A Key To Unburden Yourself: Dreams and Tarot Workshop
Yesterday, I awoke and got going on my list of items at 7am.
By 4:30pm, I was done for the day.
Except I wasn’t done in my mind. I still had things I wanted to accomplish and couldn’t find the energy to keep going.
I ended up taking a 2-hour nap and then waking at 7pm feeling like crap.
Lethargic and not wanting to do much of anything else, I simply got ready for bed and went to sleep. I couldn’t even find the energy to read.
Next thing I knew, it was 1am. Then I went back to sleep until 5am.
That was it, folks.
Today, a similar pattern.
I awoke a little after 5am and decided to get up and have a cup of coffee while listening to another chapter of Brave or Stupid. Next thing I knew, it was 6am, so I got going on my list of tasks.
I was hoping that I might be able to write a full week’s worth of blog articles in one day. This is the third one today, and I think I am done after it. It will be around 4 to 4:30pm or so by then, is my guess.
(Note: It’s 4:45pm, and I am still editing and Loading…5pm? LOL)
Why would I want to do this?
To “batch process” so that I can free up at least two days per week for writing new songs.
Therefore, I should have known that 3 or 4 articles was going to be the limit.
What I am learning is that writing a blog article is a lot like writing a song.
Some are crap. Some are good. Some are hum-dingers. They really rock.
And they are not always proportional to the time required.
Some of the not-so-great ones take 4 hours or more to complete and record a scratch demo,
and some of the great ones come together in 10–15 minutes.
When I am in full songwriting mode, I can easily write two new scratch demos per day, and some days as many as four.
The key is doing it every day, building up an arsenal, then editing the crap out of it.
And that is part of the problem.
I can’t seem to make the time or find the energy to write new songs … or a handful of other things I want to squeeze in each day.
Here’s the issue, I think.
I didn’t realize or appreciate what a load I have been carrying since starting these daily blog articles in the middle of March.
Since then, I have also added walking 15,000 steps per day, every day, or dang close to it.
I also added stricter eating habits to ensure I reached and stay at my target weight.
Heck, I have basically not had an adult beverage since the Karaoke Party at the Northwest Tarot Symposium, and less than I would normally have had for the summer.
That is good, but I seem to be making up for it with increased sweet treats. Sigh.
Nevertheless, this takes mental fortitude to be vigilant about sticking to my standards.
Plus, I was already doing a daily, or at least 4-times-per-week, strength training routine. That is good. I want to keep and even increase the frequency. But it takes time and energy.
Then I got rid of the algorithm.
Success! I have escaped it. When I signed in to look at my bill for the month, my data usage for July was down two-thirds from June!
Yay, me!
But wow, what a mental shift.
It’s hard to describe the effort that not doing something takes. It may sound silly, but it does. It takes energy to avoid overusing screens to numb yourself out.
Last month, I probably prematurely announced that my sixth One Hit Wonder was going to be playing 100 open mic shows in the next year, from June 21 to June 20.
But guess what?
Those take a tremendous amount of time.
You see, I don’t have a 15-song set like my music coach recommended.
“Just pick your best ones and go play those,” he said.
And he said, “Rehearse your set two times per day.”
Uh-huh. Right.
Well, here’s the problem. I don’t know what my best songs are!
And I have been proving that to myself at the shows I have played this summer.
Some of the ones I thought would “slay” have been received okay, and some of the ones I thought might be tolerated ended up being loved by the audiences.
Go figure.
The point is that I am still learning and therefore, I am rehearsing a catalog of about 50 songs.
At 12 songs per day, that is at least 1 hour of just rehearsal time. Which I have to admit I haven’t done as Consistently As I Wanted.
However, my coach is right. Rehearsal does matter, so do it, dude!
Also, there is the Often 2 hours of round-trip driving to get there.
The “shows” last about 3 hours.
Thus, if I played an open mic every day of the week, I am looking at a minimum of 5 hours, plus getting ready and packing up the car, which adds another 30 minutes or so.
It’s a lot.
Which brings me to the real point of today’s article.
I wanted to share a little about my friend Jennifer’s presentation at the Symposium, plus how I decided to test it out, and what I learned.
As you can somewhat see in the thumbnail of this article, a dream is something that rises up out of your unconscious.
Your conscious mind has access to it if you can remember it and write it down.
Her proposed method utilizes tarot cards to help you decipher and understand its meaning(s).
I tend to think everything is a bit of a dream, so I bent the rules and decided to use this process to decipher the skeleton key in the Inner Child layout that I discussed in yesterday’s article
(see Ramble On: Why My Inner Child Loves Led Zeppelin).
I wanted to know what the key meant in that spread, since it was the most mysterious of the four symbols.
Here is the process Jennifer taught, in a nutshell, and the cards I drew:
1. Pick a dream and hold it in your mind. Ask, “What in waking life is giving rise to this dream?” From a shuffled tarot deck, pull a card.
The card I pulled was the High Priestess.
2. Identify an image, person, action, or feeling you want more insight into. Mine was the skeleton key. Pull another card from the randomly shuffled deck.
The card I pulled was the Emperor reversed.
3. What is the overall message of this dream? Pull a third card.
My third card was the Five of Cups reversed.
And if you want more insight and think it will help, you can do Step 4.
4. What’s next? What action, insight, or guidance can I take from this dream? Pull a fourth card.
I pulled the Ten of Wands.
Now, I don’t really know how to interpret tarot cards all that well because I don’t really know what each one is about.
Some I know better than others.
For example, the first two cards I drew are referred to as Major Arcana.
since there are fewer of these, and they are more distinct, I kind of understand what they are about.
But When it comes to the four suites of Wands, Cups, Swords, & Pentacles, and the two through ten and court cards for each, my insight falls off dramatically.
But hey, what else is AI good for, am I right?
So I ran it through a couple of the platforms.
Each had a consistent reading of the spread.
The four cards make up a “spread” in this case.
(There are other formations of cards that use more cards, but that’s off topic).
Let me just cut to the quick.
The core message was:
You are acting like a tyrant with yourself.
Your rules and checklists are keeping you a prisoner, and they may be outdated.
You are at a point where you can change and are ready to change.
But you need to lighten your load, dude.
And you have the universal key—the skeleton key—to do so.
Ah, fascinating.
One of the six One Hit Wonders I have been doing for a long time is tracking my progress against financial, health, “stuff,” and personal goals.
This also takes Time and can feel tyranical.
That doesn’t mean I should give it up, but … Can I simplify it?
And, I have realized in the last few days that I am trying to squeeze 100 lbs. of potatoes into a 50-lb. sack, as we used to say Back in FFA country.
(Note: Think Napoleon Dynamite’s hometown. That’s where I grew up, just like it.)
What do I do with this insight?
I have some ideas, but with all of this … We will see.
kudos to Jennifer on an excellent presentation and workshop.
My hope is that she takes it to the next or a future IASD conference.
It would be a hit.
And…
The bunny on the loose right before her presentation was amazing.
The fact that it ran over “my slow foot dragging me back towards the door I just came in from out of the cold” shan’t be ignored.