Today (well, yesterday, it’s 1:42 am) I told my team, “I write. Words, labels are important — what do I call myself?”
And my team screamed back at me:
“THE LABEL ISN’T IMPORTANT!!”
They pull up the image of my current phone wallpaper into my mind.
“LIGHTWORKER, CHANNEL, WITCH, WRITER — BY ANY OTHER NAME, IT’S ALL YOU!
YOU, YOU GET TO BE ANY AND ALL OF THIS. THE LABEL DOES NOT MATTER!”
I went home, thinking that was it, and they continued when I was in the shower…
“KNOWING WHAT WE KNOW OF YOU, YOU NEED VARIETY.”
I think of my charm bracelet, which I rearranged last night to create a cluster of dangle charms, stacked together so that they’d fall on top of each other.
Every time I looked at it, the jumble would cover, reveal, and create a new, surprising combination/look, and it made me happy.
Variety.
“HOW CAN WE GIVE YOU A PLAN THAT WILL LAST THE REST OF YOUR LIFE??
YOU’LL TAKE ONE LOOK AT IT, AND REFUSE TO MOVE. STUBBORN BUTTON PUSHED. ANXIETY OVERWHELM.
SO WE WON’T GIVE YOU THE FULL PLAN. WE’LL GIVE YOU A TELEGRAM. ONE MESSAGE AT A TIME. WE’LL TELL YOU WHAT TO DO, AND THAT’S FOR THE PRESENT MOMENT, UNTIL FUTURE NOTICE.
CHECK BACK IN AN HOUR LATER, IF YOU’VE DONE THE WORK THAT IS.”
I take a moment, in my shower, to marvel, grateful, at how well my team knows me. And how they’ll change the message depending on who they’re talking to. (Realising that this is universal to every team with their charge.)
Jarrod can hold a plan. So they tell him. Anything and everything about me.
Me? I can’t hold the details for tomorrow’s meeting, five minutes after Jarrod’s told me. It’s happened. Often. That’s why Jarrod messages me to remind me, at night and in the morning. I’ve taken to repeating the messages back to him, so that we both know I’ve registered it. (Something I learned watching… Hell’s Kitchen I think. When the chefs repeat the order.) And then I still check my phone before I sleep, when I wake, when I walk out the door, and when I’m close to the rendezvous.
So my team knows me. They know I get stubborn, forgetful, overwhelmed by anxiety. I am impressed and grateful.
YOU’RE THE ONE WHO BELIEVED IT WHEN YOU READ —
“Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it — that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything.
There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing — an actor, a writer — I am a person who does things — I write, I act — and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”~ Stephen Fry
(I just googled and it turns out this quote is… Oscar Wilde didn’t actually say it like this, he meant masks, “A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be [a list of jobs], invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.”
Then later, “People whose desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they are going. They can’t know. […] the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate achievement of wisdom.” And then he wrote about, um, Christ… De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde, The Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/921/921-h/921-h.htm It’s very long, so search the page for “parliament”.
And the quote by Stephen Fry, while all over the internet, I haven’t found the source…
So.. anyway.. back to my team.)
“YOU BELIEVE TO BE BOXED IN IS TO BE PUNISHED, IMPRISONED, AND YOU WANT A LABEL??”
“Well,” I say, “then how to I tell people what I’m doing?”
“BY DOING IT.
A VIDEOGRAPHER MAKES VIDEOS. AN ACTOR? ACTS. GETS INTO THE ROOM TO BE IN, AND ACTS.
A BUSINESSPERSON RUNS A BUSINESS.”
“So I… make videos doing tarot and channeling sessions? I… get myself into a room? Go up to people and ask if they want a tarot/channel session??”
“HERE’S A RADICAL IDEA: INSTEAD OF US TELLING YOU, WHY DON’T YOU TELL US? OR BETTER YET, SHOW US.”
I think of Jarrod telling me, just today (and for many days before), to make a choice, a decision, to go all in.
“WE CAN’T TELL YOU YOU’RE GOING TO BE A MILLIONAIRE IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING.
CAN’T SHOW YOU IF YOU FREEZE.
CAN’T MAKE IT HAPPEN IF YOU DON’T DO WHAT YOU SAID YOU’D DO.”
I made promises that I need to keep.
“YOU WANT THE DJI THING? YOURS. ALREADY. ALL READY.
THAT DESKTOP IN A ROOM WITH A VIEW IN YOUR DREAMS? WE PUT IT THERE IN YOUR MIND.
THE BOOKS AND WRITERS YOU ENVY AND WISH IT WAS YOU? WE PUT IT THERE IN YOUR HEART.
WE WILL MAKE SURE THAT IF YOU NEED TO LEARN SOMETHING, YOU’LL LEARN IT. IF YOU NEED TO TOUCH SOMETHING, YOU’LL TOUCH IT.
BUT AFTER THAT, IT’S ON YOU.
SHOW US, AND THEN WE’LL SHOW YOU.”
I know we’re co-creators in this. I also know that I need to choose. But knowing these things didn’t mean I could move, because to choose is to tie and I don’t want to be tied up.
But something in this conversation is reassuring. There is a sense that I am guided, I am watched over, and there is no option that is wrong.
I am keeping my promises, which is important to me. I am allowed to explore. I am only doing it one step at a time. I don’t need to have a plan.
I watched a tiktok video earlier in which a girl said, “I can just do things.” And it makes me think that if I do tie myself, I’m just tying with a string. It’s not permanent, and I can choose to break it, or weave it with another to make it stronger. I’ll find out when I’ve done what I needed to do.
3:08 am. famous amos cookies break. sorry clean teeth. i’ll brush well tomorrow/today/morn-afternoon.
3:14 am. i’ve been scratching and I thought I had hives. but i just killed a mosquito. glad i stayed awake then. hang on, skeeter had no blood. aw. no wonder it flew so slow, it was hungry. sorry skeeter. so i did have hives. dang it.
My team is quiet now, having said what they needed, and I’ve gotten most of it down here.
Oh yeah. This bit–
“WE CAN’T TELL YOU, OUR STUBBORN DAUGHTER, WHO BOUGHT ROLLER SKATES DESPITE OUR NOTE OF DISAPPROVAL, BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT YOU DO.”
Alright, they’ve made their many points.
It is 3:30 am, and it is time to sleep. I’ll round out this post. Was gonna categorise it as “Conversations with my team” but I feel like I should call it “When my team yells at me”.
Bahahaha they’re looking at me, eyes in slits, but still friendly.
“Conversations with my spiritual team” it is!
✒️✨🧭
Image of spools of thread leading to something out of view by VIVIANE M. from Pixabay.
