Where I was – 5 of swords/spades (a bit of conflict there)
Where I am – Judgement (a bit of reflection here, a calling out of sorts)
Where I’m going – 10 of cups/hearts (a heckin lot of being filled up and feeling whole)
How I’m getting there – The Emperor (a whole heckin lot of stepping into the role of embracing sovereignty, of the self as much as anything else)

 

 

I’m writing an essay right now.
This is not it, though I could likely write paragraphs of rambling coherency which arrive at a place not unlike the conclusion of an essay. No, this is my brain’s perambulation, a neighbourhood wander, a midnight stroll about the places we need to visit before the actual work gets done. The warm up. Because perish the thought I should write a first draft or make some notes or something…

I’ve been schooling a bit, there’s this notion in the back of my mind that age increases as time passes and the desire for an overtly physical job diminishes in what is likely an easily quantifiable measurement.
So I thought, what do I like enough that I might want to level up in order to access it? The thing I like most?  Books. And telling people to shut up, so exploring the possibility of working in a library seems like a pretty good idea.
I don’t have my high school diploma, never really saw the point until fairly recently. I know I could have just grabbed a GED, and that would have given me the English component required to apply for the Library Tech diploma program. My decision to take the actual English class/university prep upgrade is the result of considering that proving my abilities through course work might carry more weight than proving that I’m good at multiple choice tests. It’s been pretty casual as far as schooly stuff goes, but now we’re down to it. I have until 6am to write an essay on the topic provided. It’s not beyond me by any means, but the level of procrastination, of my unerring compulsion to slide into home at as near to the last second as possible amuses and frustrates me in equal measure.

I had a good chat with a brilliant friend, and an equally brilliant chat with a good friend (for clarity, both were the same chat and the same friend), and we spoke of pressure we sometimes put on ourselves to create something perfect, or if not perfect, then fitting an expectation arbitrarily laid out by a lifetime of influences, whether sub, un, or fully conscious.

And I said, sometimes I just want to draw a weird cat. She said, you should do that.

Up until tonight, every time I’ve thought about drawing a weird cat, my brain automatically kicked into this gear of, “well if you’re going to be creative, it should be writing. That’s your thing, you’re a writer and you really feel like you should write more so why don’t you do that instead of drawing because you really don’t think you’re that good at drawing, you’ve only been noodling with it since last year it’s reasonable to think you’re not very good at it yet and maybe you could write a nice story about a weird cat…” and so on. But dang it! I just kinda want to draw a weird cat! The best part of weird stuff is that weird is not a synonym of good.

It does not have to be good.

It can just be weird.

My friend shared me a link to some music that a loveliest of the weird people person we are both fortunate enough to love and miss beyond what is sane and rational, (because that’s love for you, sure the poetry is rich and expansive, but the sanity is is damn short supply and I wouldn’t have it any other way) and so I put it on. Loud. It’s really a beautiful legacy, and how grateful I am for it. And then I put on our other friend’s helmet, which he had given me the last time I saw him. Another amazing and touching gift. And I drew a weird cat.
And I didn’t know what colour pencil crayon I was using.
And I don’t understand proportion
and perspective
and what toes actually look like but sometimes just letting go,
falling into music
into grief
into love
into weird
is the best way to make space in a tired brain, an overworked body, and a broken heart for whatever comes next.

Which, in my case, is an essay.