sh1njuk1

 Another day in paradise. 

Me: Yes, I think I felt the most comfortable yet in the office today. I am starting to get my feet under me at the job! :) Which is great, because I'm more than committed at this point, really...

Situation: I realize that my feelings about the situation are coming in waves. Today I had more sadness come upon me this afternoon, but I managed to make sense of it by the evening. I realized that what's happened to me with my father is actually what happened between me and my mother back in 2018, just repeated with my "more rational" parent. 

I have twice now had a parent swear up and down they were ready and willing to do something helpful for me that was their 'traditional' role - childcare for my mother, hosting us in his home by my father (and to his credit my dad has hosted us for over 18 months... nevertheless); they found out quickly that they had overcommitted but did not bother to have a conversation with me about this fact; an excuse popped up that would let them slip out of their vow; they grabbed it like a life-preserver; and while letting me know about this "reason" why they could no longer do what they had promised, they made sure to gratuitously and emotionally blame it all on me as if I had been the real bad guy all along, for ever thinking they would do what they promised me they would do.

My mother claimed, 2 weeks before I was scheduled to return to work with an agreement in place that she would watch my baby, that she needed to keep working at her job instead so that she could afford acupuncture (!), and told me I expected too much of her, that I should have just known she should be caregiving at most half-time (despite this being impossible with my work schedule, and not brought up beforehand). The very moment I got my current job, my father - who had been continually encouraging me to keep slogging through the application the entire previous month, hmm - suddenly "discovered" the threat from the Delta variant like a new religion, put us in an impossible situation with a claim that we were just having a "conversation" about "safety", and then when we let him know we were leaving, patronized me from atop his high horse with how I was "too pregnant to think logically" and how "I hadn't solved the problem" and he "was absolutely not evicting you! You can come back anytime!" But there's been a cautious lightness about him ever since, even as we have been extremely careful about how we talk to each other the few times we've interacted. He's gotten what he wanted. Soon, his house will belong to just him again. 

In short, my entire DNA font-source is comprised of worthless shitheads, who somehow failed over the course of senior-citizen-length lives to  learn the basics of respectful communication. (My brother is ADD, on legal meth for it, married to a horrible vegan childfree bitch, and on the East Coast. I write him postcards now and again but he does not respond. I don't expect to see him again until one of our parents dies.) Well - there had to be SOME shared basis for their awful marriage, I guess!

The hardest thing is that if my dad had just let me know that he was really struggling with having so much family in his home, and that he wanted to make a solid time-table for us to move out, I would have been upset for like a day (OK, a week) and then - accepted it, and made plans. It's his home, after all. He is an introvert pretending furiously to be an extrovert, always has been. He's given us 18 months, and even slept out in a tent last summer when we didn't have enough rooms for all of us. He really has gone above and beyond. Which, in a way, makes this even more painful. I did not see it coming. I still thought, on some level, that he was the reliable one. 

For both my mom and dad, the issue is that they both want to be the type of parent that would, say, provide free childcare for their grandchildren, or let their adult kids in a rough situation crash at their place, no questions asked. But... neither of them are truly capable of what they aspire to. So they've both got a lot of cognitive dissonance about the situation, which finally bursts forth in blaming me for not somehow relieving them from this burden they set themselves up for. Which - yeah nope, I'm trying to raise children in a world implacably hostile to them, and I don't have the time or space to give a shit about Boomer feelings! I can't just pliably adjust myself to them and their whims anymore, as I once did so easily as a non-misbehaving teenager.

Clearly, I'm having a rebellion against my parents at age 35. 0 out of 10, do not recommend! At least when you're a teenager you have all this self-righteousness and energy and inability to understand what a brat you're being. When you're my age, it's more like the grimmest possible slog through a bleak, snow-covered valley. You would never ever choose to do it - unless you have no choice. I went scorched-earth with my mother for a while after she pulled that on me - we only have a relationship nowadays because my mother-in-law and, yes, my father begged me personally to reconcile (and after she completed 100 hours of free babysitting). I suppose I am glad that I gave her a second chance - the babysitting, now that my son is of an age she finds fun, is helpful. And there's no illusions between us as to what she needs to do to maintain our relationship going forward. I don't have the energy or ability to go scorched-earth with my father right now. But... I know what he did. And I think, on some level, he does too. I'm sure he'll spend hours coming up with justifications why he was right. He may even believe them. I guess I hope he does, because that's all he's going to have once this situation wraps up. 

We need good relations in place to get all our crap out of his house, that will take several weekends. I'm going to be using his compost bin - will dump on Saturday evening, while he is at work - until I find a better alternative. My son will need a transition period from "old house" to "new house", which will be easier if we can visit this place on the weekends for a while (while my dad is at work). But as soon as these kinks are worked out... I no longer intend to call or communicate with him in any way other than the obligatory Christmas call, for the rest of his life. He can get any "family" urges out by visiting his girlfriend's family, which is much more enjoyable because she does all the emotional labor so he doesn't have to. He'll get his house back - his nice empty house, filled with nothing but his Facebook friends and his girlfriend who mostly exists on his phone nowadays. He should enjoy his golden years! In silence. My mother got fire; he's going to get ice. 

We will not return here, once we have left, unless my children cannot eat any other way. 

I struggled, but I finally have a worldview that makes sense about this, and am dealing OK. 

Anyway... enough therapy writing, I gotta get to sleep. 

Outcome: I got a question at the end of the day about "if I had finished all the training videos" from the boss, which means of course, "why are you reading the news during work?" The answer being of course "I do not have more than 4 hour of focused learning capability per day, same as the rest of the human race, yet you have assigned me 8 hours of video." Not that I said that (nor did I spend 4 hours or anything close to it reading the news, for the record). Ugh... but also, oh well. I've gotta find some other task I can break up the videos with and still appear "responsible". This does correlate with my karma, though, because I caused this issue by personally choosing to take breaks, and employers have commented about my apparent lack of focus in the past (it actually helps the quality of my work when I take occasional breaks, but that's hard to tell from the outside). At least it should be (relatively) easy to solve. Just one more day left in this week. 

Divination, and bed!

Me: 8 of Diamonds - Comfort achieved through hard work

Situation: Queen of Clubs - optimism, creativity, little one

Outcome: Queen of Spades - oh no not again

Oof... well, I think the Queen of Spades is a marker that I need to be more serious about clearing my karma tomorrow. I NEED this job; I need to take it with absolute seriousness. Other than that, seems like it could be a pretty good day! Let's work towards that. 

 I was going to write back to my mother-in-law, but realized that I am too tired to handle that with the delicacy it requires. First thing tomorrow!

I'm catching up on two days of divinations, but will try to go quickly. 

First day of Edgefield, Me: I think this card just represented me traveling, lol! I focused hard on getting us all out to Edgefield, the place I'd been longing to take my family for months now, and which we finally, after several tries, made it to!

First day of Edgefield, Situation: My period didn't start, but I did have insomnia because it was so hot and humid. Also, I wore my mask most of the time indoors, even though almost no one there was wearing one anymore. My reasoning? I was still quite sniffly as I was recovering from this sinus infection, and I didn't want to spook anyone. No one gave me any weird looks, so on balance, that must have been the right choice :)

First day of Edgefield, Outcome: I didn't drink much, and we didn't push ourselves too much either. Finally, there was nothing we really had to "do". I felt a deep sense of relaxation there (and I told every part of myself during the SOP that it was OK to take a break for a little bit, we'd all worked so hard...). So I will count that as Peace through Self-Discipline. 

Divination, done right before Lugnasadh ritual:

Me: 8 of Hearts (The Moon): I conducted the heck out of that ritual and it got spooky. 

Situation: King of Spades (The Emperor): I think I managed the entire day pretty well - let my husband relax in the AM, got the ritual done, suggested we drive out to Vista House in the Gorge, which was open! The first day since COVID started! What a beautiful place that is... I have such wonderful memories there, and now so does Mike :) Then we managed my mother giving us the completely wrong address for the place to meet her to pick up my son, and not bothering to pick up her phone when we called. Just the same ol' same ol'. We asked the guy living at the wrong address what he thought the right one might have been, put that into our GPS, and got there on time anyway. Heck, he might have been the "Wisdom" part of this card...! 

Outcome: 7 of Diamonds (The Star): We hung out for a bit at my mom's friend's farm - her daughter is running it, and has big plans to sell at a farmer's market. Plenty of animals, all sorts of crops growing everywhere... enough to feed all three people in the home for a while if needed. A relaxing atmosphere, and I suddenly realized, a vision of the future - this is what every home with any sort of yard will look like in 20 years - pieces of old cars reused to make chicken coops; a rutted dirt path between all the garden plots because gravel is too expensive; growing a little bit of everything under the sun, and planting young fruit trees with an eye towards the long run... Maybe that recognition would be depressing for most people. But I see in this lifestyle the will to survive. More people that we might think will find that they have it. What we still have, even now... is options. (And I got a good glimpse of just how much I have left to learn... one step at a time!) 

Divination, done right now for tomorrow: 

Me: 5 of Spades - Possible Disappointment, A Strong Opponent, "danger, struggle, competitive"

Situation: 6 of Hearts (The Lovers) - Love, Beauty, Union "elements that naturally belong together will find each other"

Outcome:7 of Clubs REVERSED - no beavering will happen tomorrow, alas

Not even gonna guess - just gonna SLEEP. Tomorrow awaits!

 Finding myself up later than I expected... I fell asleep cuddling my son tonight. This is always a wonderful ending to a day, so I can't complain :)

Starting off today, I wasn't sure that the positive divination would necessarily be true - I was quite tense, waiting for that call. But... it didn't come. And didn't come. And didn't come. Here we are past midnight and obviously it still hasn't come. 

I still have one more day to possibly be both made far wealthier, yet intensely burdened, with that offer. But as I contemplated it not coming, or it coming with bad news (or - would it be?), I became steadily calmer. 

As I did the SOP late in the afternoon I reached out for the first time and had a conversation directly with my Heart, at that part of the ritual. It was pretty casual - like "sup? You doing OK in there?" And I heard the voice back loud and clear - "Yes, thanks for asking." I realized that it hadn't really been OK in there for a while. Neither of the two jobs I've been seriously considering over the past few weeks have brought forth a positive reaction from my Heart in any way. Today was the first time in a while I felt my chest fully relax during the ritual. Me and my body are starting to get along far better in recent days (I finally went to the gym, yay!), but I've been telling my heart to put up and shut up. I may yet have to force it back into an unwilling box. But if this job fades away... the truth is... it will be first and foremost an enormous relief.

And should I be so fortunate as to be freed from this burden, as a result of being the best possible person I know how to be at this time... I am taking A BREAK from the job hunt! Sheesh! I don't even really need to work right now (for a corporation, at least - heaven knows I have a pile of things to work on for my/the family's sake...) - why am I still dragging myself through this muck?!

I think I've got another read on the King of Spades/Emperor card. It's me, of course, but it's specifically me working deliberately towards what I know I need to work on. Mostly in a spiritual sense. The card is drawn as if it's a wise, seasoned, not-entirely-of-this-world general of an army. I'm going to see it as the best possible form of what I might become--maybe even my Higher Self. Thanks to Violet for giving me that vocabulary. 

And of course the clarity and simplicity of what I feel right now... is The Sun card. Perhaps it is even a new life. I feel like I've passed through some stuff, over these past weeks. Maybe even burned a little karma. 

Well - let's take the reading for tomorrow, shall we? And see whether my respite is temporary...

Me: Ace of Spades REVERSED - not so much for the focus and clarity, sigh

Situation: Queen of Hearts (The Empress) - Fertility, responsibility to nature

Outcome: King of Diamonds - Generosity, Happiness found in nature or spirituality

Well, this is interesting... it's almost like it's predicting I could still get the job? :/ Or just that I doubt my current clarity. Or maybe that something else entirely comes up and distracts me! :) Of course getting the Empress makes me think "R I PREGANANTE" but... I'm not, I'm pretty sure. It could be predicting something about family or my love life, though. And that outcome card... makes me think I'll finally be able to sit down and submit the curriculum! That would be a pretty good day, whatever else happens :)

My cards yesterday all but called me out as being "lethally cranky" today, and well... I think that's about right. I'm so cranky I legitimately wondered if I should bother to write anything at all today, but... it does encapsulate some spiritual elements and this is a spiritual blog. Also, I'm kind of giving in (not that I had much choice) to the "stay awake at night and think about things" outcome card. So let's go. 

I've been working pretty hard to distract myself, with some success, but I can't deny that I'm not all that much happier about this potential new job than the Amazon one. There is a difference in my unhappiness - the scratching, writhing animal reaction that was going on for the Amazon job is thankfully absent - but the appetite and sleep disruptions are steaming right along. (Silver lining - I might lose some weight at this rate...) 

Part of me is like "that's it! That's the statement!" but of course, I have to figure out what to do about it in my actual life. 

What's making me lethally cranky is that unlike the Amazon position, I have no argument to justify backing out of this job that I can legitimately offer to anyone in my life. Mike at least would probably tolerate it - he has been hovering, annoyingly, all day, because he is an empathetic person and can no doubt feel my black mood like a fog. He has told me many times that he just wants me to be happy and I believe him. I wish I could flip a switch and get there. 

I don't want to get a vaccine and I WILL NOT at this time (not without data I feel that I can trust regarding infertility issues, which can't even exist per the laws of math for another 6 months minimum). So, since this is the thing I cannot budge on... everything else has to fall into place from there. But of course, this is the exact thing that next to no one in this society is capable of understanding. And unless I'm willing to lie - like, REALLY lie, like look into the face of a coworker and ostensible comrade and straight-up tell them an untruth they believe threatens their life with a smile - I am going to have to live under the mark of a decision no one else around me understands or sympathizes with. 

I have the strength to do this. More to the point, I have the gender and class privilege to do this - actively bearing and raising an infant as a middle-class married woman gives one an "out" in many ways, even in this increasingly anti-child society. But I don't have the strength, it feels to me right now, to do this and be cheerful about it. My black mood is extending from there. 

Mike so desperately wants me to be happy, he talked all day about how "People are calming down! They're gathering again without masks! We should go places with other people - maybe if we see them enough times, they'll be our friends someday! That's something to hope for, right?" Poor Mike - he can tell, I think, on a gut level that... well... I might be hitting a wall with society right now, period. 

I don't want to be unkind, or ungracious, and I certainly don't want to make anyone else feel unsafe. I know that roughly 80% or greater of the people we would be mingling with would immediately ban me from their group if they knew I was not vaccinated. And that makes me... not want to be there. 

I don't have the energy any more to navigate the impossible standards of left-leaning Portlanders - those raging hypocrites who will nod along with vaccination mandates, social distancing, etc. while of course constantly meeting all their friends (and attending BLM marches) constantly during this pandemic - just on the "down-low". People really are noticeably relaxing, but also I notice a very studious practice of trying not to talk about it. People are just going back to their lives and usual routines quietly. It's a good thing - but the moment they so much as bump into anyone, oh, it's all "I'm vaccinated! I'm vaccinated! I'm a GOOD PERSON!!" The moment one must interact with masks, or COVID, or getting close to another person not in your family, vaccination must be incanted, lest one be Unclean and Bad. I'm extremely tired of it, and seeing as I'd probably have to navigate it every fucking day on this fucking job, I have no appetite to deal with it in any way outside of the job. 

I don't want to navigate the Unitarian Universalist church (they're still meeting on Zoom anyway). I don't want to deal with Meet-Up groups. I don't want to deal with the few online friends that I keep up with, 100% of whom are vaccinated and child-free. I'm already off of social media and I'm staying off. I don't want to deal with my family - it's long past time that I keep Levi's maxim "...to be silent!" in mind, and practice it constantly. They (specifically my father, but also everyone else) don't need to know any more details of my job hunt, period, ever again. I'll be moving my desk out of the dining room and into the bedroom so that I no longer have to interact with anyone in this household except at a time of my choosing. I should probably have done that long ago! 

On the long-term positive side, I finally might be hitting a wall with the news - I've decreased my consumption dramatically, but there are still a few sites I visit across the spectrum - and I might be able to channel this negative energy into cutting them out of my life for good. That would probably improve my mental health dramatically! And move me away from screens, which is something I would like to do. I'm at the point where I'm thinking, what good does it do me to even read about events? I can't change them, and I already have my path. 

I'm extremely grateful that I made the decision to take up a spiritual path right now - if I didn't have this, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I would be in a pit of absolute despair. As is typical in a Fourth Turning, there's not really anywhere to run right now - there's no "better place" anywhere I could reach. People have lost their minds and won't quickly regain them - at least not until things are REALLY bad, far and away worse than anything happening in this moment. I can neither prevent such bad times, nor bring them on any faster. The only realistic option is to suffer with dignity, and to keep as tight a hold as possible onto my personal ethics, so that I can retain the ability to look at myself in the mirror. And, hopefully... to welcome my child into this world in a year or so. 

The great thing about AODA Candidacy is that it gives me plenty to occupy my time with :) I've got my planned Earth Path curriculum written down in a notebook - there's a dozen books in there! I haven't made nearly as much progress on discursive meditation as I would like - that's a whole category I get to focus on, with endless possible work - I have The Cosmic Doctrine right there, to provide endless fodder for contemplation. I still need to complete the SOP (I have all the elements, just Spirit Above/Below to add in). I've got lists of local parks and nature areas to go hiking in, to try and connect in the real world with the knowledge in the books. My Bardic path, I believe, will be in "culinary arts" - I plan a 4-part proposed curriculum including mastering basic elemental cooking (Air = bread, Fire = campfire cooking, Water = soup/stew, Earth = fermenting), completing 75% of the recipes in my Mennonite cookbook on eating responsibly and serving them to my family, cooking something grown locally and in season and bought at the farmer's market every week for an entire year, and either eating or preserving everything that is growing in our garden right now. Oh - and making sure there's as little waste as possible from all of the above. So... 5 parts?? Also I'm going to keep trying to keep baby trees alive, and planting them in out-of-the-way areas. I'm discovering there's a hell of a learning curve to that!

None of this requires a community or friends (though I will continue looking into the Druid church options). I can putter around indefinitely all by myself. So, while I know that I won't reject social time or friendship that comes my way... I don't need to hunt it down. I have enough safety to wait until enough people have gone through the stages of grief about what's happening in our society, that my companionship might seem like a good deal, despite being an Unclean. 

To complete my review of my day, I did complete everything I needed to for the ceremony tomorrow. I suppose the positive, creative Queen card worked out that way :) Also, I looked again, and I could also do the ceremony under the same astrological conditions at the hours of 1:52 PM - 2:49 PM. So... I don't need to get up super early after all. 

The chamomile tea I am drinking is starting to kick in and calm me down, so I think I'm ready to do the divination. 

Me: King of Hearts - Sensitivity, Creativity, Career

Situation: Ace of Hearts REVERSED - NO creative, emotional, spiritual flow

Outcome: 8 of Hearts (The Moon) - Instinct, Mystery, Subtlety

Oh no, not another hearts sweep... :( But I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. I don't think Amazon is coming back - I'll still be continuing my job hunt, though, 100%! There's a great chance that any offer given will be rescinded once I announce my Unclean-ness, so I need to keep juggling. I have two potential leads, both of which I will follow up on tomorrow. I admit, I'd be pretty surprised if some part of the ceremony tomorrow wasn't done rotely, given my emotional state. But... the outcome suggests that I will reconnect with my instinctual self, and has a spiritual dimension. You know what? I'll take it. I'll take what I can get. 

 A quick one today, so that I can get to sleep - It's like my body remembered belatedly that I am on Day 2 of my period, lol! ^^;

I did not stay awake with worries, at any point today - I had a few, and I dealt with them each in turn.

This day was very, very much about family - Mike and I had a serious chat about what I could do to show him that I was committed to our family and our marriage, even after turning down this job. He told me that he wants me to actively move in a career direction - not just float until I am forced to take another miserable job. And y'know... he's right. I don't want to get caught by the leg by Amazon (or similar) again! So I actually applied for that part-time job in the school system. Perhaps I could transition, into being a teacher...? It's a beautiful dream I've had for a long time, made impossible by the $35,000 price tag for a master's degree (fuck that, fuck everything about that). It will have to come from starting at the bottom, though, and working my way up. Perhaps... perhaps it's possible. Let's see :)

The Jack of Spades is me all over today - full of caution, striding forward into an uncertain future where I need to keep my cards close to my chest. But also - potential. Potential for things to be better tomorrow, for myself and our family to be happier. I pray it can come true. And I will work for it - and work hard. 

Divination time...

Me: 6 of Hearts (The Lovers) - Love, Beauty, Union

Situation: 7 of Hearts REVERSED - "a clear choice and a firm decision" 

Outcome: 8 of Spades (Justice) REVERSED - "an unjust, unfair decision - do not push forward right now"

Hmmm. That last card sure does make me nervous. But at least the first two are in line with how I am feeling lately. Well... let's see what tomorrow has in store!

 Interesting day today! 

Over the course of the day, the worries lessened gradually about the upcoming Amazon thing... I'm mostly calm about it now. Mostly. Though I admit I did wake up a few times with them on the previous night, so there's that. 

I think both the other cards weren't about me at all, but my friend Cory. The Hierophant reversed represented me, offering him the chance at doing a banishing spell, from a source outside of all official tradition. He took all my books pretty eagerly and I think he'll at least give it a chance. So... the Jack of Clubs would be him :)

After this long, hot day, let's do a divination and get to bed!

Me: 8 of Diamonds REVERSED - NO comfort achieved through hard work and persistence

Situation: 5 of Spades REVERSED - NO possible disappointment, powerful opponent

Outcome: King of Spades - Wisdom, Authority, a man in charge. 

My guess about this... I'm not going to be very comfortable tomorrow, lol. Not too surprising given the heat! The situation card to me suggests "nothing happens". And the outcome card... hmm. This card seems to represent me expressing spiritual authority (even if only to the tomatoes). I wonder if I'll finally start to get traction on the next part of the Druid path sometime tomorrow? Once I survive the heat, that is! :)