An automatic drawing I made last night while watching Uzumaki. Mostly just tried to set time apart where I wasn’t doomscrolling. Being locked in during a snow storm has made it hard to resist the phone, especially since I can’t go for my daily walk. My legs hurt intensely. Luckily my ulcer issues have chilled out, and the medicine I am allowed to take has kept the horrid headaches at bay. I still slept a lot today. I also began knitting a hat. Still trying to work through my stash.
Back to the drawing, into interesting because a lot of elements always seem to appear and I usually see some type of character or spirit manifest. Will probably do more of this tonight when I’m not knitting.
I am currently trying out selling some tiny artworks as ACEOs on eBay after learning about them on TikTok. I enjoy making tiny art anyway, and it does pile up quickly. I use to run an eBay shop back in college. This seems like it will be much less labor intensive (I hope) as far as admin is concerned. Each is on auction for a starting bid of .99, with a buy it now price of $5. I enjoy the accessibility of this practice, as someone who only started collecting artwork a few years ago. Each piece is also 3.5” x 2.5” which is just fun. You can check these all out here: https://www.ebay.com/usr/starmothx. The two images below are also cards I have available.
This is the design that won out for the sticker for this month’s care mail club (sign up on ko-fi here: https://ko-fi.com/starmothpress it’s available as a one-off purchase or a membership). I have a few others that I really love and was torn as far as using them, but ultimately the bunny was the winner (bunnies are my favorite, besides dogs…and birds.) Here were the other contenders. Perhaps they’ll be stickers in the future?
This evening I would really like to get to some fiction writing, but have also been recovering from a whole collection of illnesses. Last weekend, the family had the stomach flu. It kicked my butt! The kids had it as well, so I was extra beat from taking care of them. Then the week felt like a race from one thing to the next, not a moment to breathe. By the time Friday came, I was dealing with debilitating stomach pain. It seemed as though my ulcer was acting up again. I (stubbornly) did not go to the doctor right away, trying to push through with the thought it would be gone in the morning.
It was not.
The thing is the temperature and air pressure also dropped overnight. The lack of caffeine plus the sinus issues, plus the tension from so much body pain meant I had a triple whopper of a headache when I took the kids to basketball camp Saturday morning. It was all I had to sit there for an hour, and after taking them home and getting everyone settled…I headed to urgent care. They advised me of steps I could take to alleviate the stomach pain as well as meds I could safely take to manage the headaches. I could barely keep my eyes open. I slept most of the day. Thank goodness it was a Saturday.
The next morning I felt much better. Having slept so much I woke up at five. I treated my stomach gingerly, and have been slowly eliminating certain things (such as coffee :() in order to keep everything manageable. Sunday felt a little like a hangover day, today’s vibe was much better but with another temperature drop came another headache.
A page in my journal where I played with paint, pencils and paper. Processing the world Visioning the world I wish to inhabit.
Luckily it was a mostly quiet day at home. I’ve been catching up on some admin, hence the fact that these items are up on eBay, and I finally posted some stickers for sale on my ko-fi. I’m on a strict order to take Benadryl before bed so I think it’s time for me to get some sleep. I can hit the ground running with some writing in the morning — caring for the physical body comes first.
I did complete this weeks collage for The Tarot Diaries, which I hope to write on tomorrow. The podcast has fallen behind a couple of weeks, but I hope I can recover that as well. It can’t be done in poor health though, so rest it is.
I hope everyone has a safe week. Stay well friends.
More pages from the notebook obtained from the record shop. They are created by Half Hazard Press, and I found them in a new (to me) record shop I was perusing. I also got a Uriah Heap album, titled Demons and Wizards. It was a bold choice considering I had never heard of them but for $9 and a title like that who could resist. We recently pulled out the record player tucked away in a closet, in the hopes that more music enjoyment can be had together.
I am leaning toward this piece as the sticker design for this month’s mail club.
I am mulling over the idea of how to approach the zine for this month. I am proud of my ability to create a zine each month thus far, as well as figuring out the format to print it within Canva. You can sign up for mail club on my here.
My poetry collection is taking its final shape, I’m settled at between 30-40 poems. I am looking at setting the container to make the corresponding collages. If anyone has any experience self-publishing a book outside of Amazon’s service with text and full color images, please let me know.
A new essay for The Tarot Diaries will be on Substack later today.
this week’s edition of The Tarot Diaries is now available. We’re talking about the ace of pentacles, how the hand is offering you the pentacle just as Morpheus offered Neo the red pill out of the matrix, about analog practice, about cooking and the moments that make sobriety and presence worth it.
I drew this card on the evening of the 28th, having wrapped up my week with the four of wands. I did so after my daily prayer practice. It felt good to pull the Queen of Wands. I love her creative, life-giving energy. Then I went to bed.
During morning pages on Monday I didn’t think much of it but I did decide to do a collage to get the juices flowing. This is the collage that resulted after my own knowledge of the Queen of Wands as well as just vibing with the card.
Queen of Wands, collage on index card, completed 9/29/25
I was incredibly proud of this piece. I am trying to push the bounds of my collage practice. I am trying to include new subjects and shapes, patterns and colors. The sunflower was cut out of a copy of How to Know the Wild Flowers. This was done on a co-working live, and it took immense concentration. But, again…I think one of the main takeaways for me on my creative journey this year has been that sitting with discomfort is a part of it. That’s where this TikTok came from. I filmed a beautiful monarch butterfly outside in the backyard. I was baking in the heat (it’s still in the 80s in the Midwest) because the dog wanted to peruse the whole property…or so it seemed. She was doing dog things, I was observing our (still) blooming zinnia patch when I turned to find this gorgeous creature just chilling on our hedgerow. The thing is, I wouldn’t have seen her, been captivated by her beauty, or thought to record her (I’m keeping that part in a little box labeled LOOK AT THIS LATER WHEN THE WORLD IS LESS WILD). My grumpy, sweaty, tired self would’ve been obliviously inside, comfortable.
So the Queen of Wands embraces life. She is open and excited about creative potential. She moves in action towards that which she desires. I can certainly see this in myself, especially in this moment. With both kids at school during the day and hours to myself to work on what I’ve set aside…it seems as though creative flourishing is in season, at least for now.
Then I was blocked for two days.
Fortunately, this isn’t like an actual creative block and more like the real world circumstances and other creative commitments we make (that I’m all of a sudden holding to, thank you The Artist’s Way) that stand in the way by means of taking time. Ultimately, I can see…especially in my circumstances as a bipolar person, with ADHD, who is a recovering addict…that external intervention that pulls me back to the day to day minutiae is a good thing. I get very blustery at the time.
Didn’t the universe know I was JUST STARTING this project on the tarot and being so busy otherwise was going to make follow through too difficult.
Julia Cameron, in The Artist’s Way, talks about walking in trust with our creator. You can refer to this Great Mystery as god, the universe, source, whatever. I’m starting to realize that while I don’t have the habitual organization of what we might think of as a type a person, I do have issues with control. I want to control…everything.
How can one who wishes to subvert control over as much as they can in their life possibly sit in vulnerable openness to god? How could one singular being possibly know the path more than the being that is everything? Why do I feel the need to constantly push and push and push.
I’ve listened to the audiobook of Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom from the late Rachel Pollack once. I recently bought a physical copy because, as I stated at the beginning of the project, I want to develop a more intimate relationship with the cards. I am reading through Pollack’s interpretations and wisdom of each card as one piece to this puzzle. This is the first card where I had to do it before writing my initial thoughts essay.
When I used to do readings for other people I did not read reversals. It was too overwhelming. I was getting too caught up in technicalities so I let that go. As I refer to Pollack’s book, I can see that I easily got upright understanding of this card down, at least surface level. It’s when I looked to the reversed meanings that are shared that it seems like maybe this is why I am with this card at this time. Pollack says about the Queen of Wands Reversed:
“We can see her as the kind of person who will take over the running of someone’s house when they have had a crisis and at the same time off advice, consultation, emotional support, all these things coming from a natural impulse rather than a sense of duty. At the same time this good nature demands that life respond in a positive way. Too much disaster or too much opposition from life (and the weakness of such a person can be a tendency to think of life as ‘unfair’), and a nasty streak can emerge. She can become deceitful, jealous, unfaithful, or somewhat bitter.”
Rachel Pollack, 78 Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, pgs. 166-167
If that doesn’t sound like me, I don’t know what does. It’s not really in reference to anyone else’s house, but my own. Despite the idea that I am a stay-at-home mom, I find myself running on fumes without clear time for rest or creativity. There are even moments in the car where I will pray out loud to god while talking about how unfair life is, not to sound ungrateful, but there’s so much to do and I can’t possibly manage all of this and I just want to be at home making art.
I tear down all of my own boundaries and walls, then get mad when no one else helps me to adhere to them. I know that I thrive when I have time to create early in the morning, however I stay up later and later due either to time blindness, tiredness or unwillingness to stop what I’m working on. This isn’t just a self-regulation problem either. Part of The Artist’s Way that has been difficult has been managing the artist date, playful time doing something fun on my own, with my responsibilities and the guilt that comes up doing this.
The Queen of Wands is inspiring me to think of how I can build more creativity into my mundane activities. She also invites me to play with the idea of time and structure. How can I have the routine that makes my ADHD happy while also providing the flexibility that my Inner Artist needs to follow her whims? AND how does all of this interact with my desire and goal to have a healthier relationship with discipline? My mind will continue to ponder as I meditate on the Queen of Wands and attempt to stay open and receptive for any insight.
Journal Prompts: What is your relationship to discomfort? Can you sit with it? Can you befriend it as you work towards a goal, perhaps one that is more abstract and long term? What is your relationship to discipline? How does is aide your creative work? Is it friend or foe? Do you avoid it all together? Try drawing a character, something that embodies discipline, that will make it easier for you to interact with. What does a conversation with them look like? How does it go? What do they expect from you in order to make your relationship work? What is your daily routine? How does creativity play a role? Do you schedule time, or find little moments? Do you feel like any part of your routine isn’t in balance? How are you standing up for yourself and your creative time?
This is my little discipline friend (well, acquaintance for now). My idea behind it is if we all have this creative Inner Flame burning, then discipline is one of the key players to keep that Flame burning. The idea behind the prompt isn’t to draw some artistic genius rendering of Discipline as a character to ooooh and ahhhh over. The idea for what you create to help you visualize conversing with discipline if you have, perhaps, not been able to stay in a positive relationship with them OR are trying to figure out how they fit into your creative life so you’re both happy.
Starmoth Press 