My Tail is on Fire?
I used to be a prolific blogger. I want to revive that somewhat this year. This inclination wants to resurrect. I am going to slap it around, throw some cold water on it, give it more than a nudge - de-root, loosen, rustle up. Kick her down the hill, maybe. Watch my disheveled, wallowing and neglected creative juicebox tumble head over heels off the cliff, hitting a few branches and loosening some boulders along the way.
And when I clamber down the slopes to see what's left of that inclination, maybe I will be able to rouse her into dusting herself off, getting to her feet. Shake her her by the shoulders. Hey, you. Wanna be 'present' 'online' or something? C'mon. You know you want to.
The thing is, I've lost a lot of creative confidence over the years. I can pinpoint a few key moments when I took a few gut punches - I thought my 30s were supposed to be a time when I stood on my own two feet a bit more, and didn't give a fuck what others thought? Instead, I retreated more and more into a snail-shell, silencing the self that stood on rooftops and said all kinds of crazy things.
What does it take to find a little of that audacity again? Now that I am staring down the barrel of turning 40 this year - officially, on a lot of metrics, the end of being a 'young person', I need to ask a question. What kind of middle-aged person am I going to be? Am I being? I thought I would have made so much more progress by now. I look on my journey and I see a lot of dead ends. Perceived wasted time. Of achievements being diminished and efforts going to waste. It feels hard to feel morose about these things when there is so much shit being heaped on other people around the world, and really, I have it very, very lucky. So I turn things over and over in a circle and there ends up being nothing posted. I stay in. I neglect to text or call. I simply resolve to disappear. Dwell in the liminal space.
I don't want to be that person. I want to use my voice. Whatever that looks like in 2024 - bring it on.
My tarot card of the year is 'The Devil' - apparently you can add the numbers again (1 + 5) and get The Lovers, and we've got returning cast here with our head honcho Spicy Cat. But, I have been using The Devil from the Tarot of the White Cats as a bookmark at the moment, and it's pretty hilarious.
I mean, these two orange kitties look completely baffled by what is going on. And little Adam-kitty (as is tradition!) with his tail on fire is just staring into the middle distance. Eve-kitty uselessly gestures as if she is only just realising the predicament she is in. I dunno, I am definitely feeling these kitties right now. They definitely didn't get allocated the orange cat brain cell on this day, and that's how I've been feeling - missing the allocated brain cell. Barely roused from the post-holiday stupor. Feeling like there is something urgent I should be attending to, but not quite sure what it is.
I am going to need to spend an entire year to unpack what The Devil means for me - maybe I will start living deliciously? Confront and integrate some shadows? Cultivate a little passion and ambition? Live a little instead of fussing with the future or the past. Stay tuned for devil-opments... live, from Hell.