So what’s happened in the last 12 days? Well, I’ve managed to retain my work-overload. In fact, as I write, this, I’m quite exhausted – I’ve been up for the last three nights pretty late, trying to knock out all the sites I need to finish. I’ve also been walking more than usual – it helps me ot walk while I’m ... read on, Fisherboy »]]> I promised I’d try for once a week. it’s late in that promise, but it’s still within the “once a week” timeline – so win for me!

So what’s happened in the last 12 days? Well, I’ve managed to retain my work-overload. In fact, as I write, this, I’m quite exhausted – I’ve been up for the last three nights pretty late, trying to knock out all the sites I need to finish. I’ve also been walking more than usual – it helps me ot walk while I’m working, and since I’m working extra-long hours – I’m walking extra-long hours too. And this sucks – I’ve fallen back into the old trend of skipping breakfast too (as well as other meals) – so old habits do die hard. I’m stopping this behavior immediately – I will not work after 3pm today, nor will I work over the weekend. Hopefully that’ll be the reset I need ot get me back on track next week.

My birthday was the other day (May 4) – dang I’m old. Every time I think of how old I am, I feel like “Sally” in “When Harry Met Sally” (even though I’ve never actually seen the movie – I’ve only seen that one part which I shall describe right now) where she calls up Harry and tells him she’s gonna be 40.

“When?” he asks.

“Someday!” she sobs.

For me, “someday” is probably closer than it was for her.

Anyway. So hubby went out and got my favorite dinner (sushi) and made me a banana cream pie. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to make pie crust, and he being the type who likes to buy everything as cheaply as possible, purchased a frozen store-brand pie shell. Apparently it was mismade, because I could taste that pie shell for hours afterwards, and it sat in my stomach like a rock – until I puked it up (along with my sushi!) around midnight.

And weiner that I am, I had to wonder how you counted calories for something you ate, and then upchucked later. I have no idea how that works.

I did a a tarot reading for myself a few days ago – I haven’t done that in a while. I should have written down the cards I pulled, because I can’t remember what they were exactly. But I do remember every time I asked a “clarification question” that was yes or no based, the card I pulled every time was the Ace of Cups – which made me laugh. (And yeah, this was after shuffling between each question – so it’s not like it was in the same spot every time.) but i do recall the meaning of e reading was what I’ve said here – I’m sliding back into old habits, and if I want to move forward and go down the path I want to be on, I need to focus, pay attention to what I’m doing, and the biggest one: don’t be afraid to ask for help. (I’m not a help-asking kind of gal – which is a downfall of mine.)

Anyway, that’s where i am on Day 12. I have no report of the weight-loss thing, because it seems to be stagnant – the scale hasn’t budged in three weeks. However, my pants still keep falling off. I’m thinking perhaps I should start measuring certain body parts, so when the scale doesn’t move, I can see if something else is.

I don’t see myself as “psychic.” I’ve never touted that I am, and for the most part, I don’t believe that people – well, most people – that say they are… really are.

Sure, there have been strange things that have happened to me throughout my life. I have lots of stories that have given people goosebumps (who doesn’t?). But personally, I believe that everyone has some part of their mind that taps into your subconscious – that’s all. Humans, as ... read on, Fisherboy »]]>

But not like you’d think.

I don’t see myself as “psychic.” I’ve never touted that I am, and for the most part, I don’t believe that people – well, most people – that say they are… really are.

Sure, there have been strange things that have happened to me throughout my life. I have lots of stories that have given people goosebumps (who doesn’t?). But personally, I believe that everyone has some part of their mind that taps into your subconscious – that’s all. Humans, as a rule, are rational beings. We like to reason and think our way out of (or into) things. However, at our root, we are animals, too – and sometimes, I think our heads get in the way of what our guts are telling us. It’s my belief that if we listened to ourselves at a deeper level, we would all be a lot happier. I’ve spent a lot of my life getting in my own way because I wanted to do something, but my rational mind told me I couldn’t or shouldn’t.

As the saying goes, “you are your own worst enemy,” and I think the human rationale has a lot to do with that. Sometimes you just gotta tell the brain to STFU.

I first picked up tarot cards just to mess with them. I write a bit of fiction on the side, and when I discovered that one of my favorite authors used tarot as a helpful tool to lay out general plot lines to stories, I got even more interested. I decided the best way to use this tool for my writing was to learn how to actually read them, so I started doing readings (for free, BTW – I would never take money for this). Turns out that a lot of people think I’m a natural at it. I take that as a compliment, although not really to heart (I’m too much of a perfectionist to take things like that to heart!)

That being said, I do get a lot of flack for admitting to read tarot cards. (I also interpret dreams – and why that is thought to be a “psychic power” is way beyond me. There’s nothing at all psychic about that one. Anyone can do it, and there’s no “mumbo jumbo” or anything to it at all. But that’s another post for another day!) My ex’s girlfriend swears I’m going to go to Hell for it, which I find kind of funny – especially since I don’t believe in Hell.. which she swears I’m going to go to Hell for that too. LOL

Anyway…

To me, tarot is nothing more than listening to your gut and reacting to an image. You pay attention to your reaction at what you see – you reactions tell you more than anything. Ask any criminal profiler – they can ask you questions, and just based on the direction your eyes move when you answer they can tell if you’re lying. It’s all about instinct, gut reactions, and recognizing them. The hard part is recognizing them. We are so trained to ignore “weird stuff” that we immediately try to un-convince ourselves of anything that might be… well, weird. You kind of have to un-train that – and the more you do it, the better you get.

If a reader flips a card, many people will initially notice the overall image. There will be an initial positive or negative reaction – even without knowing what that card means at all. Then you’ll start picking things apart – noticing little details. It’s these details that tell you what the card means – and on any given day, one detail will mean something different than it did the day before. Yeah, each card has it’s own little individual “general” meaning. (In fact, the major Arcana tells a story all on it’s own.) But this is, I think, why people think it’s “bunk” or it has “Just enough to tantalize you, but general enough to not really mean anything.” Many people go to psychics or card readers and want to sit back, and say nothing more than “Go,” and because they can’t, they feel their skepticism is valid. You hear the psychic say “It doesn’t work that way,” and you scoff because… isn’t it? Really?

But it isn’t. It doesn’t work that way. Every person is an individual. Every person has had a different experience and view of something that they have seen (or even a hundred million people have seen.) So even though the cards have general meanings to them, it’s the individual that makes the reading specific to them, based on what those pictures mean to them.

Let me give you an example. I had a roommate in college who was deathly afraid of moths. I’m not kidding. She was terrified of them. I remember a moth getting into our common room once, and in the 5 minutes it took me to catch it, she was taken from a badass chica from the Boogie Down who didn’t take shit from anyone to a sobbing, screaming mess in the far corner of the room, begging me to get rid of it. I’d never seen anything like it.

Now, if I turned over a card that had a picture of a moth on it – what do you think her specific reaction would be to that image? She’d freak the fuck out. In fact, I do have a card with a moth on it, and the general meaning of that card is actually very positive. But to her, I bet you that it would not be.

All the cards do is allow to to notice details. Those details give you a reaction. It’s your instincts at work, forcing your subconscious to work with your conscious mind. The reader is there to help you sort it, and to stop you from convincing yourself that the weird things that pop into your head and the odd reactions you have are just weird things to be dismissed. Instead, they try to help you get meaning from them so you can solve (or work towards solving) your issues. Everyone has problems, and deep down, we all already know how to solve them – but being our own worst enemy, we tend to dismiss the solutions and bury them. But if you actually stopped trying to convince yourself that your reaction – your initial thought – was crazy, and instead, actually paid attention to it, you would see the reason people like tarot cards.

Remember when you took those standardized tests in school? The one with the multiple choice questions, and the teacher always gave you the same clue: whatever answer you think is correct on first thought – go with it. Because later on, you find out you convinced yourself that your initial answer was wrong, so you picked what seemed to be the more rational one – and when you got the score back, you found out you were right the first time.

Tarot is no more mystical than that.

As for the “fortune telling” aspect of it – no, it doesn’t tell you the future. It tells you the most likely outcome if you stay on the path you’re trodding. People already know what’s going to happen, deep-down. You have a question in your head, right now, and if I asked you that question, you’d already know the answer. You’d have an answer to it almost immediately – and then you follow up with either a head shake or a “but…” or both, and start to convince yourself that you don’t know the answer. There’s too many variables and unknowns for you to know the answer, right?

If you don’t change your path, then the tarot cards will tell you pretty much what you already know – and guess what? They end up being right. Or, you make a change in your life that changes your path, and now the cards are wrong – and you can continue to be skeptical.

I still don’t quite believe there’s anything really “otherworldy” about tarot cards, except that the people who are really great at reading them are great because they understand that a human’s instinct is just as important as their reasoning. That is impressive in and of itself – too many people ignore their gut reaction, and they end up regretting it. But I think if anyone goes into using tarot without thinking it’s some sort of “witchcraft” or “mystical” thing, and just saw it as a tool to trigger our gut reactions to figure out our problems, you might just have an entirely different perspective on the whole matter.