Card Cartography: Day 4
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 (here’s how it came to be). 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 4 starting below the line.
2 of Swords
two equal forces competing against each other; a choice is required that is challenging the intellect
One thing I love about tarot cards is the way their ambiguous meanings can feel relevant in so many situations. I don’t believe that the cards have some mystical power over me, but I have found this week’s cards to all be helpful in giving me some direction.
Which, after all, was the point of this week-long experiment in the first place.
I feel like I’m the red spark between the two blades depicted in this rendition of the 2 of swords. I feel like I can hear the clang of these two swords clashing against each other, and the sound is reverberating out from that center bubble.
In that center bubble is a lot of the binaries I artificially create for myself and find it hard to escape from.
I had a coaching call today with Jenn DePrizio around my tendency to—binarily—ruminate indefinitely or take frenzied action.
We talked about making myself a set of tools and reminders to help me break out of that binary. In fact, when this mini blog post is written, I’m off to craft a wheel I can spin with a set of affirmations and questions I’ve come up with to encourage myself to spend more time in the in-between and away from the far reaches.
I often want to—binarily—craft a perfect thing and tweak it into perfection before releasing it to the world or I want to sit and research it without ever making the thing at all. I’m cultivating methods for moving away from either extreme and giving myself permission to do just a bit of the thing. To try. To hold it lightly. To have fun with it. To do the 50%, or the 25%, or the 10%, or even the 1% version of the thing.
That’s what my affirmations are for this wheel I’m about to go make. So that when I find myself on the third hour of tweaking some just-fine-as-it-is Canva graphic, I can lift my head up, spin this wheel, land on a wedge that says How can this be easier? or Make yourself creative constraints or Decide and move on.
It’s like I’m designing my own version of Oblique Strategies, one of my favorite tools to break out of my loops and consider something anew.
The two of swords reminds me today about the importance of not staying stuck inside that clash of two opposing forces.
When I’m feeling caught in the ringing clang of two conflicting directions, there are other options I can turn to.
That might be turning to another person for a new point of view.
It might be putting down an engrossing task and coming back to it later to see if it really requires more time.
It might be reminding myself that my self-worth is not defined by my productivity.
The thing is probably fine just as it is. So am I.
Favorite word of this post: oblique
