Spinning Coins

I’ve never been very mindful of money and it’s often slipped through my fingers to the sigh of oh well… Easy come… Easy go…

I’ve never been affluent but always I’ve managed to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. Currently it’s not so easy to be so blasé about currency. Businesses are going to the wall and the gig economy where many of my friends reside has never been a harsher environment. Money is on everyone’s one mind. Even if you try to avoid the news, the message finds a way to tap tap tap out the directive that you should only shop for essentials.

So what do people do? They panic buy bog roll, chest freezers, dried pasta, flour, tinned tomatoes… Food shelves are emptied as dustbins bulge with 30% more food waste. I wonder why it is that on my street, everyone is in all day yet you can’t smell cooking? Are my neighbours eating toilet paper…

Who knows? What I do know is that I’m more mindful of my money and more discerning in where I place it. Whittling down my day to day spending leaves me with a little that I can afford to forward to support friends in the Arts/self-employed sector. Is that essential shopping? I think SO.

When this is all over, will I continue to support them? Yes, I know so.

They call this nouveau plague the great leveller. I call bullshit on that.

It’s a great cleaver clearly cutting through to show the best and the worst in people.

I stepped out of the tarot industry a couple or so years ago. I say stepped out, it’s not entirely, I still have a toe dipped in there as gigging is an itch that needs to be scratched occasionally and it’s good to be open to fun stuff. I left the roller-coaster of feast or famine finances for the mundane stability of a regular clock-in, clock-out job. This means I can pick and chose card slinging activities.

As I felt lockdown looming I opted completely out. My agent sends emails about bookings much further down the time line and I bounce them back telling her to send them to folks who rely on readings for their sole source of income. Ethically, now is not a time to take more than you need, now is not a time for second income side gigs…

I understand that it’s desperate times and people roll out desperate measures but I see something happening that really boils my piss. OK, there’s the highly visible big companies who are confirming beyond all measure levels of greed we all knew where there but maybe turned more of a blind eye to than we should have for the sake of consumer convenience…

But the heat that causes my piss to boil is the hot air coming from industries that could be considered parallel to the tarot world… People who are expert in their own now barren fields, hopping over the fence to dole out freebies of tarot/astrology when they are not only not experts but also have failed to nail down even the most basic of principles. Oh sweet Jesus! What’s the word? I think the Germans have a word for it but I’m buggered if I can recall what it is… That word for when you see somebody doing something so badly, that you find yourself blushing and becoming painfully embarrassed on their behalf…

Just stop it already!

Firstly, you offering freebies outside of your own sector is making it much harder for people who have been in that sector for years to earn a crust. Though I’m guessing that will be shortlived as people don’t want freebies, they want results…

Secondly, oh my! Posing as a pro in something you clearly don’t know, undermines your plausibility as a whole. When all this is over, even if I need your kind of services, I ain’t coming to you…

Money is energy… I’ve heard it and I suspect you’ve heard it a million times…

Yeah, well anyway… A rant was not my intention here when I sat down to write…

Back on track…

Think about who/what has brought joy into your life (in whatever form) and think about how you can reciprocate that.

And for my silent friends who are struggling but unwilling to raise their hand. Put your hands up! Remind us you’re still here! It’s not charity. We most probably owe you anyway.