Reading up on my T-Square

2024-04-29

I’ve been reading up on my T-square and am pretty astounded about how accurate it is. My T-square involves a Mars-Saturn opposition with Jupiter and the Moon as the focal point. The tighter T-square is with Jupiter as the focal point but the Moon is still technically within orb as well.

It’s a mutable T-square and probably the only good thing about it is the fact that Jupiter is in domicile in Sagittarius. Jupiter rules over 2/3 of the T-square as well: the 1st house and the 4th house, where Saturn is. So it’s nice that at least Saturn, despite squaring Jupiter, is ruled by Jupiter. In fact, Jupiter is the final depositor of my chart. So, following up the rulership chain, even Mars answers to Jupiter, too. My Mars is in Virgo, which is ruled by my Capricorn Mercury. My Capricorn Mercury is ruled by Saturn and, as we know, my Saturn is ruled by Jupiter. So, it all leads to Jupiter eventually.

The book I’ve been reading, “Planetary Aspects: An Astrological Guide to Managing Your T-square” by Tracy Marks, points to the focal point as being the key to managing the T-square. It makes sense in my case, since Jupiter colours my entire chart. The downsides of Jupiter is it’s expansiveness. It wants too much. Does too much. Thinks too much. On the other hand, Jupiter, when used correctly, is used purposefully with a discerning eye. It can still grow, but it grows the right things.

The Moon as the focal point, on the other hand,has a hard time taking care of itself. It is dependent on others for emotional and even physical nourishment to the point of codependency. A proper moon will have emotionally fulfilling relationships, will nourish others, and be self-sufficient.

Can I just say, called out?

The opposition though is the main source of tension. The Vrigo/Pisces axis is an interesting one. Virgo is a perfectionist whereas Pisces is “easily disillusioned.” It often points to putting attention on the wrong thing, worrying about things not grounded in reality. It could also mean escapism from responsibilities. Just like how my Jupiter needs to be more discerning, the Virgo planet should also be more discerning. It should focus on the correct practical actions in order to fulfill the Piscean ideals. There’s also an emphasis on service. But meaningful service, pointing again to the Pisces side of the opposition.

This is interesting especially considering that the houses the opposition takes place in are the 4th and 10th houses. There is a push/pull between home and work. To balance it out, the book suggests to work from home (take that companies with mandated return to office, the stars I should work from home), have a healthy work-life balance, be involved with work that concerns with matters of the home, having family involved with work, having a “work family,” or bring your more homely aspects of your personality to work. Honestly, a lot of those things I can’t argue against. They’re all things I value in a work place. I know people roll their eyes at the idea of “a work family” but I find that when I care about my fellow co-workers on a personal level, it makes work all the more bearable.

All this information I still haven’t got to the “managing your T-square” bit. Right now I’m on the chapter about how transits and progressions can influence your T-square. I’ve been interested in progressions these days so that section was quite interesting but not that helpful. It was literally just, “a progressed planet aspecting your T-sqaure can change the dynamics of your T-square.” Thank you for that information, very helpful.

Anywho, I’m only 52% through the book. I’ll probably do another check in once I’m finished reading it. And hopefully I can actually apply it (my Jupiter focal planet says I like to learn but that I don’t apply my learnings, hah). Hopefully I will be a changed woman by the end.

The Final Push

2024-04-22

For the past two weeks I’ve been a little bit out of sorts. It funnily coincides with the the eclipse that happened on the 8th of April. “As above, so below” is what the astrologers like to say. I didn’t expect such a personal impact from the eclipse. I was bracing myself for an external event to put me off kilter but rather, it was just me that caused my own demise.

Basically, what went wrong was that I slept a lot in the past two weeks. I would finish work and go directly to bed. Or I would take three hour long naps in the middle of the day on the weekend. It really set me off of my regular schedule. I think I border on the edge of sleep deprivation. I get around 6.5 hours of sleep a night. Maybe I should really be pushing for 7 and above. But it’s so hard to squeeze everything I want to squeeze into my day without sacrificing sleep. I know, if I have a lot to do, why don’t I just cut things out?

Good question.

The two main things that occupy a chunk of my time is work and school. Work is fixed, I can’t really negotiate my hours with work. However, I do find that I often put more hours into work than I should. So maybe I need to go back to the minimum. It’s not like I’m busting my ass at work. Work is pretty chill, most of the time. But lately it has been a little stressful, especially with deadlines looming. At the same time, I also think that it’s manageable.

I try not to spend too much brain power on work because I’m also going to school at the same time. I’m currently going through some pre-requisites in my English major. The semester is finaaally winding down. I have an exam this Friday and then I’ll finally be free from the shackles of the semester. I’m still debating on whether or not I should take another course in the summer semester but a part of me is thinking to just take the free time and decompress. Reassess. Re-evaluate. Recuperate. All of the “re” words.

Understandably, work and school leaves not a lot of time for other things. But when you’re sleeping more than usual, that also means I’m procrastinating. I pulled a lot of late nights in the past two weeks when I usually did not because of my procrastination naps. Usually I’m more organized than this. But sleep was too enticing.

Astrology incoming.

I think the eclipse highlighted a part of life that I neglect too much. The eclipse was going through my fifth house of fun, creativity, leisure, and children. The eclipse square was in a close square with my Capricorn Mercury (which, natally, is under the beams). Basically, the eclipse was telling me, “you need to stop thinking too hard and enjoy life sometimes.”

And I tried my best in the past two weeks. I tried listening to more dead-brain friendly podcasts in my spare time (shout out to the Get Real podcast). I tried reading more for fun (thank you, romance manga). I even hung out with friends for the first time in a long time (we watched Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire). And I also hung out with cousins as well (we watched Dune part 2). I even caught some Coachella live-streams over the last weekend and spent some time listening to music.

Needless to say, I feel a little more refreshed now.

I think I was long overdue for a break. I’m still trying to figure out how I should be building in breaks into my routine without losing progress in regards to my goals. “They” (I don’t know who “they” is) often say that you need to guard your study time. But what about your “me” time? I think that needs to be guarded as well.

Like I said, I’ll be taking the summer break to slow down and reflect. I think I need to rework my schedule. Or revisit my studying habits. There must be some room for some efficiency improvements, somewhere. Work smarter, not harder, and so on, and so on.

Writer's Stuck

2024-04-15

I have been trying to write for an hour every day. My goal was to write more fiction but right now I’m in a bit of slump. Instead, I’ve been writing a lot of blog posts, which, to me, still counts as writing. It’s still not the kind of writing I wish I could be doing, though.

It makes me wonder what’s behind my current writer’s block. Maybe my life has been too stagnant recently. Or maybe I’ve been looking for inspiration in all the wrong places.

By inspiration, I mean that I’m definitely someone who needs to respond to something. I’m not the type of person who can just randomly pull ideas out of their head. My best ideas are the ones that build upon an existing idea, either by exploring an idea further or adding a twist (or several!) to it. Usually I get my best inspiration from fiction. But I haven’t come across anything really that has sparked an interest in me.

Last month I finished "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf and it did, for a little bit, light a fire in me but it was quickly extinguished. The idea I wanted to explore felt a little too close to home for me to write about. In other words, it felt a little icky to explore it. Even after several layers of abstraction, I still felt too vulnerable. I think I do eventually want to write about the topic I had in mind but I think I need to sit with it a little bit more. I think it feels too vulnerable because I haven’t processed it yet. So, there is something that I want to write about but it’s not the right time for it.

Otherwise, I don’t have anything to say, really. Funny, just as I wrote that, something came to mind. But, like my previous idea that “To the Lighthouse” sparked, it feels too early to write about this other topic. I feel like I haven’t come to a conclusion on it. But maybe I don’t need an answer to able to write about. Remember, I’m talking about fiction here, not a way too personal blog post. I think it’s okay to have unanswered questions in fiction, right?

But when I think about the fiction that I like to read, they feel very opinionated, even when it feels like there is ambiguity. For example, in Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed” she pits two different economic systems against each other. It’s not super clear whether or not Le Guin prefers one over the other but she still makes great arguments for both of them. Still, by the end of the book, there is still a message: you got to try it before you knock it.

There are a lot of things that I could be trying. Maybe the way I’m working at it is the wrong way to approach writing (at least, when I’m stuck). My usual approach is to start with a core message and then craft the story around it. When I observe what other writers say, many start with the characters or the world instead. I’m not a world-builder as most of what I write is rooted firmly on realism so that throws that out of the window. That being said, I feel like I’ve always written in the same way for so long that maybe I need to switch it up.

Like, it’s been a long time since I’ve centred my building of a story around a character. To say that my stories aren’t character driven or character centred would be inaccurate. Honestly, I’m in awe of people who know their characters inside out. When I write characters, they kinda just appear to me and I don’t feel like I need to know everything about them. They’re there for a specific purpose and what I portray on the page is enough to get across the intricacies of their personality (or at least, what I feel is important to get across). Now that makes me wonder how people view my characters and if they can tell that I don’t fully flesh out my characters, hah.

Another approach that I often see as an antidote for writer’s block are writing prompts. Sometimes those work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I’m writing for a writing prompt and I still get stuck.

I also see free-writing as an often touted approach to unblocking oneself. But what I’m doing right now is a free-write and I don’t feel any closer to jumping across the chasm to writing something in the fictional realm. It results in a lot of blog posts, at the very least.

Usually I just accept that I have nothing to write. It results in months and even years of not writing anything. Maybe I’m just not meant to write? Another possibility. But I’m going to try to experiment a little bit before I give it up.

Alone or Lonely

2024-04-14

When I think about my life five years from now and how I want it to look like, I think my vision is is the same as it was five years ago.

Five years ago I thought I’d be looking out over downtown in a high-rise apartment, surrounded by concrete buildings. Now I am willing to settle, even longing for, a little more greenery in my view. As I look over whatever the scenery is outside, I picture myself sitting at a small table, with a book or a laptop, either reading or writing. My cat is slung over the top of his cat tower, sleeping. I’ll be playing one of my vinyl records, maybe some Sharon Van Etten or Snail Mail. Because I live in a walkable neighbourhood, I can go down to a cafe and read and write some more, but with a cup of tea. Or I’ll go to a restaurant and eat something fancy. There’ll be a gym nearby and I can do some weight lifting. I can take a walk around a park while listening to an audiobook or a podcast.

The one thing I realize in all my visions of the future is that I am alone (save for my cat).

I am a very solitary person. Despite this, I admit that I am definitely someone who enjoys the company of others. So why don’t I make room for people in my idealized future life?

Maybe it’s because I can get too caught up in my own world. It makes maintaining friendships hard. I am the type of person who can surface after days, weeks, months, years after contact and keep going along with a friend like nothing has changed. The problem is that not everyone is like that. In my first year of university, many of my high school friends dropped me because I was suddenly unattainable. I had so many things going on that my friends kind of fell off of my mind. It made sense why they dropped me but it still stung.

I think this is why I can make “work friends” so easily. You see them every day without too much effort to do so. The proximity helps a lot. It does feel like work friends just become friends of convenience but it’s enough to feed my longing for connection. Or so I think. I’m not entirely sure.

The only time I feel lonely is when I compare myself to others. I don’t even know if it’s loneliness that I feel. The feeling is more like envy. I am envious when others talk about hanging out with their friends. Obviously I don’t feel envious enough to change my ways. I feel sorry for myself for a little bit and then go back to being my hermit self.

As I write this, I’m asking myself how much of this is just me trying to cope with the fact that I am often alone. Do I enjoy my time alone? Yes, I think so. But how would I really know?

Going back to the times when I was most social, I realize that I would often overdo it. I would spend too much with others and all the things that I liked doing by myself would fall to the wayside. It’s like I can’t keep a healthy balance of me time vs other people time. It could be that spending too much time on one end of the spectrum causes me to go to the opposite end in order to recuperate.

What would balance look like for me? Right now, I’m not content with just having work friends. But starting from scratch is so incredibly hard. One of my goals this year was to make a new friend. Or rekindle an existing friendship. One third of the way through the year and I’ve made no progress towards either (and just a clarification to any online friends reading this, I am talking about making friends in the “meat space”). Where do I start? How could I possibly start?

My last friend group was formed around my ex. And I met my ex through another friend group, a bunch of people from the computer science club at university. My inclination is to join another club-like group. I have often toyed the idea of joining a Meetup Group. Maybe a book club (as if I don’t have too many books to read already) or a writing group. Or maybe something extremely out of my comfort zone and totally left field, like an improvisation club (yikes).

I’m still thinking about it. All of this came about because I just finished reading the poem, “How to be Alone” by Tanya Davis. As I read through it, I couldn’t help but read it with some disdain. A lot of what the book talked about that were supposed to come off as a little revolutionary was just how I live currently. Okay, except for talking to random strangers on park benches, I don’t do that.

But another thing that spurred this on was a post tangentially about being terminally online. I can’t deny that a lot of my “alone time” is spent online. The author mentions taking a social media detox. I don’t know if that would help me at all. I think I would instead just dive myself deep into my studies or reading or writing. I think it would help me be more productive in those areas, actually. But productivity is not the goal I want. Connection, is. I think.

I’m not sure. I’m still turning these ideas around in my head, even after writing 900+ words about this. I wonder if anyone feels the same.