Answer to Kimberly

Last Saturday, I left a question for Kimberly Steele about this job that has come up through my former employer, BehemothCo.

Kimberly, bless her, responded here rather than just deleting my question.

I replied to her answer: briefly here in a comment on her blog, and at greater length in a post here on mine.

So far, so good.

And then, in a burst of generosity not to be imagined, Kimberly replied to my blogpost in a comment here, which runs as follows.

Kimberly Steele here, thanks for sharing this. It seems to me your Tarot are telling you the same things as my Ogham. From what I can tell, you sincerely want to take the job and you want to move away, but both your Tarot and my Ogham are saying you would come to regret it. If you need to take the job and relocate because it is your heart's desire, then go ahead. Sometimes we can only learn certain lessons the hard way.

You also have other choices -- one is taking a local job or joining a local volunteer group or other Meetup for structure. You could also look into living and working in someplace that is not related to this job. The point is you have options even if you feel emotionally blinded to them right now.

Pause with me for a minute to appreciate what this comment means to me.

The frustrations of divination

I told you all about the possible job that I've been discussing with a recruiter from my former employer (affectionately nicknamed BehemothCo for the purposes of this blog). At this point, I have spoken to the recruiter, to the hiring manager, and (just this afternoon) to the two most senior employees in the department.

I have also—this should be no surprise—been consulting divination. The problem is that the message I get from divination is consistently different from the message that I get from my regular human interactions. But of course divination doesn't speak English, and there's always the possibility that it's not true. But I remember enough times in the past that it has described reality that I am reluctant to dismiss it. This means that I am stuck.

Echoes of Kimberly

You've all heard too much about how I've "written a book" under my real name about the stuff that I used to do professionally, but it's still sitting on my hard drive because I can't figure out how to publish it. Almost six months ago, I asked Kimberly Steele to consult her Ogham, to tell me what I ought to do about it. She told me that it is very important that I publish it—"one of your major tests in your life"—"but you have to be very flexible and open to multiple ways of publishing and promoting it: eBook, website, podcast, audiobook, even self-publishing... Nothing should be off the table."

Today I was traveling back home from spending the Thanksgiving holiday with relatives. Brother was driving. And out of the blue, he started talking about my book.

Don't ask a question unless you want the answer

Last month I talked about things that it might be kind of nice to do, but that I wasn't doing because I wasn't really doing anything. One of these was, "I imagine it might be nice to publish the book I've written related to the work I used to do as a day job." As I've explained before (for example, here in some detail) I've written the damned thing, and I've talked to several people about how to publish it. But I've taken no action. And in fact the day before I posted "Becalmed," I had wasted some time by asking the Tarot how it would go if I tried to publish with this or that person. I couldn't make anything of the results.

But you may also remember a little over a year ago when I was still wrestling with whether to find a job, I asked a woman on the Internet (Kimberly Steele) who reads Ogham what her reading said I should do. (And she said no, I shouldn't be looking for a regular job.) Why not ask her again? At least it's a way to delay having to make a decision or take any concrete action, … right? What could go wrong?

Magical thinking for the win

I told you back in August that I had started trying to learn to read Tarot. Among other things this means that I start most days with a quick check of what I need to know about the day. As often as not, I get white noise, or combinations of cards that make no sense.

But I've also used the cards, from time to time, to answer Yes/No questions. Should I apply for this job? Will there be anybody useful at this job fair? Is this plan for seeing Marie a good one? And there the answers have looked kind of reliable. One of the questions that I have asked not infrequently is whether to apply for this or that job, and I get the answer No pretty reliably. Of course I think this answer is great, because I don't really want another job at this point (or at any rate not just any old job). And in my mind I have this fantasy that I should spend the time instead producing content: writing a book about the stuff that I do professionally, or writing philosophy, or some damned thing. Even just writing more of these blog posts. (I did an inventory yesterday of ideas I've had, that I haven't written up yet, and came up with more than twenty new posts each for this site and for the Patio. Let's see whether I get off my ass and write any of them.) 

Fantasies don't pay the bills. And even if that's not an immediate concern for me right at the moment, it feels a little presumptuous to say that I am "supposed" to be spending my time doing this or that. Besides, even if you accept the whole idea of consulting oracles, I've read that it's unreliable to read for yourself about any question where you really care about the answer, because your opinions are likely to cloud your judgement or skew the reading.

Funny thing, though — it turns out there's a website whose owner will read Ogham for you for free, as an oracle. How accurate are her predictions? The people who leave comments seem to be pleased with the results she gives them, though that may be nothing more than selection bias. In any event she's never heard of me before. And it's free, so it can't hurt to ask. Right?

Anyway, a couple days ago I submitted a question:

Dear Kimberly,

I've been trying to learn Tarot for a few months now, but I'm often still baffled by the images so I'd like to cross-check something with you. Just at the moment I'm out of work; but several times I have had the experience of seeing a job posting that might be a possibility, asking about it, and getting a very clear "NO" from the cards. OK, maybe they were all just bad places to work. But it's happened enough that I want to ask: Am I supposed to be doing Something Else with this time, instead of just looking for another job? If so, what?

Thanks very much!

Hosea

And her reply was as follows:

Hi Hosea,

Yes, my Ogham agree with your Tarot -- you need to be doing Something Else.

They provide Quert or Delight well-dignified to answer your question.

Then she went on to give me a bunch of advice about saving money; some of her suggestions are things I'm already doing, and others aren't terribly practical for me right now. But of course she's never heard of me before, so how should she know the details of my situation? I did try to ask her a follow-up question, ("So what exactly should I be doing instead?") and got no answer. Maybe I'll ask again next week.

In the meantime, though, she confirmed that I'm not "supposed" to be looking for work right now. Maybe the way I phrased the question prejudiced her answer, but I still think it's interesting that that's what she said.