For the first time in at least a decade I’m taking proper weekends as breaks, regularly - which is pretty hard to do as a creative because my life is my work is my art. Chasing down ideas in a practical sense (I have a series of ideas each day all of which would be nice to pursue) is not the point of weekends! So I’m allowing myself to file the ideas for “work” days during the week and then go back to just being.

2. Worrying about money. I don’t do a lot of this in general but I’m moving into a phase of a few months where I’ll be living off savings until the next funds come in - it’s guaranteed that they will but the when and the how much and the from where are thing I’m deliberately entrusting to the universe since I’m fine for the foreseeable future. I know I will go through times during this period where the “what next?” questions will mount up so I’m allowing myself to shelve these until later in the autumn. Worry is absolutely not the point of this glorious opportunity I have right now for freedom and it would just waste and tinge the time.

3. Worrying about relationships. This is an interesting one that I’ve just been thinking about this afternoon. Lockdown and being on my own for two months has really messed with how I feel about people and spending time with/on them, plus I’m still healing from the last few encounters which mostly haven’t worked out to anyone’s satisfaction and in some cases caused a deal of hurt. I have been stressing a lot about how to ease out of lockdown given that I have no-one really to ease out of it with, how to meet new people, while struggling with the feeling that lockdown’s left me of not really being sure how much I want other people around, and maybe I should just aim to be alone for the next phase. I don’t function great emotionally like that though, I like having positive connections to bounce off and express myself but I also feel very dry and silent right now and relationships don’t excite me like they used to. A few other factors here:
   - I’m a Gemini
   - Venus is in Gemini at the moment
   - The retrograde means Venus stays in Gemini for 4 months instead of 4 weeks, which only happens every 8 years
   - Venus is also in Gemini on my birth chart
   All of that considered I feel like I am noticing a greater sense of just love for myself, I appreciate myself more and want to take care of myself better and all of that’s good for now. I was thinking maybe I’ll just stop dating until the autumn as well but then worried that might do me further damage emotionally to be on my own for that long and not even open to meeting anyone new. So for now I’m going to defer this decision until the end of the Venus retrograde towards the end of June, by which time a lot of my other practicalities will have moved on, and consider it some more in the light of how I feel by then.

But he came back to look for me

Last summer, I met a guy in a random online chat room.

(Right before this photo was taken as it happens, as I remember falling asleep in the grass behind the beach on a day when we were chatting).

It was a nice but pretty casual chat, but then the following weekend we were both there chatting again and he said, I was hoping I’d see you here again.

And you know, we dated a bit and had quite a long drawn-out and deep, daily, connection, and although it’s true that he never wanted to see me again after the second date I had not unreasonable hopes that he would, at some point. In the end he simply disappeared one day without warning. But he had come back to look for me.

It still blows my mind that someone who was trying so hard to find you can eventually let you go, just like that. People change so quickly. I don’t have any answers - I can guess at what he might have been thinking that led to him leaving, but I’ll never really know. Maybe it’s the learning to live without answers that matters.