astrology: alchemizing a skeleton
"doing the work," the case for pseudoscience, & upgrading your code
because i have my big three tattooed on my fingers, it should come as no surprise that i will seize any and every opportunity to take a personality test, especially if it has some kind of mystical basis in objective reality, i.e. astrology, numerology, and the more… um… esoteric... human design.
additionally i’m a fan of both the enneagram and myers-briggs tests, even though i get paranoid that i’ll accidentally lie about how much of a procrastinator i am, or overestimate my willingness to sacrifice for others, etc., as if the unfeeling computer is going to judge me. or perhaps rather to predict and mitigate undesirable results. (don’t act like you didn’t intentionally rig a buzzfeed quiz at least once in the 2010s.)
last week’s post was a little abstract, but under all the cryptic analogizing was my confused grappling with self-analysis and perception. what your tiktok therapist may or may not have told you is that spending all your time trying to figure out how to be better leaves you very little time to feel good and okay. weird!
finally, at the ripe old age of 25 (could it be the hardened frontal lobe?), it’s become clear that perpetual, obsessive attempts at self improvement and actualization are often less productive than the average wellness influencer would have you believe.
consistently excellent culture writer jessica grose explores this sentiment in her piece “‘doing the work' and the obsession with superficial self-improvement,” which includes this resonant quote, in response to the phrase “doing the work” being used to reference incessant therapizing:
I confess a visceral aversion to “doing the work” used in this particular way. My gut reaction is: I simply decline to do more work. My life is already filled with many kinds of labor. I work full time; I cook dinner every night; I shuttle my children to and fro. I’m not asking for a medal here. This is just what’s in many people’s inboxes. But does tending to my mind and soul have to be framed as yet another job, another box to check, another task to optimize and conquer?
in true american capitalist-individualist fashion, making an effort to better manage our mental and emotional landscapes has become something quantified, advertised, and even performed. i want to shift my inner narrative from self-improvement to self-reflection, the latter of which doesn’t imply any achievable goal.
that’s not to say i won’t naturally evolve via said reflection, but the shift in semantics implies the opportunity for curiosity, grace, and a sense of unhurriedness. i want to grow and improve because i want to, not because i have to to be considered an acceptable type of person.
does water improve? no. water reflects. who among us is more changeable than water?
i fuck with astrology because it’s allowed me to transform my blissful ignorance into informed radical acceptance. my chart doesn’t doom me to some predestined reality – it gifts me with tools to better understand my patterns, habits, and subconscious preconceptions.
i was a bonafide tumblr girl in 2013 (soft grunge, anyone?), and spent a concerning amount of time making my blog something beautiful and personal to me. part of that process was modifying the code that made the displayed aesthetics and experience what they were.
some of the code was unalterable – it provided the basic structure for the website to function. but a lot of it was malleable on purpose. using the foundations provided to me, through trial and error, i had the power to alchemize a skeleton. that’s what astrology is to me. the power to alchemize a skeleton.
in “dear men, shut up and let me enjoy astrology,” jessica mason (different jessica! love you gals.) writes:
For me, and I would hazard for the majority of astrology fans, we don’t use astrology to “know the future” or “plan our lives,” but we use it to understand ourselves and others better and to help us grow and learn to be better people. There are countless “personality type” tests and categorizations, and they are all, in some way, arbitrary, but that doesn’t mean understanding them isn’t useful. From Meyers-Briggs to Love Languages, knowing our personal tendencies, and more importantly having language with which to examine and discuss them, is useful—and a big part of personal growth.
i recognize that people generally don’t like to be told who they are, and new age pseudo-scientific practices like astrology and human design can come off that way. but when we take a deep, thoughtful look at our own code, we realize how many colors and fonts we can actually change, how many widgets we can add, how many elements we can creatively reposition.
having a fun and sexy tumblr blog was never about work. i created it the way i create myself. one inspired line, one excited idea, one hopeful, leisurely upgrade at a time.
obsession of the week
my new clothes rack. my closet rod collapsed sometime in june, and on account of depression it took me three months to cook up a solution. i have conceded to the fact that my closet, being meek and weak and inadequate as it is, will simply never be able to withstand the weight and power of the entirety of my wardrobe. enter: the clothes rack. i highly recommend this alternative storage option for my fellow clothes hoarders who are tired of sacrificing their sanity for their slay.