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RANDOM THOUGHTS On dealing with the New Year before it can deal with us.........

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Last night, I was thinking about ….. things ….. and one of them was wondering what makes the New Year so challenging, if you’re one of those people it’s challenging for, which I definitely am.

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Is it that it almost forces you to take stock, whether you want to or not? To look at where you are, and where you’re going, and how you got here, and then how you’re going to get there, and what you might need to change in order to do that, and whether you really need to rinse off those dishes in the sink or if they’ll hold for another day or so, more or less.
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Or you know, til you have enough energy to squander on shite like that ..... as if ....​


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Is it the sad, recurring thoughts that come, sliding slyly in unbidden and snickering all the way, about the rose-lipped maids and light-foot lads that have fallen by the way and left the race during this last year, (I have a fondness for. E.A. Robinson’s and A. E. Housman’s simple, eloquent paeans to life’s melancholy or challenging moments, easy to read, easy to remember, easy to quote) probably because Christmas starts that wheel a-churnin’, and like the Titanic, it doesn’t just turn on a dime ya’ know ….


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It didn’t take long for me to realize that lingering there on those thoughts wasn’t going to yield anything but a long whine and deep wallow, both of which have their place in times of stress, but not an effective way to welcome in a new year …. but gratitude wasn’t working, and trying to remind myself how much worse I used to be wasn’t doing it, either …


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But finally, after searching high and low metaphorically speaking, I came upon a few perfect thoughts for those of us stuck in this miserable little droning, busy buzz-saw of an illness, possibly also trapped in those long, long, dark and dismal New Year’s thoughts. Here goes ....

  • Stop thinking about everything you’re not, or used to be but aren’t any more …. success comes in many different guises and sizes and usually when you least expect it ….
  • Remember that it’s entirely possible that some people were put on earth simply to improve your anger management skills ….
  • Remind yourself that the three hardest things to say are ….1) I’m sorry … 2) Can you help me? …. 3) Worcestershire sauce ...
  • It’s possible that being able to more-or-less listen, consider, and immediately forget is a form of multi-tasking. Give yourself a high-five …
  • And finally, remember that rabbits hop around like mad hares all day, and they live for 5-8 years …. dogs run everywhere, they live for 10 – 15 years …. tortoises do fluck all, day in, day out, and they live to be upwards of 150 …. Lesson learned.

Happy New Year,
And may it be filled with
Less pain,
More gain,
And as much chocolate, or anything else you fancy,
As your stomach can hold in one sitting …

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Reactions: Nacht Segler, Jyoti, Zebra and 2 others

Comments

YippeeKi YOW !!
Rebeccare said:
Your post made me think of Woody Guthrie's 1943 New Years resolutions--have you ever seen them before?
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Both those and the world-weary but patiently plodding tortoise really struck a chord, and are most welcome, made me smile ....

In spite of being a Guthrie fan, I hadn't read his resolutions before. I've decided to adopt the following ones for personal use, and thank you again for supplying me with these worthy signposts ....
  • Wash teeth, if any
  • Read lots (of) good books
  • Don’t get lonesome
  • Stay glad
  • Wake up and fight !!!

Rebeccare said:
if it's too hard to read them in the image:
Click to expand...
Also, if you click on the image, they'll open in a larger, more readable form, right here on the site ....

Happy New Year, ReRe, from your devoted fan :thumbsup::thumbsup: :hug::hug::hug:!!!!
 
Jyoti
Thanks, Yip and @Rebeccare for the hand(s) up, at what is so often a hard time. And I am watching the sun rise right now and honestly, it is enough beauty to fuel a good half year of optimism. I just have to remember it.

I'll be mining Woody's 'rulins' as well. Someone worth attending. And SUCH neat handwriting too!
 
Nacht Segler
  • Stop thinking about everything you’re not, or used to be but aren’t any more …. success comes in many different guises and sizes and usually when you least expect it ….

I was recently thinking about success after the visits during the holidays. There I was at the table: mother to the left of me, a cousin in front, and cousin 2 over on the right. The 2 cousins were/are involved in tech, the mother a nurse of over 40 yrs at the hospital.

And then...there was me.

In the discussion, which I was largely left out of for obvious reasons, they wound up talking about the hospitals, the Epic program (which cousin 1 helps hospitals set up), and somehow how much one makes came up.

The mother mentioned something about someone making $90k/yr. Cousin 2 chimes in and mentions about making 3x that.

So now I immediately start doing math.

On the drive home the mother tells me about what one makes and the 90k/yr. She said if cousin 2 makes 3x that, cousin 1 makes multiples of *that*.

And so when I got to my place and sat alone and mulled over the idea of success.

I was not bearing in mind money specifically because that came with the territory. I was thinking about personal to collective pipeline. Like the mother being a nurse, but her contribution to the collective is just that. Same with the cousins. They have their (using astrology) 10th House niches.

I don't.

My success is measured more on the 10th's opposite, the 4th House. A more personal, and inner, success. Also the 4th representing the house in which one resides, which has also improved over the years in terms of better apts.

However, due to this, it is hidden from public view. In essence, I have no public face. Not here where I live, or anywhere...because I am not "out" in the world with a career.

So I have to measure my success on a more intimate level rather than a public level.
 
YippeeKi YOW !!
Nacht Segler said:
Stop thinking about everything you’re not, or used to be but aren’t any more …. success comes in many different guises and sizes and usually when you least expect it ….
Click to expand...
I'm tickled that that stuck a chord with you, as it does with me, and probably for the same reasons ..... I'm fairly iconoclastic, and prefer to make my own determinations of what constitutes success. And while no one can dismiss the importance of money in terms of survival, making it the fnal arbiter of one's life is .... silly.
Nacht Segler said:
In the discussion, which I was largely left out of for obvious reasons, they wound up talking about the hospitals, the Epic program (which cousin 1 helps hospitals set up), and somehow how much one makes came up.

The mother mentioned something about someone making $90k/yr. Cousin 2 chimes in and mentions about making 3x that.
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WOW!!! Brutal. The mother might have opened that can of worms accidentally, but it must have made for a melee of "can you top this?"
Nacht Segler said:
Also the 4th representing the house in which one resides, which has also improved over the years in terms of better apts.
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It's also the house of the father, with the 10th being traditionally assigned to the mother, and the 12th to the general effect the mother has on her child or children ....

I know you already know this and don't need to hear it from me, but I'll say it anyway ..... you keep carving your space, both physically in what I laughingly call The Real World, and internally, where it really matters .... and

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!​
Nacht Segler said:
So I have to measure my success on a more intimate level rather than a public level.
Click to expand...
 
Nacht Segler
YippeeKi YOW !! said:
It's also the house of the father, with the 10th being traditionally assigned to the mother, and the 12th to the general effect the mother has on her child or children ....
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I always put 10th as father (Capricorn), and 4th as mother (Cancer). I use Judy Hall's descriptions, but then again, her books were where I taught myself. It's just Cancer/Moon/Mother, Capricorn/Saturn/Father always made sense to me due to sign and planet (or luminary) associations.

Her book "Hades Moon" gets into this quite a bit. It's about Pluto in aspect to the Moon.

YippeeKi YOW !! said:
PS ..... @Nacht Segler ....
Am behind on this site due to a little flare and a sort of general New Year lassitude ..... am going to amble over to yo
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No worries. Been rough for me lately due to inner work...and outer weather.:pem: I would like to get back to working on my trunk, but just feel too rough to, and don't want to make it worse.
 
YippeeKi YOW !!
Nacht Segler said:
I always put 10th as father (Capricorn), and 4th as mother (Cancer).
Click to expand...
I have trouble with those delineations, too.

But once I thought about it, I could see why traditional astro uses those determinations. The mother is generally the greatest influence on the child, tho not always, and the primary shaper of his or her character and temperament, and the father is the one who (traditionally) provides the home and all the accoutrements that go into it.

The moon and its position definitely determine the characterization of the mother, the relationship between her and her child, and the nature of the childhood.

I think using Saturn as the father can be restrictive and daunting, what with Saturn being the Great Malefic, the Great Restrictor, The Cosmic Disciplinarian, the great Delayer (and never in a happy way). All of those can facile-y be attributed to the father, but I'm not sure I agree.
Nacht Segler said:
I use Judy Hall's descriptions, but then again, her books were where I taught myself.
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I'm not a huge fan of Judy Hall's writings. For one thing, she either gets a variety of things wrong, or has decided that her oen instinctive opinions trump thousands of years of astrological study, both in the Western schools and the Eastern. Her attributions are not entirely accurate, either. She assigns Friday to Jupiter, but since, like, forever, it's been Freya's (Venus's) day. Thursday (Thor's Day) has always belonged to Jupiter .....

In reviewing the bibliography in one of her books, I forget which one, I was surprized to see only about 11 or 12 sources mentioned, almost all of which were written by ..... Judy Hall .... Every other astrology boo I've read has pages and pages of sources and attributions, some of the quite obscure, and rarely any by the author of whatever you're reading ....

By her own self-assessment, Hall doesn't really do 'technical' chart analysis, instead she relies on her intuitive, divinative, approach, seeing things like past lives and life patterns in terms of pictures and psychic communications. There's nothing wrong with this, and most of the truly great astrologers are also part-psychics, but when that seems to be the primary thing that you're calling on to interpret someone's life and future, it's a little unnerving, particularly when so much of it goes against the astrological grain.

Still, I found some of her assumptions interesting and thought-provoking, even when I didnt agree with them, and Lord knows, there's room for everyone in astrology's large and varied rooms, and whatever you resonate to is probably the right approach for you, at least at that moment in time. With her emphasis on past lives, I can see why she really resonated with you and why she's probably the right guide. At least for now ....

I found Zipporah Dobyns and Demetra George, even tho they are quite different in their approaches, to be more to my taste, which tends to give more weight to traditional astrology over the current predominate 'psychological' interpretations, which are often vague and read like bad fortune cookies.

Jupiter, by the way, is a happier possibility for The Father than Saturn, or maybe even the Sun. Anything but The Great Malefic. Altho in fairness, Zipporah Dobyns totally reconfigured the traditional meanings of Saturn, and defused it's negativity considerably, if not entirely. I've found that by combining those two interpretive schools, you can come up with a considerably expanded, and definitely less frightening, view of Saturn's traits and effect on your chart.

DAMN ..... I'm rambling. Apologies ....:):):)
 
Nacht Segler
YippeeKi YOW !! said:
Did you do the trunk that, I thin, is at the foot of your bed? Gorgeous !!!!
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Yeah I painted that. Actually I painted all of them, but mainly referring to the yellow one I have been working on.

The one at the foot of my bed has a design I started, but never finished because I cannot seem to find the paint I was using anywhere. So, I don't know where to go with it. It is the dark blue.

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