Caterwauling

On the fifth day of December, the tarot advent calendar said to me …

What warm, generous, grateful overtures can you make today to those you love, admire and have been helped by?

The Empress is one of those cards you want to see when you’re hoping there’s a birth in your future.

Alas, I’m not looking forward to an actual pregnancy. But I would have preferred a girl if I were ever to perpetuate my DNA.

Besides, my grandmother always said “girls make you ugly.” From where I sit, she isn’t wrong. Even if one started out ugly, gestating a girl didn’t help.

In any event, the Empress is the Divine Mother. And it doesn’t have to be the querant. It can be someone who represents nurturing and love and care to you.

My mind immediately springs to someone who was let go two days before Thanksgiving.

I cannot speak to the circumstances behind this travesty because no one tells me anything anymore. But I can say that there was a little group of us who gave everything and then some. And we are tired. Like, gave till it hurts and now all these fresh faces are in the mix, making changes that often make things different instead of better.

In any event, I’ve been meaning for a few weeks now to call this motherly type.

So I’m not going to read into this card other than to pick up the damn phone and say hi to someone who was good to me for a very long time.

We used to talk tarot and she made me some beautiful crystal bracelets. There is something I can do for her now, and it’s about time I did it.

Was on a two-week break from work.

Got my final wisdom tooth pulled yesterday to start my first day back.

It was excruciating and I was on constant calls and my mouth bled all day.

Still, amid those constant calls, I heard many variations of “you look so relaxed.”

My favorite variant was, “So this is what you being relaxed looks like.”

I was 10 minutes into my first call of the day when I said I need another two weeks off because of what you people are proposing we do in the next two weeks.

Jesus Christ, I came back to my desk with four things I HAVE to achieve this week. And they dumped on those two extra projects … plus 12 reports … plus being secretary and planning meetings between two Japanese-speaking groups … plus I don’t even know what because my OOO message somehow stayed up yesterday. So I guess I’ll get hit with more today.

Can’t wait till my next vacation in two weeks.

And a buncha years at Blogspot before Jack sold it and started Twittah.

“The ability to bend an inch at a time while seeming to stand up straight is a useful and gendered skill. Most women I know do it regularly. They bend until they’re pretzeled and then blame themselves for the body aches.”

Isabel Kaplan

On the fourth day of December, the tarot advent calendar said to me …

You’ve got plenty of time to sort out what you need to, if you pace it right.

GURL.

In 24 hours, I have my final dentist appointment of the year. Then back to work.

I have a chalkboard full of to-dos for work and home that I wanted to achieve during PTO.

I erased a lot, which is great. But there’s still a lot on the list.

I think about the remaining items and wonder, if not now, when? When it’s back to up at the crack o’ me, no lunch breaks other than turning off Teams for a half-hour and having to shop, cook and clean in the evening hours, when can I do the rest?

My friend JD reminds me that we all have the same 24 hours in a day. Get up early. Stay up late. Work smarter.

If he could write three books while working two jobs and traveling 14 times, so can you.

He’s not wrong. I don’t want to be THAT busy. But, maybe I could write one book over the course of a year instead?

The Two of Coins reminds us maintain balance BUT be careful because you can fall on your ass and twist your ankle during this delicate, never-ending dance.

How easy it is to fall out of balance and never get back. So prioritize the money-making shit and the “have to do” shit but also prioritize the fun shit.

So, basically, sleep when you’re dead, as Bon Jovi sang.

“A heartbroken person is unlike any other person. Their time moves at a completely different pace than ours,” she explained.

“It’s this mental, physical, emotional ache and feeling so conflicted. Nothing distracts you from it. Then time passes, and the more you live your life and create new habits, you get used to not having a text message every morning saying, ‘Hello, beautiful. Good morning.’ You get used to not calling someone at night to tell them how your day was.”

— <a href=”https://www.eonline.com/news/1356598/taylor-swift-and-harry-styles-went-on-their-iconic-central-park-date-10-years-ago-inspiring-these-songs“>Queen Taylor</a>

On the third day of December, the tarot advent calendar said to me …

Do a “future, festive you” some favors today.

I love wands because I love fire.

I also don’t use fire in my magick anymore because mom can’t stand the smell of candles or incense (scented or not — even the burning smell bothers her).

Also, catbutt. My furriest baby, Belly, always catches me sneaking a quick candle burn and walks across the flame. Then I have to hear about it that mom smells burning fur.

That’s my connection to the Three of Wands. You realized with the Two of Wands that there’s a whole world out there, and it’s your fiery little oyster. Which direction will you pick?

In the Three, you’ve got the vision. And you need to act on the desires before they flame out.

I feel like I am permanently stuck at three.

It’s good in a way because threes symbolize power. But if you don’t tap into that potential, even if it turns out to be a complete and utter disaster, you don’t get to the celebration stage that the Four of Wands represents.

How do I best serve future, festive me?

Right now I’ve been coming back from severe burnout. But I was met with an issue that messed up two days.

The issue got resolved this morning. And I have to thank past me for having the foresight to prepare for the fallout from a mess I didn’t know was coming.

And the issue only got resolved after I lay awake worrying about it. I told myself, go back to sleep — you’ll know what to do when you go to do it.

Sure enough, at 8 a.m. I chose the solution I wasn’t planning to choose. And it saved me a fortune as well as two more days of inconvenience.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be for future me, not past me.

But maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here about having two options and JUST KNOWING what to do … and then DOING it.

Future me has a choice of two different elements — water or earth.

Practical me (usually the winner) really wants earth. Go figure. Earth equals practicality. Stability.

The other Gemini Twin wants water. Flow to complement the ebb. Uncertainty, but balance.

I wonder if I just made a major life decision with this post.

On the second day of December, the tarot advent calendar said to me …

This year, whatever feels special to you is where the magic is.

Makes me think about what I wrote for day one of the advent calendar — what is my calling, if not this?

I think my calling is within this. I’ve loved having a hand in 40 different pots for the past 20 years.

But after two decades, having a skill set that’s an inch deep and a mile wide is disconcerting.

Being 30-ish for so long, I’m accepting that there are fewer years left than have been lived. That maybe the bucket list needs to be shorter or I need to start checking things off faster.

I think the pandemic taught me to find wonder in the ordinary. But it also taught me to stop seeking magic. Including my own, but mostly in others.

Where I expect to find magic is in an odd place … in discipline. That’s my word for 2023.

Lately I’ve been too tired to do anything that brings joy or satisfaction. So I give myself grace for doing the bare minimum, since my minimum is not others’ minimum.

But, this period of grace could last forever, as I’m still tired. I think the way to get un-tired is to do more. Rather, do different things, and more of them.

I wouldn’t say it’s a matter of finding magic in the mundane.

Now, lord knows I’ve read enough mundane tweets from enough mundane people to know there ain’t no magic there. And never will be.

But maybe the magic is in actively seeking it beyond what already happens on its own.

So when that cloud hands me yet another cup, as it always does, I’m “saying yes instead of no,” as T-Swift sang.

Except to meetings. God, what has been most wonderful about the last two weeks was getting rid of the useless meetings and conversations and people (just two, really) I do my level best to avoid.

How do I zap the time sucks and fill that time with more joyful things? Talk about a life resolution, not just a New Year’s one.

On the first day of December, the tarot advent calendar said to me …

You are Boss Santa, in charge of a magical run-up to the big day. What do you want to happen? What are you most looking forward to? What new activities or traditions could you try this year? What foreseeable snags or pitfalls do you want to ditch or delegate?

That’s a lot to unpack. Too much, really.

What am I looking forward to? How about not forgetting to buy turkey, as I did on Thanksgiving. Definitely don’t want to make “going to McDonald’s” a tradition.

The sad part is I was on vacation and had nothing BUT time to shop for everything else. Oy!

I like this whole “getting paid to not work” business. I intend to repeat it for Christmas. Preferably far, far away from here.

I’ve been closely following Christina Applegate and her battle with MS as she works on “Dead to Me.”

She’s worried this will be her last project, as her condition worsens and will impact her ability to be active for long periods of time.

She worries that she can ONLY work five hours a day.

A five-hour marathon sounds awesome.

I mean, yeah, she’s used to working all day and night. I used to be used to that, too. But I don’t want that anymore.

So I guess when thinking about what I would change for upcoming and future holidays, feeling OK with “just” working five hours seems like a good goal to have.

I mean, it probably means getting a different job and getting used to having less money. But it’s something I think increasingly more about.

I’ve been enjoying being supervisor/psychic healer to 25. But they keep talking about hiring someone to take the crypto half of the duties. Which makes me sad because that team is growing on me. But if I had my way about it, I’d pick one franchise (out of the remaining four) to really blow out of the water.

I always say “if I were editorial director, I’d …”

That’s what I’d do. Focus. Ditch the hags … I mean snags … and not need two weeks to try to recuperate from utter and complete exhaustion.

There’s a new goal for the new year. Not save up all my days and need a whole damn month to recuperate from burnout.

As for what to look forward to, I guess that depends on what I’m allowed to do.

Or maybe I’m allowed to do more (or, for the purpose of this conversation, LESS) than I think.

As one of my favorite seers wrote, “Use your energy to its best ability.”

I rag on B a lot. He earned it.

He was cruel to everyone who can be arsed to remember him. Acted like he was smarter, richer, better than us all.

Definitely had more money than us. I see the house he paid $400k for is under contract for $1.2M.

That mofo always falls in shit and comes out smelling like roses. Won’t lie — I hate him for that. The luck, not the money.

Dude could BS his way into or out of anything. Even though I hated his guts, I kissed his flat ass to keep my job and enjoy an occasional perk.

One of the perks was working on Atlantic Avenue and seeing the beach once a month when I could swing a lunch break.

Only getting lunch once a month sucked. But grabbing BurgerFi or Pizza Rustica by the ocean made it worthwhile.

In any event, I’m currently halfway through a two-week PTO stint. Unlike past years where I forfeited that time, I decided to take two weeks for Thanksgiving and one week for Christmas.

I don’t think anyone above me is pleased with my scheduling choices. But it’s also not like I haven’t been selectively working and attending meetings.

That’s the thing. I’ve Marie Kondo’d my to-do list and meeting schedule. I provide direction to my staff, run away and let them do it. Is it to my liking? More or less. Did I do the right thing by LETTING them do their job? Absotoothly.

(Oh yeah, wisdom teeth coming out today and tomorrow. Whee.)

Anyway, I got to thinking about B. He would force us to sit on a “monring” call for an hour every day. Then you’d never see him again because he couldn’t be bothered to come into work unless it was to poop in the bathroom that I was somehow responsible for cleaning.

I always said his wife kept his balls in his purse. And he stayed home in hopes that he could go steal them out of her handbag.

In any event, the one thing I appreciated about B — beyond the satellite office that I was pretty much the sole occupant of, even if I wasn’t allowed to work from home — was that he left me alone.

I worked hard. I worked A LOT. And I missed out on a ton of life events and social engagements and TIME OFF.

By choice, of course. I blame no one but myself for that.

He would always skip the “ediotrial” (sigh) call (our 1:1). So I was free to do my work in the way I saw fit after we hung up from that often-rambling group call.

In any event, I was just telling someone that I gained a new appreciation for B this week.

I work for an hour, maybe two.

I check in on those who need it.

I answer questions and provide direction and share stuff I gleaned from other conversations.

You know, like I usually do for 8-10 hours a day, every day. But, abbreviated.

Then I go fuck off and let everyone do their jobs and then I go enjoy my life for a goddamn minute.

If this is ACTUALLY what being a director is, I need to do this all the time. But with filling up the other six hours a day with real work — i.e., not inane meetings and putting out fires and reminding people of things they should know by now.

Anyway, today goes down in history as the day I started to loathe B less.

I mean, I wish I was making his salary to work two hours a day for five years.

But, I’m OK making mine as long as I can do the wild things I’m doing like CLEANING THE HOUSE and GOING TO THE DENTIST.

Seriously, I have been deep-cleaning this place for a week and I’m only halfway done, yeesh.

So, no, Cindy, I don’t have some “unemployed relative” doing it for me. How about send your maid over here if you pity me so much.

I have two getaways planned for next year. So I won’t get this trough of time off for the holidays. I mean, unless I channel my inner B and go take all my industry contacts to lunch and call it networking.

Hey, now there’s an idea …