back2dreaminagain-blog

[back2dreaminagain-blog]

9/10

I’m planning a trip to LA and I feel caught up in it...I just did a tarot reading and it generally echoes the positive, blue sky feelings I’ve been having it and I’m certainly moving forward with those plans when my paycheck comes in tomorrow. It feels a bit irresponsible to drain my savings on a trip right now while I have debt hanging over my head. Honestly, I’m not sure how I’m gonna pay back my parents and my credit card while saving up for school and taking art class. I am trying to find balance, generally, in my life but this somewhat impulsive decision makes me question my own sanity and sense of balance. It feels right, but I am second guessing myself. My higher self and my guides seem hands-off on the matter, continuing a (honestly really refreshing) trend of letting me take the reins and manifest my visions and life in the material. J----’s gateway was so much about vertical growth, seeing, listening, being carried, being challenged to overcome and grow, whereas M----------’s gateway is more relaxed, simple, horizontal, centered, and a balancing act in itself. It’s been about a lot of sixth house stuff as I discussed in my last entry. This big expensive trip does not feel very “sixth house” to me, nor does it feel like M----------. It feels more like I--’--. I don’t know why I feel called down to LA right now, and I haven’t unpacked it on a subconscious level. All I know is that things have been moving for me in a way that is tied to this location. The momentum is slowing down and speeding up as I go into this. It mirrors how I feel in my overall life. Balanced but completely out of whack at the same time. Like how is it that I feel so rational and centered going into this, so much of me feels clear and present, while I go and book a fucking $800+ trip to LA while I’m trying to save for grad school and currently in debt? Is this normal and healthy behavior? I mean idk, is this new high paying job getting to my head? Does “normal” even apply to me right now? I feel like I’m operating in spirit mode and simultaneously in earth-mode (at least more so than I have in at least the last year). It’s paradoxical and rule-bending. Like what the fuck? It’s fine, I’m excited, I want to do this. It feels good. It feels true.

[back2dreaminagain-blog]

8/28/19

I ate a big breakfast today and I felt extremely grateful for the nutrients that were given to me by the Earth: Fresh spinach (so fresh I found a little caterpillar on my plate!), multi-color farm eggs from lovely free range chickens that I got to see myself, local cherry tomatoes, and freshly baked bread hand-made and delivered by my dear friend Jeremy. I feel so emotionally grateful that in this year, 2019, I am privileged to eat such nutritious and wonderful food. I also am feeling grateful for this job that I have found myself in once again. Even though I was reluctant to go back because of the intense things I experienced last year at this company, I now feel that I know better than to complain. It has reasonable and flexible hours, it pays me $18 an hour with paid holidays (better pay than anything I’ve had before or any job offer I’ve ever received), and it’s only 20 minutes from where I live. I get to bike to and from along the beautiful Springwater Corridor and live in Sellwood. Furthermore, the work is easy and relaxed, I’m familiar with it and the culture here, I get to drink free coffee and tea throughout the day, and I get to set my own schedule. It’s not what I envisioned after leaving Environment Oregon, but it’s pretty fucking nice and it gives me the space and financial freedom to explore non-work related things in my life. 

This year so much of my personal and spiritual work has been focused around my literal job and my relationship with everyday work and service. Since graduating in May, I have had four different jobs, five if you count my second (current) contract at CLEAResult. I’ve high key been through the wringer with my job and financial situation. In that year and a half I was unemployed twice, each time for over a month. Both times I drained my savings and had to borrow money to survive. I have endured and integrated difficult lessons around humility, service, entitlement, and what it means to just show up and do a job everyday without taking it too personally. I’ve learned what it’s like to identify with my job and my work. In fulfilling and exciting ways, as I did with Environment Oregon and Prestige Landscape, and in more of an existential-identity-crisis kind of a way, as I felt with my two IT contracts last summer and fall. I’ve tried on a bunch of different stories and identities at my job: an IT Guy, the Office Queer, an IT Guy who’s Over It, a Starving-But-Humble Environmentalist, a Field Manager, a Landscaper, an Unemployed Artist, and a Future Architect. I’m still trying to learn what it’s like to just be Austin and to have a job where I show up and put in my hours every day. Where I’m not obsessed with my job but also where I don’t bow my head in shame when I tell people what I do for a living.

It’s interesting to find myself back to square one, literally down the hall from I was sitting right after I graduated, before I had my first phone call with Jai or started apprenticing with them. This is the job I started only the Tuesday after I graduated. At first it was alarming to be back here - I’m like “WTF? I’ve done so much work, I thought I had grown and changed, so why hasn’t my environment reflected that? Did those nine months of Healing the Wounded Healer even happen? Didn’t I earn a right to do something different? Am I entitled to something better?” But it’s important to remind myself that healing and growth are NOT linear, and even though I find myself here again, I HAVE changed and I AM still doing the work. This is just another opportunity to come into balance with my work. An opportunity to not try to escape my current reality, but to appreciate it for what it is. Nothing is ever as it should be, only as it is. “Should” is just a projection from my ego, anyway. And here I am. I’m taking art classes, I’m doing healing work with Ajna in the relaxed and gentle way that I need, I’m eating healthy and I’m exercising. This is super enriching North Node in Libra in the 6th House work for me. Finding balance and harmony in my work and routine. Gently decoupling my work from my identity. Neither gluing myself nor detaching myself from my everyday life. Overall, I feel brighter and more content than I ever have before.