The Peaceful Kind of Loneliness

Once in a YouTube video one of the video game commentators made the statement that in order to know if you’re going to be a good comedian, you need to completely fail a set. If you keep going back on the stage then it means something to you. If you can’t handle the hecklers and the fiery underarm sweat of no one liking the one thing you’re there to do, then the bright oven bulb of a stage light isn’t going to be your thing. I had been writing for a few years before this, but that philosophy has continued at my side. It is something I have been doing since I self-published my first book. It is something that I am still dealing with.

At the beginning of 2020 I had experienced some health problems (not COVID related) and made it a resolution that I was going to give my self-publishing one more push. In the meantime, I’d be looking for a job to replace the one thing that I have ever been consistently doing. I’ve studied wedding planning, I did the online certification to officiate weddings, I worked with children, I worked with the elderly, I worked in retail, I struggled making pizzas. Since I started seriously writing in 2013, it is the only thing I come back to. It is my first love.

I have been trying to build my writing career from the ground up. Vocal is a part of the way of this year helping me try to finally earn some money from it, as a matter of fact. Self-publishing books is akin to traveling around as a one-man-band for me. It’s a lot of solitary work and I know everyone who has read my books. As the pandemic went deeper and deeper, I started feeling the effects in January 2021 that everyone else had the year before. The job search went as expected for last year and self-publishing hadn’t picked up either. I began swimming downward. It’s hard to go year after year, book after book, and nothing coming from it but not having the ability to stop. Questioning now, nearly eight years into the only thing I’ve ever been committed to, if it was going to be worth it.

Not that long ago I started listening to Sagittarius Today from Parcast Network on Spotify. It’s a daily horoscope with meditative like music playing quietly behind it. Though the three minute episodes begin with good morning, I started playing it whenever I needed it. I would hit play, close my eyes and just listen to a soft-spoken person guide me through my day. It’s quiet. The cool breeze of a gentle fan is blowing across my face. As short as it is, it lets me go back to writing. As stated, I can’t stop. When I’m not writing to publish I’m writing to go to sleep. Everything around me is a brand new idea, or a new detail to be added in something I have been stuck on. And then, something funny happened.

If you don’t believe tarot readings hold much weight, I implore you to just keep an open mind on the seemingly bizarre coincidence that happened late May and again just a few hours ago, July 3rd. I am from a small town seventy miles west of Nashville and we don’t get people who practice ‘witch work’. The one time I had my palm read at the county fair someone walked by and yelled “God can help you with that!”, just to put in perspective how amazed and interested when a tarot reader had just announced business. Out of her own home, not that far from a church. My sister and I went and we had ours done separately.

I didn’t know what to ask so I tried to keep an open mind and let her read the cards from where I’d cut the deck. She did a cold read, so she knew no details about the struggles I was facing career wise or anything else in my personal life. At this point I had contemplated the idea of traditional publishing, or trying to sign with an agent so that I wouldn’t have to choose putting writing on the back burner. At first, she told me that one of the cards meant that I had someone in my life who I believed hung the moon and the stars. This didn’t fit, so we put it aside and went down the other path the cards were showing her.

I was going through a dilemma in my life, plagued by fears of rejection, and needed to break passed that. Once I accepted my creative works for what they were and how powerful they made me, I would see that I was on the right path. We talked more about this and I then relayed to her it was exactly what I needed to hear. She had more of a “stand tall and screw them” approach that she insisted I adapt when dealing with rejection than just letting it slide off the shoulders. Rejection was going to hurt and it was okay. I needed to not take it as a stab at my self-worth and what I knew I had to do with my life. I recall two cards in particular. One was what she liked to call the Big Sad.

It’s easy to remember the details of that evening because of how odd it was to be happening where I lived. More than that, it’s almost verbatim what I heard in a YouTube video doing a group-like tarot read.

Nonbelievers, stay with me here. I promise I don't take all of my life advise from YouTube videos, but sometimes they make a lot of sense.

In the video this woman who I do not know and have never personally met, begins by telling the viewer about the four incense holders in front of her. Before she even asks you to choose one, I was drawn immediately to one. As soon as the video started playing actually it was the only one I was looking at. Afterwards I thought maybe it just was the clearest, but rewinding showed that they all are pretty much in the same viewing range. I could have been drawn to any others. With this video, it was meant to be from your Future Self.

It was all about victory, success, prosperity, getting mindful clarity from negative thoughts of self-worth and self-deception. The harsher feelings were connected to a card related to something having caused me repeated sadness. A Big Sad. According to the cards, something affected my heart and intuition. It couldn’t have been more closely to the one-on-one personal reading if it were scripted. The one that made me audibly laugh was the second exact same card that I had gotten: there was going to be someone in my life who would mean the entire world to me. The person in the YouTube video said that it could be love for some, but not all. I didn’t take it as that, but then there’s more clarity on that relationship wise. When she continued, she found more evidence of this to her in the cards in the form of a partnership.

I joke that I just need to hear all of this for a third time and then I’ll really believe it’s true.

Deciding to do traditional publishing is not usually something to leave up to a deck of cards or a podcast episode horoscope reading. But hearing validation from someone who isn’t your close friend or family member brings a certain kind of joy. I still struggle to get my head out of the fog wondering if all of this writing is worth it because of how unrewarding self-publishing can be.

Striking gold is a one in a million chance and even in traditional publishing success doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long, hard process where you have to be your own cheerleader during those late night writing sessions. Whatever helps you get through it, be it a three minute soothing voice, sitting in complete silence, or blasting music to get pumped up, there needs to be something else. If you’re like me and writing even when you aren’t, there needs to be a break to keep the mental clarity focused and remind yourself that you return back to that stage for some reason. Keep writing those words. Keep liking your own writing. Keep laughing at your own jokes.

Someone out there likes the sound of trees falling in the wood.