Recover -- Don't Hide!

Hello All!

Hope you've had a good week so far -- it's warming up a tiny bit here in Houston, but is expected to get really cold in about a week.  'Course, it'll probably be 80 degrees the week after that -- winter in South Texas!

I've been working on a really tough project at work - all the pieces finally came together this week and the darn thing finally worked!  Big sigh of relief from over here.

On the downside -- I have a Tarot booth every spring at a Renaissance Festival near Austin (Sherwood Forest Faire).  It's located at the "top" of a ring of shops on a hillside.

Two years ago, one of the retail shops in the ring and a food seller moved in.  Many of the shops in the ring were clothing sellers and they complained about the food smells and grease getting into the garments they sold.  The food seller is a nice guy -- but putting a food booth right next to clothing shops wasn't really a good idea.

The next year, he put up a bunch of picnic tables in front of his booth.  Worked for him -- but for the rest of us, it was the same as putting up a wall.  People could no longer walk "around" the ring -- they'd hit the mass of people sitting at the picnic tables and would then walk away.  End result is that our foot traffic dropped by nearly 90%!

More complaints -- the food seller decided to move and the fair management said he'd be replaced by another retail vendor.

But -- just found out the faire is replacing him with ... a bar!  Now, we can look forward to stale beer and cigarette smells and liquored up crowds still breaking the traffic flow.  I'm tring to see an upside -- it will draw crowds, but they're not the type of crowds to browse and buy, they're the type that'll sit and drink.

Not too excited about it -- will see what we can make of it, but am considering relocating as well.

BTW -- the bar owner is going to be ... the Faire managers!  So ... no hope of talking them out of it.

On to the weekend reading!

Our first card is -- the Four of Pentacles.

If you've been reading these posts for a while, you may remember that I promised a young couple that I would always call this card "Mr. Grumpyhead" when it came up -- so, meet Mr. Grumpyhead!

Mr. Grumpyhead is someone who has walled himself away.  He's thinking "I don't need anyone, I can keep to myself and be happy".  If we look at his dour expression, we can see just how happy he is.  He's not noticing any of the joyous things in the world around him ... his mind is completely closed off.

There's quite a lot wrong with this card -- but one thing that strikes me is that he's static -- he's not changing or growing ... and he doesn't even realize it.  He's missing out on so much; if he would just open his eyes and his heart, he'd see so many opportunities he could be joining.

What do we do?  Let's look at our second card -- the Four of Swords.

This card suggests taking a step back and taking a break -- resting, relaxing, recharging.  Once we're refreshed, we'll likely see things in a different manner.

Going back to Mr. Grumpyhead, we might ask how someone gets like that in the first place.  I'm thinking if someone's had a bad experience -- they might close themselves off to feel safer and less vunerable.

If we instead used the Four of Swords to recover from a bad experience, we'd find ourselves more prepared to move forward rather than just sitting still.  When we relax and recover, we build our strengths back up again -- and let the boo-boo's heal.

So - when you run into rough spots, take the time to recover and heal -- don't make the mistake of walling yourself away!

Make sense?  Hope it's something to think about!

Have a great weekend -- I'll see you again next week!

Woodsong