Our work team has been moved to a new office recently. Both the people close to me & my colleagues observed my level of Zen with suspicion. Don't get me wrong - the fact I did not partake in the office drama (ME! Leo Sun, Aries Moon & Scorpio Rising!) surrounding our move - is quite an unusual feat. There's been secret gatherings held around the office coffee machine, sneaky email exchanges expressing the trepidations about the new location, the new colleagues, the new management, the new workflow... and all throughout that, I kept repeating to others & to myself: for now, this is just a change. It's not good or bad, for now it's just different...

But that's the scary bit, right?

There's a neat numerology trick in tarot that can reveal which cards will be our main teachers for the upcoming cycle. I won't bore you with too much of this woo woo fluff (I have another blog for that!), but by adding up numbers in 2019, we land at 3/12 - corresponding with the 3rd card of Major Arcana - The Empress, and the 12th - The Hanged Man. I find these energies very poignant at this very moment. Whilst The Empress talks of abundance and fertility, teaching us how to smash through the outdated forms of protection that are keeping us from receiving the pleasure & bounty of life, The Hanged Man indicates this can only happen through suspension. Through taking a step back, looking at our reality from a completely new angle & in this pausing, excavating what needs to be left behind. This is not a violent & painful restructuring, like say in The Tower. The Hanged Man is like a chrysalis - a necessary hibernation before a huge expansion, and whatever we're leaving behind is READY to leave our life. We're asked to surrender to this idea that something is dying in order for new things to be birthed (it's not a coincidence the following 13th Major Arcana card is Death). And this might take time. In The Hanged Man, we're locked in a standstill, being granted a space & time to get ready for letting go of our old skin and stepping forth renewed.

I've sent the postcard above to my parents sometimes in 2011, letting them know that "Somehow it seems I got stuck here in London for a while."

That 'not quite a decade yet' of living abroad had been my chrysalis. I truly & honestly believe I'd never become the person I am today, should I have never left the comfort of my home in Czech for unfamiliar, uneasy, intense, heartbreaking, often bizarre & always changeable pulse of the City of London. And I also feel that after reaching a certain level of stability & comfort here, I'm ready to roll way back & flee the nest before it becomes a trap again.

Because in comfort, there can't be no growth.

My partner is not having an easy year. Lately, he feels defeated, uninspired and constantly under an attack by the reality of London, where - to be quite frank - the balance of energy input/output is not always sensible. The amount of work vs. what it can provide for (outside the necessities like rent & food), the amount of opportunities for fun & adventures vs. how much of those you end up doing in the end (long hours and being always broke).

So here we are in the summer of 2019, FAR older than you'd expect for such an outrageous idea, brainstorming about how to wrap our London affairs up, and go work on a cruise ship for a bit.

It's like a storm is brewing outside..a super weird, stuffy period filled with heavy-hanging sticky anticipation & fatigue (thanks Cancer Season!). It's the necessary suspension before spreading our wings.

My super-pragmatic scientist friends laughed in my face when I proclaimed: "The HOW is not important to know at this moment. The important thing is sitting in the 'knowing' that we're doing this & becoming comfortable with that."

Obviously, if you're a super-pragmatic scientist person, any dreams without structure, spreadsheets, project management plan & submitted budget report are just that - dreams. Meaning - not reality.

But wasn't everything you see around yourself right now - your work desk, your smartphone, the coffee mug, your clothes, this building - wasn't all of this at some point just someone's idea? Did it maybe also materialised in the tangible world by being planted & tended to first? By sharing it with other people, by allowing others experience & expertise to give it shape & by taking twenty thousand wrong turns, to finally manifest through errors & compromises in the material existence?

I love talking & writing. For me - the most natural platforms for analysing, understanding & organising life's dazzling messiness into patterns, lessons, rules & wonky philosophies so changeable, that the mere act of putting them down to paper becomes its own important tool to help understand oneself in a context of time, space & the growth that somehow happened in the background.

Sitting right at the rapid pulse of a City like London for the past (almost a)decade - I always have new (often bizarre but never not-exciting) stories to write about. Will it be the same if we end up working on a cruise ship? What is it going to feel like living un-burdened by material possessions? Oh fuck, what about my books?!!! What about ordering stuff from Amazon? And where do you hang your clothes to dry on a cruise ship? What about gardening & going for a walk, what about forests and picnics in the park, what about cinemas & concerts & awkward office parties & what about the life of our friends that will keep happening without us being nearby?

These are the things I worry about and yes, I see the irony & I do relate to my colleagues much better now. I learn to lean into this resistance of ego, accepting it's nagging voice made out of doubts & fears, knowing we must do this anyway. Ego has just one agenda, and it's to keep you safe. Ego doesn't care about your job crushing your soul, ego is your super-pragmatic scientist friend, the one who'll whisper to you:

"Yeah, but it's a job! It pays your bills! A sucky job is better than no job!"

Kind of like my parents, to be fair. Both them & my own ego will be tough hurdles to climb over when we do this radical move away from comfort, from reason & from things that no longer nourish our soul. But that's ok, I've got time.

For now, I'm comfortable with being suspended like The Hanged Man. Like the chrysalis that appears completely still and inert, but all along - magic is at work inside.