Card Cartography: Day 1
As I’m working on reconfiguring my business to be what I want, I’m trying to bring some lightness, ease, and fun to how I work.
In a recent coaching session with Jenn DePrizio, she pointed out that although I talk about the importance of playfulness and experimentation, I was coming to her feeling stuck in a binary of either frantic action or endless rumination. She wondered how I might run my business with the same spirit of playfulness that I talk about it. We came up with the idea of trying some little fun experiments to keep things nimble and low-stakes.
I also talk about the value of creative constraints, and feel at my most vital when I’m breaking out of a box. But I’ve been feeling lost in this caterpillar goo transition moment of feeling like there is no box around me. So I’m practicing with giving myself some creative constraints.
Last week I joined Cecily Sailer’s Creative Coven workshop for the solstice and was reminded that I’ve fallen out of my tarot card pulling, and how much I enjoy finding inspiration and resonance in the cards.
Finally, I’ve been wanting to spur myself back into regular public writing, and I remembered how much fun my self-imposed daily blogging was during #RSRSeesTheUSA (my 2.5-month solo cross-country road trip).
I’m combining all of the above for a week of intuitive play.
This week (the week of June 23, the first full week of summer, with all the ripeness and flourishing promise that summer brings), I’m conducting an experiment. Each weekday, I will:
pull a tarot card, focusing on the question How shall I work today?
see how that card guides me throughout the day
write a short blog post (30 minutes only, exactly 500 words) about how it felt
single out my favorite word from that blog post at the end
OK, 500 words for Day 1 starting below the line.
Ace of Cups
the kernel/seed of the suit of cups (suit of water, emotions)
a fresh start with emotional receptivity and openheartedness
What an on-the-nose card to draw for the first day of this experiment!
I began the day in the humid heat with a walk in the woods, accompanied by both my dog (who does not like the heat) and a new friend/colleague, Quinn Corte.
We're both recovering museum workers who, now in our 40s, want to work with more ease and spaciousness. We’re both building independent businesses that we want to be balanced without descending into burnout, and we both want to help other museum workers along the way.
She’s a forest fairy. I’m a pirate.
Who knows what collaborations may come from our powers combined, but we had a lovely walk and talk, and the Ace of Cups was a quiet voice along the way reminding me to stay receptive.
When we all started wilting in the heat, I headed home for a collaborative meeting with two other friends (Isabella Bruno & Jen Holmes). We’re cooking up a session proposal for the Museum Computer Network conference in Minneapolis in October, and today’s the deadline. I hope our session's picked, because we’re offering a chance for folks to learn various decision-making frameworks that can help lead to more collective decision making instead of hierarchical dictates.
A flexible and receptive call later, the proposal was in submitting shape.
Which means it was actually time to decline another conference opportunity.
Isabella and I had proposed a session for this year’s New England Museums Association conference, and while it wasn’t selected, it did seem in line with a couple other promising submissions. We’d been offered the chance to try and combine our ideas across three sessions with a total of six different presenters.
I’m a hand-raising eldest child overachiever. Conference presentations=success and recognition! Marks of expertise! Gold stars for contribution to the field!
But the plan Isabella and I had was an immersive, participatory experience session. I’ve written about how much I believe in experience sessions. Combining ideas and formats with so many others seemed complicated and likely to move away from an experience session.
I opened an email to bow out of the collaboration. I wavered over it. Did I really want to say no? The others were still planning to connect about the collaboration potential. I like collaborations. I could still do something, right? Right? Right?!
Ace of Cups reminder: work with fluidity and receptivity today.
I have other conference session irons in the fire. I’m already speaking at this year’s NEMA in another session. There was no need to make this happen when it was a move away from an experience session, and a need to come up with something entirely new.
Fluidity means listening to my intuition and not letting my head overrule what feels right in my body.
Gracious decline: sent.
Now I’m wrapping up this little fluid experiment to go jump in the physical water of the backyard pool.
I listened to what emotions were resonating today. I let things flow, both giving and reserving my energy.
Favorite word of this post: gracious
