YOU Get to Say What Deserves Your Time

I had my first tarot reading, and it was four years in the making! It’s a wholly unexpected full-circle story that started when the person who would end up turning up tarot cards for me first turned up in my life. And the cards she turned up now were delivering the same jump-starting message that my interaction with her years before had. So settle in. Maybe your life could use an upturn, too.
The upturning message: Cut right to and right through your daily rationalizations. They are lies. See the ways you’re not being true to what’s important to you. And start being true.
Four years ago I published my first creative writing piece after a five-year drought. In the magazine edited by Marybeth Bonfiglio, my future tarot card turner. This very story you are reading now was in motion.
[Stop for a moment, people. Stop. Because magic is everywhere. There is magic in every life.]
Maybe you don’t care about writing. But there is something important to you that you haven’t been true to. You, like me, have been doing things daily that don’t deserve your time. Read on.
Leading up to my publication four years ago, I came across an article on biorhythms and brains and the best time of day to do different categories of things, like, oh, writing. You see, I was feeling the truth of the words in me trying to come out. But I wasn’t writing. You see, I was feeling the truth of words trying to come out.

I was feeling the truth of words trying to come out.

I expected to get another shaming from Hemingway’s ghost for my inability to write daily at dawn. But it said something different. Something instantly liberating! The best time for creative pursuits was not the optimal on-brain times, but the opposite. It told me to cut through my shit about not having time to write in the morning when you’re supposed to write – because I could do it at shitty times and it would be even better than the “best” times!
Whoa. I knew I had been caught in the trap I had warned plenty of my yoga students about – imposing ideal conditions in the name of doing your best work, but those conditions become obstacles that keep you from doing the work at all. But I didn’t know this: the ideal conditions weren’t actually ideal.

The ideal conditions weren’t actually ideal.

So I went on a mission to write at shitty times.
[Stop for a moment, people. Stop. You must be so proud of me.]
My first shot at this was, appropriately, when I was absolutely shot. It was after a long day of bad parenting, too much yoga studio marketing, meetings, conformity-railing, and late evening yoga and meditation teaching. Normally, I’d have put on a Grey’s Anatomy rerun, nothing could be accomplished anyway, just wind the fuck down.
But instead I sat at the kitchen island, poured a glass of jammy zin, and I wrote late into the night. I finished a whole piece. I edited and submitted it the next day, to a really out-of-the-box publication I found called Amulet Magazine. And it was accepted. And the editor Marybeth Bonfiglio sent me some edits, we did the editing dance, and then it was out there.
Just one single day, one single previously rationalized undeserving use of my time cut. One quick slice. Boom. Or whoosh. Yeah, whoosh. The sound of a blade through the air.
Two months later, I started this blog. Whoosh, whoosh.
The Daughter of Swords. This card came up in my Tarot reading with Marybeth four years after all that whooshing. Ever have a tarot reading? So you’re supposed to ask specific questions, and this one was, “What do I need to do to get around the corner with my writing and other neglected aspects of my life’s work?” I mean, I do a lot of things, I’m always moving on something. And sure, I’ve been moving forward in some important aspects of my life, but inert in others that I have a feeling could really pull it all together. The truest things in me. Like what I pull together with my writing.

Always moving, but inert.

“You cannot force anything. What you can do is stop everything that is pushing you forward and instead slow the fuck down.” – Marybeth’s Instagram post recently. Yeah, I’ve heard it before, friends. But this time, I heard it. (Hell, I’ve been rajas-shamed by so many yoga colleagues that “slow down” just meant hackles up.) So, Marybeth was getting through to me. And I totally had to tarot with her.
Marybeth said the Daughter of Swords card was about mental transformation. About night vision – seeing through the dark. (Did I mention the name of the piece I published with her four years ago was “Dark, dark, dark, LIGHT”?) This was an air card. Swords and air. It was like “a cut through the air” at the things I haven’t been able to see but that need to go. “Change how you’ve rationalized things” she said. “We all have an extra hour in the day,” she said.
Do you believe her? I do.
[Stop for a moment, people. Stop. “Hold the magic,” she said.]
So, it’s time to choose. We can continue with our habituated daily rationalizations and justifications. We can continue believing we don’t have time and we aren’t in control and the demands of our day-to-day lives don’t allow us to pursue our long-reaching, heart-longing goals.
We can continue not doing the things we wish we were doing.
Or we can take a new look at how we spend our time. See what we haven’t been seeing. We have to carry our swords and poke around in the dark and when we find something, be ready to cut through it.
We will see how we’ve justified doing the things we don’t even want to do. My nightly Twitter “current events check-in” that turns circuitous, landing me in arbitrary accounts of people I don’t need to know anything about ever. And we can say fuck this shit, I don’t want to hold up my life this way anymore.

We can say fuck this shit, I don’t want to hold up my life this way anymore.

Whoosh, it’s gone. What, it’s not that easy? Right. You’re right. It’s hard. But swing your sword at it the next time you find yourself in the middle of it. Just set your fucking phone down on the counter. And smile. It’s how it starts.
[Stop. This moment is the magic. The way you stop barreling down a life course you don’t have to go down any more.]
In one week of telling Twitter to fuck off, I actually started to feel a longing to read a book at night. A book of all things.
There’s another way of justifying things that our swords will root out in our respective darks. We will see how we let ourselves do things that take more time than what we want to spend on them – even those things we can legit justify as “necessary” or “good for us.” That stellar healthy kale and eggs breakfast I’ve become attached to making with all the pans and clean-up? I don’t have to do that every day. Whoosh. Instant 40-minute gift to myself. That organization project I want to do in my son’s room so important things aren’t lost in the rubble? I don’t have to spend two hours online finding the coolest way to do it and price-comparing. I can just buy a couple decent fucking racks and bins. Whoosh. Magically I have an extra hour in the day.
We will see, we will cut. One moment at a time. Stopping in the state of what it feels like to choose your future and not your past. Did you hear that? Every time you just stop yourself from barreling down the course you’ve taken in the past, you are choosing your future.

Every time you just stop yourself from barreling down the course you’ve taken in the past, you are choosing your future.

And then there will be space. Space for the things that keep you true to your process for meeting your long-reaching, heart-longing goals. These things will take their rightful place in your life. For me, that means Aya mindful dance practice, when so much comes to light for me. It means getting dirty and grounded doing trail work with friends. It means reading contemporary creative stuff. It means meditating daily and finding out what I really feel. It means blogging frequently and finding out what I’ve been trying to say. It means creating yoga-integrated programming for people wanting to move in the direction of their desired future. It means writing for publication. It means paying more attention to who I spend time with or on, and re-establishing connection where I’ve lost some – my sisters, my mom, my yoga sangha, my writing community.
But, I didn’t have time for all these things, right? The things that lead to a future I’ve wanted for decades? Yes, I do. Now I carry a sword. Time isn’t my enemy. Time is there for me. My daily rationalizations and justifications of my time are my enemy. And one by one, they are falling. Not every day. Sometimes I lay down my sword. Trusting that I will pick it up again. Trusting that I will continue to be true.

Time isn’t my enemy. Time is there for me.

[Stop. There. That is how we slow down.]