february summary

Well then, that was a lot of intensive work. I have dug my heels in and focused on openness and curiosity, over planning and pressuring myself to keep to a schedule. The results are fantastic in terms of my personal well-being (and surprisingly not-terrible in terms of staying on top of things). I must remember to keep going with this.

In terms of tarot I packed even more decks away. Maybe not for good, but I'm experimenting with TdM style decks for now, testing the assumption that non-scenic pips give me fewer things to be dissatisfied with. My main study focus has been the Ancient Italian tarot, which I intend to carry over into March for a month-long exercise. I'm crafting a journal for these studies, filling it in, it's been fun. Reading more scholarly and more playful books about TdM (itching to buy a practical-approach book, too, but I want to finish at least one of these first). Haven't lost interest yet!

I've been using the Thoth exclusively for my journaling pulls and it's been working fine. Also my trimmed version is tiny and I like how handy it is, just sitting with the journal. Other than that I occasionally pull out a deck for fun, most recently the Tarot del Fuego – still curious to see if the keywords exercise I did with another Fournier deck would match up with this. Maybe later.

This month's going with the flow also directed me into new avenues of witchcraft, so there was quite some inspiration there for a variety of activities. In addition to that my partner and I finally launched an artsy/magical joint website we've been talking about for ages.

In terms of being more present in the physical world – we started seedlings for our balcony garden. The tomatoes already needed replanting, we got some gnats in the wildflowers – there's always some tending to do. In the newest meatspace developments: I'm trying to use the laptop as little as possible and shut it down in between uses. I remember how great it felt when we stayed at an airbnb with a shitty internet connection – my days didn't have a constant distraction-hose blasting my brain, and daily tasks and activities were clear and simple. Chores were as entertaining as leisure and I didn't feel the need to plug into social media. I wonder if I can recreate this without those externally imposed limiting conditions. Especially since I'm trying to stay informed about world issues, so that keeps me coming back online quite often. We'll see how it goes, that part of staying present is still in trial mode.

Overall I'm very satisfied. I notice a significant decrease in “should-ing” at myself and the world in general seems much more interesting when I'm in “receiving” mode, rather than “task” mode. Onwards and upwards.