Upsetting the Status Quo Versus Staying Put

Uranus enters Aries today. It’s a big deal. The planet of revolution and destabilization is in the first sign of the zodiac, that of the pioneer, the self-starter. Its entrance symbolizes new beginnings that tend to be shocking or that upset expectations.

I’ve been feeling very anxious recently. I have been attributing it to the fact that Uranus has been in the final degree of Pisces, the sign that “houses” my Sun, Mercury, Venus and North Node.

How is this affecting me?

Ever since Ning, the build-your-own-social-network platform, announced that it will no longer be providing its service for free, I have been contemplating a major overhaul of Sasstrology. I do not want to shell out $20 per month to host a forum, so I’ve been looking into integrating an open-source forum/social-networking platform called BuddyPress into my blog, which runs on WordPress. Namely, I want “one brand”/one destination, and I don’t want the foundation of my site to be dependent on the whims of a company that can change its policies at any time.

So I’ve been spending numerous hours, behind the scenes, beefing up my CSS/PHP skills so that I can build Sasstrology 2.0 on my own (with the help of some very smart WordPress people in various forums). Although I feel confident I can do this, I’m also feeling worried about the future. I believe that Sasstrology has the potential to be a lot bigger than it is, but I am also taking some risks by integrating the blog with the forum. (And then there’s just the fear that, even though I’m building Sass2.0 in a development environment, something could go wrong when I launch it live on Sasstrology.com.)

When I get this anxious, I remind myself that nothing has to change. I don’t have to update the technical foundations of the blog. I can just pony up the 20 bucks per month to keep the forum on Ning. I can just keep doing things the way I’ve been doing them. I have a formula right now that seems to work well enough, so why rock the boat?

Which brings me to Uranus. I really don’t think it’s healthy for me to just do the same thing week after week. I need to push myself. To do otherwise is to settle, to die on some level. I’ve been working so hard for the past few years to get to where I am, and frankly I’m not even halfway to where I want to be. (And where I need to be if I want to support my family with this endeavor.)

So I will keep soldiering on. Somehow, knowing that Uranus will backtrack into Pisces again is comforting – I can keep working on the next version of Sasstrology behind the scenes without feeling that I am obligated to move forward. I know that an inner revolution is taking place even if I’m not immediately ready to share it with the world.

Published on May 27, 2010 3 Comments

Psychotherapy Vs. Movement Practice

I earned my license to practice psychotherapy a few years ago, but I’m not certain talk therapy works. Granted, I was a client for a good 15 years, and I know I changed quite a lot during that time. But I have also found that psychotherapists are imbued with so much power – if only by virtue of projection – that talk therapy can be quite harmful. With one therapist, I felt strongly that she had a specific agenda, and when I shared this belief, she denied it, and suggested that I was just projecting my disowned wishes onto her – that it was my agenda, in reality. I still don’t know if she was gaslighting me, but since that time I think that it’s somewhat dangerous to enter a long-term therapy-client relationship, because all humans – even analysts – are flawed human beings. Yes, they can seek out supervision to work out their own countertransference, but if they’re not virtually 100% “pure,” they may bring their own garbage into the relationship and have an adverse impact on the client. [Read more...]

Published on January 7, 2010 4 Comments

What does reputation management mean, anyway?

I’ve never really had a personal blog before – one in which I’m not opining about astrology – and I’ve been wondering how transparent I want to be.

It is a given that anything one publishes on the internet is nowadays more-or-less permanent. Therefore, one must think about one’s reputation. The thing is, whom do I want to feel positive regard towards me?

Of course, I want to be liked by everyone. But in reality, I need to care about two things: future employers, and future girlfriends. Right now, I’m married and am a struggling self-employed person – in which case, I don’t have to worry about a prospective boss or date googling me. However, anything can change at any time. I could divorce, or my blog could fail and I’d need to find a job, if only to pay my basic expenses.

Transiting Uranus is making its final conjunction to my natal Venus on February 9 of this year. My Venus is in my 7th house of partnership and rules my 10th house of career. So, basically just about anything could happen in my career and/or love life this winter.

But does a writer hold himself back out of fear of some future state of affairs?

Published on January 6, 2010 2 Comments

I can't find what I'm looking for

I’m trying to find a piece of information I recorded over the summer, and I can’t find it. The problem is that I don’t have one system. I save some thoughts in Evernote, some in Google Docs, and some in OpenOffice documents or text files. Usually, I remember where I entered a piece of information, but right now I feel flummoxed.

Unfortunately, the “cloud” is not always reliable, and right now the search function in Google Docs is not working. I like Evernote because information is saved both on my hard drive and in the cloud, and I can easily access it on my iPhone. However, I don’t record my every thought there. (It would be nice if they had a spreadsheet function!)

What system(s) do you use to record your thoughts and save your ideas?

Published on January 6, 2010 3 Comments