Following on from where I left off in (other articles in this series first article, third article, forth article) this is where I’m going to compare real-life to what my horoscopes said, retrospectively. Quick re-cap: I had given up my full-time job due to a family emergency, suddenly I had time on my hands before I re-joined the employed. I began writing while I sorted out my late mother’s estate, but it was really only something to keep me sane during a difficult time – writing was a dream for later in my life!
I had completed my first manuscript and a hardcopy was sitting in a box beneath my desk. It was also filed neatly in a folder on my PC desktop ‘Linn’s Written Work’. I had already started manuscript no. 2, but every time I logged on that little folder jumped out at me. So I pulled out a one inch square of paper I had cut out of a newspaper more than fifteen years earlier, and Googled the publisher. They were still in business and I looked up their submission details. Twenty-four hours later my synopsis and sample chapters were in their Inbox. Two days later I received an Email asking me to send them a hard copy of the full manuscript. This was my forecast for that day:
Gemini, Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Time is not only a great healer; it is a great magician. The passage of time can bring about the most amazing transformations. Sometimes, though, you have a rather difficult relationship with time, not least because of your tendency to lead your life at a hectic pace. Others cannot always multi-task – or think about as much at once, as well as you can. You are now hoping that a dream can come true soon. It can, and it probably will come true – but you should still be thinking in terms of months not weeks.
Real life: The healing referred to was the grieving process following my mother’s unexpected death in March 2009. It was a thread running through my forecasts as that time. In truth I felt a bit like a rudderless boat – I often found myself going to pick up the phone to ring her and ask her advice about what I should do. Then I would remember and each time it hit me like a cold slap. The problem was that I had no reason to believe it was sensible to spend my days writing –how on earth did you get into print (ebook wasn’t even in my vocabulary then)? I had begun talking to old contacts about prospective job opportunities and had already been offered a finance role. For some reason I kept putting off making a decision. In the meantime, I sent off my full manuscript – a stack of over five-inches of A4 paper, double line spaced – I was handing over my baby…
My husband said the decision was mine – my mother wasn’t on the end of the phone to ask, friends would say the same as Lawrence. Of course, no one understood my ‘sudden’ passion for writing, it was something that surprised and shocked most people as it was the hidden side of me. So how could anyone help me evaluate the next step? This is what my stars were saying:
Gemini, Thursday, 21 January 2010
There is an old Middle Eastern saying, ‘Trust in God, but tie your camel.’ That is good advice. We might also say, ‘Plan for the future, but make the most of today.’ The two priorities need not be mutually exclusive as long as you remember that, if you decide that you have to let something go here and now, so that you can enjoy the benefit there and then, you must do it with good grace. There is nothing wrong with a compromise, as long as it does not become a sacrifice. Be wholehearted today, and be wise.
Real-life: The ‘sacrifice was giving up a full-time income (and feeling guilty about that), I decided to take my private pension early. It meant I still felt I was making some contribution whilst I ‘discovered’ myself…
Gemini, Friday, 22 January 2010
Some say that it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do it wholeheartedly. That’s nonsense. If you do something silly, unkind or selfish, it hardly matters how much enthusiasm and sincerity you muster. It is, though, fair to say, that even if you do something wise, generous and selfless, you will have problems if you act in a spirit of resentment. You do need to put your heart and soul into this weekend’s undertaking.
Real-life: This was the weekend I finally bit the bullet and made the decision.
To put this into perspective, at that time my forecast for the year ahead from the astrologer I follow daily (a) and another astrologer I consult from time to time (b), were saying:
a)Gemini, Year Ahead 2010
The real question is not, what is this year going to bring? It is, what is this year not going to bring any more of? As we get further into this next phase of opportunity and challenge, it will become clear that something really is moving you away from feeling perpetually engaged in a struggle to which you must give your all*. New possibilities will reveal themselves, and it will be clear that circumstances have begun to alter and your attitude has changed, too. Nothing need bother you like it did. There will still be issues. You may still face seemingly impossible dilemmas. But none of it will matter to you as much as you once thought it did. You’ll enter a world where there is more love, more wealth, more relaxation and more comfort. Comfort is a funny thing. We don’t necessarily look to our astrologer to tell us when we will be comfortable. We want to be told about ‘attractive strangers’, journeys over water or unexpected windfalls. But you don’t need any of that to make you comfortable and happy. You just need to know that what you have got on your plate is something that you can digest and that will prove good for you. In 2010, something good is coming your way and it will keep on coming throughout the year. So no matter what you feel intimidated by, look again. Look into yourself. Into who you are. Into what you came here for. Into what you might be able to achieve if you were really to set your heart on it and really to get a fair shot at it. Life is about to give you a real way forward, bringing great enjoyment and fulfilment.
*My mother’s sudden illness was tough, but I had also been actively supportive when my Aunt died in 2003 and my father in 2004 – both involved daily hospital visits and ‘vigils’ towards the end. The years between 2004 and my mother’s death in early 2009 were equally tough because although there were no significant outward signs, I ‘felt’ something was terribly wrong and sometimes the worry was overwhelming. After she died we found out she had been diagnosed with Leukaemia shortly after my father died, but had chosen not to have treatment. Quite simply she’d had enough, but it was five years of intense, draining worry for me and my family began to think I was paranoid as I kept saying something was very wrong, although I had no proof.
b) Gemini Year Ahead 2010
Get ready to see yourself in a whole new light, dear Gemini. Some rather vast and important shifts will take place unexpectedly in your life between now and when a series of eclipses ends in May 2013. You are setting the template for many years to come, but you may not have any clue that all this is about to happen so soon! An exciting and new path will open up for you to investigate.
Your attitudes or opinion may do a surprise shift in a new direction, or an opportunity you never expected to come up may materialize, and when it does, it will change everything you assumed. Gemini is very quick, breezy energy, so whatever this eclipse brings will happen fast. Eclipses never give you what you assume it will bring – it’s always something different, but in the case of a friendly eclipse, that might be quite exciting.
Gemini rules communication, including writing (books, magazines, Internet blogs, screenplays, journalism, cell phone and computer apps, poetry, inspiration, documentary work – you name it), as well as lecturing and speaking, editing, teaching, marketing, translations of work into different languages, copywriting, advertising, publicity, TV production and programming, telecommunications, research, and sales of every description. One of these areas may become very important to you now when a breakthrough opportunity comes your way.
This is where looking at your forecasts with hindsight can turn something that felt rather unlikely at the time, into something rather insightful! I made the decision not to return to work – to let go of my ‘old’ life and my small pension made me feel at least I was still making a contribution. On 13 December 2010 I set up this website – my debut novel was due out in February 2011 and I had to establish my author platform very quickly. I joined Twitter and Facebook also in December 2010. When I read the yearly forecast b) at the beginning of the year I totally dismissed it out of hand. If someone had told me I would have an Internet Blog set up before the end of the year, I would have laughed hysterically and then said ‘I have absolutely no idea what that involves!’ My next post will explain the ‘coincidence’ that allowed me to learn the skills I needed very quickly …
I will be telling you all about that and sharing some more forecasts with you in my next post. Thank you for joining me and if you want to ‘join’ in and tell me about your own experiences drop me a line at lbhalton@googlemail.com!