Tarot card: 5 of Swords (defeat)

I'm feeling that today. Technology is sucking today. I couldn't get onto Blogger last night and today I'm getting timeout errors. I'm feeling very irritable today - every little thing seems so damn annoying. I can't think of a damn thing to say that isn't whining about one stupid thing or another. The most exciting thing I can say is that I got new underwear. It's surprising how something so small and insignificant can make such a difference. I did power walk this morning, but I skipped the yoga in the evening to play more Baldur's Gate. Small steps, I guess. I didn't want to talk about weight loss, because this is an ongoing issue I have. I've filled volumes of journals talking about how much I want to lose X pounds (where X is an ever-increasing number). It's boring to write about it and even more boring to read about it.

But it seems dishonest not to talk about it either. Somehow, by not being open here feels like being dishonest to myself. Yeah, it's difficult. I feel pessimistic about my chances for success on this, because I feel this weird kind of pessimism in my life. I am somehow hopeful and doubting at the same time. I used to be a lot more optimistic and I can tell it wanes. Maybe it started with the economy and getting laid off, or maybe it's the state the world is in right now. Maybe it's both, plus the untreated depression I suffer from periodically. I actually had a panic attack Sunday night, something I haven't had for a couple of years, and I had to take a sleeping pill in order to get to sleep (something I very rarely do). Yeah, I'm worried and I have a lot of anxiety, about my life and my future. I always have. I don't think that's going to change with or without treatment. It's just part of my chemistry. I just hate feeling paralyzed or powerless to change anything else about my life.

Yeah, I know this is what the card is about, self-defeat that is. I live with this feeling I'm not going to win so I should just give up now. No matter how optimistic I am at the beginning, my endurance fails and I just stop. I can't figure out how to keep going, and every task seems enormous and far too difficult. I get tired of struggling.

I am tired. I think I'll go to bed.

Tarot card: 8 of Wands (swiftness)

I use the Thoth deck for my readings, and the design on this card looks like the Chaos Sphere, a symbol used by Chaos Magickians to represent (among other things) a model of the universe and the 8 magicks. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because I am intending upon making a personal magick system by cobbling things together from lots of different sources. For example, this person, who goes by Kite, has a lovely list of archetypes that correspond to the 8 magicks on his web site - just nicely put.

[Wow, uh, I just got the worst call. A woman called here looking for a "Timothy" (and no one by that name is here of course). When I told her that, she said that she was going "to bust him up" and that she was going to "bust" me up, too, and called me a "bitch," then hung up. What a cunt. No wonder Timothy is fucking someone else, you ugly whore. How dare you call my home and threaten me, especially when I have done nothing to you. May you die a horrible, rotting death from whatever STD Timothy gives you, crackhead.]

OK, so where was I? Oh, yeah, enlightenment. So I was saying, there are 8 magicks, each with a corresponding color and association with one of the classical planets. There are other associations, too, like day of the week, gods, plants, whatever. My first step is to match up associations and make a table of correspondances for my own use. Mostly this is pretty easy, because Crowley did all of the hard work, but I wanted to match the magicks with the major chakras (as we see them in West - I have no idea how historically accurate this information is, so I'm guessing it isn't). The chakras are matched up like this, from highest to lowest:

Sahasrara (crown) - purple
Ajna (third eye) - indigo
Visuddha (throat) - blue
Anahata (heart) - green
Manipura (navel) - yellow
Svadisthana (genitals) - orange
Muladhara (root) - red

[all apologies to learned gurus everywhere for my igorance.]

I'm not so worried about that there are 7 chakras and 8 magicks. The 8th magick, octarine, is sort of an all-encompassing energy, so it doesn't matter that it doesn't fit into this schema. What bothers me is the placement of Luna and Mercury. In the colors of magick, Mercury's color is orange and Luna's is blue. In the chakras, Mercury is associated with the throat chakra and Luna the navel. As you can see, their colors are switched in between systems. I'm not sure that I can rectify this discrepancy. I know that others have been trying to incorporate chakras into other systems, such as the Tree of Life, but without much success. It might be one of those things that simply can't be resolved. Or maybe it has been resolved by someone and I just haven't come across it yet. It's one to sleep on, I suppose.

Tarot card: The Magus

Today officially ends my birthday celebrations. Andy bought me a flourless chocolate cake from Bittersweet Cafe and we had the group over to game. We were playing Gene's game: yes, I play RPGs and specifically, yes, I play Dungeons and Dragons. Some people bought me presents: I got The DaVinci Code from Rob, a ton of graphic novels from Terry and Agnes and Marsha made me earrings and a bracelet. I was very touched, especially since I didn't expect anyone to give me anything, I just wanted to have friends around.

I didn't think the day was going to be a good one, actually. When I woke up, I felt fat and ugly and this was amplified when I went to get my haricut this morning. I didn't like my new haircut at first, and it was disappointing, but now I think I'm growing to like it. At any rate, I'm starting to feel better about my life overall. Having this party and feeling the love from my friends and Andy, who works so hard, makes me realize that I've been a shit. I've wallowed so much in the stupid shit that I think about myself that I forget about other people and what they're going through. I know we can all be asses at times, but I think I've had more than my fair share of assholishness for a long while.

I was thinking about Mercury today, which is funny because I drew the Magus card, which is associated with Mercury. I happened to see something about Mercury that said it completes its revolution around the sun every 88 days. I think that is magically significant, or should be, since that is more or less every 3 months or once a season (here in the North America that is). Considering the Magus is "He who Makes Shit Happen," I think that, like the Soltices and Equinoxes and New and Full Moons, the turning of Mercury should be celebrated in some way and used for the magickal energy it creates. Maybe every time Mercury enters Gemini (since I am a Gemini), that could be a potent time for magickal workings or maybe just a creative time in general. This is something I will need to investigate further

Tarot card: 7 of wands (valor)

In a classic bonehead move today, rather than cleaning the house for the company we're having over tomorrow, I instead played Baldur's Gate 2 until 10 pm. At least I got to the shadow dragon (but it kept killing me).

Today was a weird day. I got my new shoes, but they are very tight. I would take them back except I got them online and I would have to pay to ship them back anf I couldn't guarantee that I'd even get my money back. Even getting a new pair in a larger size could take 2-4 weeks. This makes me very angry, and I'm not sure what to do about it. At work, we have a new dress code that has everyone concerned. No one is sure what is considered to be appropriate dress and again, I'm angry. Then, I have a convention in Nashville at the end of July that I am just dreading.

I'd rather be playing games, that's for sure. The card says to be brave, but I don't feel it. I don't feel like I am trusting my instincts or standing by my convinctions, as Arriens says about the 7 of wands. I just want to hide most of the time and pretend like nothing is going on.

Tarot card: The Chariot

On this day, at 3:25 am, 32 years ago, I was born.

I asked my dad if he remembered anything about that day, and he said he remembered driving mom around in the car awhile before going to the hospital. She dreaded the hospital, so the less time she spent there, the better. He said as little girl I was talker. My younger sister, Rachel, would get made because she could never get a word in when I was around.

Overall, this had been a good day. Andy delivered me a special meal, filet mignon, served at our dinner table (we usually eat in front of the TV unfortunately). I got presents, too: a grill from Andy's mom and stepdad and from Andy, the third season of Buffy the Vampire on DVD. I love this show, and I was so sad to see it end this year. I have such a soft spot for Buffy/Sarah Michelle Geller, and seeing her sweet and impossibly pretty face on the cover made me feel so happy.

Because it's my birthday, I've been thinking a lot about my life - what I've done, what I haven't done, what I'd like to do. I've set a lot of goals for myself, some embarrassing(lose 40 pounds), some spiritual (practice magick every day), some creative (write every day). I decided that part of my fullfillment of that last goal would be this journal. My goal is to write a little something each day (and every day) for the next year, birthday to birthday. It's a challenge I hope I'm up to facing.

The tarot card above is the symbol not just for this day, but my whole year, according to Angeles Arrien, the author of The Tarot Handbook. She says it means change, amd that in times of change it is necessary to incorporate "quietude" with activity. This is a year of big changes, she says, which could mean moving or changing jobs, but that changes should be positive and "nuturing."

Well, I don't want to move. I love it here in this home that Andy and I have made together, and I don't want to leave it any time soon. As for my job, well...I wouldn't want to leave the university without getting a Master's Degree first, if I could at all help it.

But I have been thinking about my job. I don't hate it, but I don't love it either. I was reading an article in Wired that made me think about what I would like to do a little more closely. The article was about Silicon Valley and the GenX people, like me, who lost their jobs during the Internet bust. The people interviewed talked about their new jobs and said things like, "It's just a paycheck now."

The article was supposed to be somewhat positive. In the context of the whole article, this attitude was a good thing, because it meant that people weren't married to their jobs or going crazy creating start-ups that would ultimately flounder and leave them penniless. But what it also meant was that they weren't in love with their jobs either.

I was in love with my job, and two years later, I still mourn it. I never thought that I could have a job that I honestly and truly loved. I felt so damn lucky that I found something that stimulated me, that allowed me to be creative and enthusiastic and to learn something every day. Looking back on it, I should have seen the warning signs. I was blissfully unaware of how the company (actually, companies) was run. It didn't matter to me that I had coworkers whose job titles were nonsense and whose job descriptions were vague. I could give a rat's ass less about what anyone else did as long as I was allowed to code in peace. I dreamt code. I lived to see a site go live, to type the URL into the address line of the browser and see my work "in the flesh," so to speak. This still excites me to this day, to see the sites I work on as freelancer come alive.

My job at the university is stable, but my heart is definitely not in it. I know this has to change, because it is affecting how I feel about myself. Andy tells me all the time that I am not my job - and he's right - but considering that I spend 40+ hours per week there, more time than I truly spend with Andy or my friends or my family, I can't discount any longer the effect it has on me. I have to move forward.