In March, after 32 years of using and loving my Thoth Tarot, I signed up for a Thoth-specific Tarot course with Joe Forleone through a Tarot school run by Ethony. I can’t say enough good things about this class. I also picked up a copy of Tarot: Mirror of the Soul, A Handbook for the Thoth Tarot. After years of using the Thoth to teach and read but constantly putting it aside to change my teaching content to accommodate the Rider deck, I have shifted. In fact, I am looking for forever homes for all my Rider clones. Reacquainting myself with my Thoth deck has taken me back to the early 90s, before the internet, before online shopping, before smartphone slavery, and before collecting volumes of stuff became such a thing in the occult community.
During this time I have also dumped my social media accounts. I haven’t deleted them but I have stopped using them. When I got a new phone, I did not add them. I did a huge reality check reading for myself regarding social media and mysticism because after several years of showing up on social media, taking all the masterminds, doing all the plans, and making all the content I still had nothing to show for it. I was spending money and making zero. I was frustrated and I’ll be honest, I felt like a failure when I woke up and a failure when I went to bed at night. Since taking all these accounts off my phone, my anxiety has vanished. I also shut down my Shopify site because I was spending about $600/year to blog and not making any sales. So what is the point? I can blog about what I love right here, for free. The end result of my reading was a good cry and the realization that I need to focus more on creating and selling art than I do on trying to be the social media queen of numerology, because let’s face it, if it hasn’t happened after four years, it’s not happening.
At the same time that I stopped trying so hard in the virtual world, I started trying harder in the real world. I am not making mega-bucks, but one or two Saturdays each month I am the oracle at the Tramontane Cafe. I enjoy reading for the public again and it has given me thoughts about doing readings at home once more.
This month, I am starting a program through MVCC in Utica called THINCubator. It is an eight-week coaching program designed to help people like me become artists who can make art AND a living. I am excited and scared if we’re being honest. I have no idea what to expect or if I’ll succeed. This is 100% out of my frame of reference and I really do feel like The Fool.
What this all means, too, is that my podcast, zine, book-writing, and teaching are on hold. I am not good at juggling all this stuff right now, mainly because I was flailing around in a hundred different directions. Losing social media has been a trigger for putting it all down because, without platforms to share on, I don’t feel like standing on my head for anyone and churning out content. I have decided to declare a moratorium on these things until I am done with THINCubator.
And that’s all I got! I’ll do another triad report sometime in the beginning of August, the end of the second triad.
