Addicted to that makeover feeling
New live tarot readings with The Side Woo
I am starting a new series of bi-monthly live tarot readings in which I read for an artist or other creative person on the question of their choosing. To kick it off this Thursday I read for Vivien Chung, an artist, curator and a friend of mine that I have had the luck to get to know better since moving to LA.
Vivien’s question resonated with me because essentially she is looking for something new, and doesn’t quite know what that is or how big to go. While some people are change-averse, I would describe myself, and maybe Vivien, as stability-averse. I am up for adventures and will sacrifice some creature comforts to experience them. I love the back-to-school freshness of a new job, or a new residency to attend. The nerves and the excitement. The new office or art supplies, and a wardrobe to go with it.
One of the things that I did while I was traveling to different residencies is buy clothes in each new city, often from their local thrift shops, that reminded me of the way that I had seen locals dressed. It’s not exactly that I wanted to fit in, but rather I liked that I could try on the feeling of being a local. New city, new look.
Plus when I went to the next place, I had a functional souvenir that I could take with me and use over and over. Although not everything made the cut, like the blue-and-white stripe, off-the-shoulder dress I bought in Greece. Some things just look better while on an island.
The tarot card that represents this energy to me now, thanks in part to a recent episode of The Tarot Diagnosis podcast, is The Chariot. The Chariot can represent new opportunities, new horizons, and the planning stage right before starting a new challenge. But as Shannon Knight, host of TTD, and her guest discussed, perpetually embodying The Chariot can be a sign of trauma or a coping mechanism that says to stay on the move is to be safe.
It’s possible to embody both sides of this card and make choices about exciting new changes. The trouble is when you get addicted to the excitement of the new, but don’t stick around to experience what the new feels like when you create a routine around it. When the thrill of the makeover wears off you are left with yourself again, your limitations, and all your self-doubts that you thought you could outrun.
If I were to have fully embodied The Chariot shadow when I moved here to LA, I would have moved somewhere new within the first six months. It was lonely and the traffic sucked, and it felt like nobody cared about my art. Ugh!
But everything takes time and I am now proudly able to navigate to many places in the city without using Google Maps. I wrote that many times on my end-of-day gratitude list to make sure I didn’t miss the small successes.
This post finds me at such an interesting time. I’m back in my red state after a stint in Europe. (First world problems. I already sound like an asshole.) But I have been trying to direct my chariot card energy to being happy. I’m happy here. I’m happy there. I find different ways to be happy in each place, because my happiness is up to me. And most of the time, it works.