Picture copyright Taylor Ellwood 2021
7-21-2021 today I switched over to Binah/Saturn. Given that I recently did a Saturnic ritual it felt appropriate. I had a continuing realization that it doesn’t matter what I do in the short term, because what I’m really dealing with is my own pain and suffering and I am the author of that, for the most part. It helped me come to an important realization and a sense of peace about the choices I need to make in order to move forward with a number of things. I think my time of chaos is coming to a close. I will still have some grieving to do and other processing, but I can do it and I can also commit to the path forward that will pay off down the line.
7-23-2021 The last couple of days have involved a number of job interviews. What’s been interesting for me is realizing that I’m juggling these different possibilities and trying to decide which ones I’ll explore and which to let go. I let go of one because it was clear I wasn’t the right fit. I feel this very Saturnic weaving coming into play which is actually helpful because I’m ruling out what doesn’t work for me, in favor of figuring out what could work as well as what I want to do with what I’m learning. And through it all I’m also recognizing I’m going to have to make short term sacrifices to get to where I want to go.
7-24-2021 I think it’s appropriate I’m working with Saturn as I’m trying to reset myself job wise, right after I left the previous job. I was hard on myself today as I was driving, mainly because I realized that I was just as, if not more, miserable driving, than doing customer support and that my real issue is my own sense of misery and unhappiness. I’ve kept trying to escape it instead of embrace it, much like I’ve done throughout my life and yet it never works. So this week, for once, I just drifted my misery and let myself accept it. The misery didn’t go away, but it made it less hard to be with.
7-25-2021 I started re-reading When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. It seems like such an appropriate book to read right now. She talks about how when you encounter fear you get nailed to the spot. You can run, you can fight it, but at some point you get nailed to the spot. And that’s where I’m at. I’m finally just accepting the way I’m feeling and letting it nail me to the spot around everything: My life, my writing, K, and all the other things that have been coming up. It’s a very intimate experience, a very terrible experience in a way. Yet I find it necessary to accept it, fully be present with it and let the masks and illusions continually dissolve so that all that is left is this core of me, raw, exposed, vulnerable…to me. Here I am, with me.
I am also rediscovering myself. I bought some clothes and today I tried them on. I definitely think I’ve found what I would like to continue wearing in general. It feels good to give myself permission to rediscover who I am and what I like to wear and do, and various other activities.
7-26-2021 I have these moments of panic right now, around recent decisions. It’s the part of me that craves stability and security and thinks I shouldn’t have left the job. And maybe I shouldn’t have…but being back in this place of existential crisis is interesting because it’s calling on me to be even more open to the magical and spiritual forces I’m working with. I don’t always want to be unstable, but maybe being in a period of instability isn’t so bad because its forcing me to see how much I’ve fallen into ruts around comfort and security which is no longer readily available to me. It forces me to rely on myself more.
7-27-2021 It hit me all over again today, how much I’ve lost. I was interviewing and it came up and afterwards I drove home and felt a bit of grief. It’s not as sharp at least. It’s more of dull pain now. Life goes on and I’m starting to feel like me again. I’ve got to go on with it.
I’m watching a Beautiful Mind again. I’ve been thinking abut whether or not to go back to school for a masters in counseling. Part of me just wants to lean into my writing and my work. I know it may take a while, but if I keep writing both the fiction and non-fiction (plus creating classes) I think I will get to a point where the content will support me. And it feels right. On the other hand doing a counseling degree is another way to find some work that I might actually enjoy doing down the line. I’ve got time to think about it, but part of me just wants to believe in my writing, really believe in my own gifts for once.
7-28-2021 I went on a ride along today with a hospital courier. I decided the job wasn’t for me, because of my lower back issues, but it did help me appreciate the work that is happening at hospitals and how important it is. Right now so much is in the air and it is mostly due to my own rash actions. I accept that, because it is what it is, but I also am doing what I can to turn things around while also being more rational in my approach. I feel more like myself as I shake off the madness of this last year. Tomorrow it will be a full year since I left my job and I find it ironic that I’m ultimately coming back to work around that same time. Still I feel there is a path forward in the midst of everything being up in the air. I will find it and I will move forward knowing that I at least have part of the puzzle in my grasp.
7-29-2021 Today is the anniversary of the day I left my job at Sage. It’s a hard day because a year ago I thought I was finally done working for anyone else. I was going to spend the rest of my life writing and practice magic and making art. A year later and I’m divorced, looking for work and finally, slowly, making progress forward in getting my life back together. I think the hardest realization I’m having today is recognizing how I have self-sabotaged myself. A few weeks ago I had a job with okay pay, but I self-sabotaged myself and quit the job. A year ago I finally achieved my dream, but I self-sabotaged and planted the seeds that destroyed my marriage and my life. I’m so tired of screwing my own life up, and I see other moments where I self-sabotaged and it’s enough of a recurring pattern that I know I need to spend some time figuring it out and making some changes. I never want to go through what I’m going through now, again. I also don’t want to hurt other people because of my choices. I know I’ll make mistakes in the future, but I can also do better as a person if I recognize my own tendencies and do something to remedy them.
7-30-2021 Today I was reading When Things Fall Apart and I read the passage about how falling apart is both a testing and a healing. It invites us to be with our most vulnerable self and that’s exactly where I’m at. She points out that things come together and fall apart again and gain and I suppose right now I’m seeing that up close and personal. She also points out that we need to make room for all of it, and again I suppose that’s something I’m getting the opportunity to do.
I think the most important point she makes is we don’t know. Right now I am intimately getting caught up in that realization of not knowing. There’s so much I don’t know right now. I don’t know and I am learning to become comfortable with it, in a way that I never have been before. I’ve always craved certainty, but there really is no certainty.
7-31-2021 Tonight I saw the Green Knight in the theatre. It was an interesting retelling of the classic mythology. At one point I felt the archangels and She Who Watches connect with me, in a way that I haven’t felt in a while. They told me that I had to lose everything in order to find my connection and truth again, but that what I would find would replace what was lost. And I feel there’s some truth to this. I lost a lot, but what I got was a clean slate in return. Now it’s up to me to make of that what I will, and to be certain that what I do and take on is truly in alignment with my connection and truth. I felt Cronus as well and he told me it was the end of everything but also the beginning, and I saw this timeline unfurl before me, of my life span and how long my life could be and what could be done, especially if I took good care of myself. It’s given me a lot to contemplate.
8-1-2021 Did the SOA short form before bed last night and then Cronus visited in my dreams. I don’t remember the dreams, beyond he and I walking in a fallow field, planting seeds in that field. Today I find myself feeling some degree of hope and happiness I haven’t felt in a while. I feel the spiritual connection more than I have in a while. Today, during qi gong I did some dissolving work around what I’m feeling and that proved quite helpful.
It’s later in the day. I find myself feeling a bit paranoid and gun shy. I was burned so badly last year and the resultant mess of my own making didn’t help matters either. I as simultaneously the person who caused harm to people, and also a victim of someone who didn’t care about the effect she had on me, or anyone else. The situation is different now, but part of me wonders if I’ll ever be able to approach any new relationship of any type without feeling some deep fear and paranoia. That’s on me to work through and I’m not going to inflict it on anyone else. If anything, I’m trying to slow down and protect any person who would come into my life. I’m damaged goods, a bit of a celebrity and I have other complications that come into the mix. Naturally I want to protect anyone from that. In a way it just makes me feel even more…like it would be better if I never interacted with anyone else ever again.
8-3-2021 I am too hard on myself sometimes. I hear the ghost of my dad tell me what a disappointment I am because I don’t have my act together. I don’t know what to do to get it together. I see avenues presented to me that could work, but I just can’t do them. They aren’t the right fit, but maybe that’s just me fucking myself over again. My writing just doesn’t make enough and I can’t put enough out fast enough to somehow make it make enough money to support me and the books. And I’m back to door dashing because I let myself get so thrown off by the ex and the divorce papers. And what I’m left with is a feeling of failure. Yet I keep plodding along, trying to find a way forward. It feels very Saturnic. I know I’ll figure something out, but I question what the point of it is. Yet I know what will happen if I try to end the show early. I’m here for specific reasons and those reasons demand so much of me. I just didn’t think starting a life over would be so damn hard.
I question too whether I’m just broken or mentally ill or whatever the PC term is now for someone like me. The stories that draw me the most are the people on the edge staring into madness and having it stare back at them. By conventional measures I probably am insane, but if I am, I just manage it as best I can. If I am insane, I have to find a way forward regardless. There is simply no other choice. I have to remember that what I feed is what it grows strong. I can feed the voices of my pasts or the hopes of my future, the failures and mistakes or the successes and possibilities.
8-6-2021 I’m feeling more grounded. Events have started lining up in my favor. I just had to relax…fortunately a friend reminded me of that. I suppose too I shouldn’t be surprised at my reaction at the beginning of the month. Last year everything fell apart during this month, just when I thought I finally had things the way I wanted them. Now I get to rewrite this month and I am rewriting it, changing the past into a new present…a better one.
I've been feeling Theide coming around lately. It's been a while since he visited me, but with all the other space/time work, I guess I shouldn't be surprised if the Aghama comes to visit. That sharp sense of humor and the spatial aspects of his being, along with the fox fire hair...what a fine hara...There are some interesting convergences happening in my life right now. What's fallen apart is coming back together again in new ways. I guess what surprises me is that he would come visit, but maybe it shouldn’t. I felt him disconnect from me when I broke with Storm, but now he’s back.
8-9-2021 Something I am realizing…it’s better to put my passion and intensity into the writing, magic, art, and other expressions. Save it for the work that will make what I do great. It’s a good Saturnic lesson: Operate in your zone of genius…and my zone of genius is my work.
8-10-2021 I find people so puzzling, especially when it comes to what they want from me. Anymore I find myself questioning the agenda of any person approaching me, because I wonder what it is they really want from me. And inevitably what I find is they all want something from me. The question is…do I give them what they want? I’m finding myself wanting to give less and less and open up less and less. If they want something from me, maybe I should make them pay for it…pay with money, pay with their souls, pay something if they really want what I have. Make them earn it, instead of give it away so freely. Of course that’s really not my nature, but the Saturn work is really helping me see I need to have better boundaries on any and all people that come into my life. I’ve been burned far too much and they all want something, and they give so little in return, if anything. That’s not true for everyone, but 9 times out of 10, it is. That’s 9 times too many as far as I’m concerned.
8-12-2021 I feel like this month is really emphasizing my issues around boundaries. I talked with my mom and I’ve come to the realization I need to be more buttoned up about my life…keep some details to myself and what’s important, really important, to myself. So I’m trying to do better with this. If I want to honor my truth and connection I’ve got to know when to protect my connections and sometimes keep my truth for the people who are important to me. I’m realizing this in a hard way. Sometimes I think the only way I learn is through the hard way…
8-14-2021 Saw Free Guy tonight. I’m glad I did something fun, because this is the year anniversary of when things went sideways. I needed to do something fun and that movie was hilarious. It made me laugh and it tugged at my heart strings. I’m admittedly a romantic at heart and I find this to be true moreso as I get older.
The truth is I feel things so much more deeply than other people, from what I can tell. I’ve learned to mask a lot of that emotion, to conceal those depths, but the right story, with the right scenes unmasks that depth And how is that different from anyone else? It’s not, but when it touches me to the core of my being and speaks through me, all of me, it is something that becomes so powerful that it transforms everything I know. I think too…people don’t realize that when I come into their lives, what is really coming is an elemental force, something deeper, more primal…something that is like the ocean itself. That is who I am. That is what I am. Most people only get a little touch. Some people get more and a few people…they get most of it…and I don’t know how to make that easier, if it can be made easy at all. I suppose it’s why I prefer to limit that depth if I can. The problem is I don’t know how to limit it easily, especially when that depth is increased by the one I share this existence with.
8-15-2021 Saw a post I wrote on FB a year ago and I’m reminded that a year ago today I spent all night not sleeping because of a dumb argument and then said four very fateful words that changed my life. I don’t know if I would take it back. The problems were already there. It doesn’t matter anyway…what’s done is done. I just wish that the person who tossed a match into my life and then walked away could be made to know just how deeply she hurt me and almost broke me. Yet in the end I’m not broken. In the end I’m finding my way forward. I will never forget…
8-17-2021 The last few days have been hard ones in some way. And I find it relevant and synchronous that I’m finally moving out of PDX and having a lot of other things happen that just…it’s like one year ago, but with a much different outcome. I hope the outcome that’s manifesting really is what I want it to be. I hope I can finish healing and move forward into a new life. I really need it. I need to set those ghosts to rest and move forward with my life.
8-20-2021 It’s been an eventful few days. I moved out of PDX to Eugene, after securing a nice little home for myself. It’s the perfect place for me to rest and recover from everything. I found it synchronous that this happened a year later. I’m re-writing what happened last year, through this year, healing myself from the deep wounds I’ve been carrying and finding the deeper wells of strength I’ll need to continue on.
Ironically I had to come back up to PDX. There’s a friend’s wedding I’m playing a part in, so today I drove back up and I already feel a difference. PDX feels heavier, and not like my home anymore. Eugene, in contrast feels easier to be in, a place to relax and discover. There are people in PDX I’ll miss, but I’ll see them again and there are people I need to meet in Eugene, who will be part of the next phase of my journey. I did my final Saturnic working today in PDX and it felt right to close it out up here, to create a boundary between myself and this place. Tomorrow, after the wedding I’ll drive home and I’ll begin my Neptune working. I’m ready to relax into the flow.