So, apparently happiness ISN'T a checklist?!
November 2024 Collective Offering
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Hello my tarot besties!
Happy Halloween to those that celebrate! I’ve been so very busy these last few weeks that I’ve not had a moment to really sit and contemplate the thinning of the veil, and what lessons I can learn from it. There’s still time tonight though!
For me November tends to be a chance to recoup some of the energy that October takes from me, and build some of the excitement that December inspires in me. How do you tend to spend it?
May this month be full of reminders for us to look around and enjoy this life,
Ilayda x
Wtf are the cards saying?
Shortly after I got my current full-time job, I was sitting in my therapist’s office having a minor meltdown. I felt like a total fraud and sellout (7 of Swords). Here I was, someone who had dedicated my entire adult life to creative pursuits, and now, seemingly, I had turned my back on it all. Quitting stand-up comedy and my showbiz adjacent day job to take on this extremely normal, steady role, where not a single person appeared to harbour creative dreams, OBVIOUSLY meant that I had betrayed myself (7 of Swords), and given up on all my shots at happiness, all my chances at making my dreams come true (10 of Cups).
“RIGHT?!” I sobbed to my therapist, “I have, haven’t I? I’ve given up on being everything I ever wanted to be, everything I ever wanted to do, RIGHT?!” She stared at me for a bit, choosing her next words carefully. Then slowly, and very gently she said: “Ilayda, what if you already were doing everything you wanted to do, but it just didn’t feel like you thought it would?”
Reader, I gasped. Fully, legitimately, actually gasped. Because of course, my therapist was 100% right.
We all have ideas about what fulfilment should look and feel like. The world we live in – and the systems that endlessly push us towards the ‘next best thing’ – paint fulfilment as a seamless, glossy image (10 of Cups). Something we see as the end goal, the happily ever after container for all our hopes and dreams. But of course, happiness isn’t an ending… It’s an unravelling thread of experience that needs constant adjustment and balancing (Justice); a task that’s not always easy, or glossy.
The truth is, shortly before my little meltdown about betraying myself, I had been performing stand-up most nights of the week, and starting to get paid for some of the gigs. And before that? I had been making shows with my theatre company, had them programmed at great venues, and even had the pleasure of being Arts Council funded for most of the work we’d done. I was, to all intents and purposes, a working artist. That had always been at the heart of my dream, the central purpose underneath the technicolour visions of joy and glory (10 of Cups) that I’d imagined when I was younger.
What I hadn’t imagined, was the fact that even as a paid artist, I would have to have at least one other job to make ends meet. Nor had I envisioned that to get shows funded, we’d have to do a year’s unpaid grunt work on each one. I hadn’t factored in people constantly asking me if they’d see my stand-up on telly (nope); doing gigs to audiences of 8 in rooms that were little more than spacious toilets (srsly); or working 60 hour weeks in a showbiz adjacent job where I was beholden to the unhinged whims of other people who were living MY dreams. This was the shadow side of the life I had dreamed of (Be Groovy of Leave, Man). It chipped away at my vision of fulfilment, leading me to believe that I was a fraud (7 of Swords), a wannabe at best. Of course, as my therapist had rightly pointed out, I’d been doing what I’d always wanted to do – creating and performing - all along.
She’d probably tried a thousand different ways, at a thousand different times to relay the message to me. But it wasn’t until I was presented with the possibility of having my dreams stolen away from me (7 of Swords), and physically detached enough (Justice) from it all, that I was able to really hear it, really get it.
I left my session that day with a new sense of clarity (Justice). I was still reeling from the shock and disappointment of having made such drastic changes to my life, but I could feel the relentless grip I’d had on what happiness should look and feel like, beginning to loosen.
When I’d looked at things from a more objective (Justice) angle, I hadn’t betrayed my dreams at all; I’d actually been living them the whole time – albeit, in a slightly adapted fashion to suit what I had and who I was at the time. And now, the lifestyle of living the dream - the stress, the poverty, the constant balancing, the moonlighting, the stealing time away from family, friends and self-care to pursue glory - no longer felt fulfilling or good or worth it. So, I’d made a decision to step away, for now (Be Groovy or Leave, Man). My task was to accept this with grace and compassion towards myself.
Looking back at our lives and reckoning with the iffy decisions we’ve made or not made, can seem like a natural invitation for regret. And if not regret, it can give rise to a temptation to fix things, make up for lost time to find our happy endings. But what if we could look back at the choices we’ve made with the incisiveness of hindsight AND the softness of compassion? What if we could dare to believe that joy isn’t waiting round the corner for us to arrive at, but something that’s been woven into the fabric of every moment we’ve already lived? What if we could simply let ourselves be at ease enough to be here, now? Because if acceptance is the courage to hold every piece of ourselves, fuck-ups and all, then Justice is the strength and clarity and freedom that comes right after that.
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