Lucy Looking Upward

I had wanted to update far, far sooner than this, but the last shoot I was on seemed to run particularly long in all aspects. Not only did the days feel super drawn-out, my time on the episode was also extended due to another crew member having a medical emergency and my having to fill in for her. For the time being I don’t have any more jobs solidly booked for a little while, so I’ll be able to take a week or so to just relax and get my bearings. (At least until Mercury retrograde is over.)

Truth be told, more than anything I’m excited to not have to do anything too time-consuming because Saturn just went direct in my 4th House. Saturn’s retrograde period was not kind to me. Initially I saw it as a chance to set more appropriate boundaries for myself, both physically and emotionally, so that I wouldn’t punch strangers in the face or open my eyes thinking I was in my hotel bed and actually have been laying on a strange family’s garage floor for an hour. And of course, thinking back on it, that’s SO NOT WHAT HAPPENED. Despite my better judgment, I threw myself into a relationship with someone before I was even sure that he felt the same way, and was then crushed beyond crushed when he didn’t. And instead of actively working to balance work and my health, I worked non-stop for about four months, with only a short break in between, which has done three things: it’s destroyed my skin, it’s reactivated my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (so that when I’m asleep, I might as well be dead) and it’s caused me to completely slack off on my exercise, such that if I were to weigh myself, I would not be shocked to see a 20-30-lb. gain. Being someone that traditionally has difficulty both stopping work and losing weight without drastic measures, I’m not particularly happy about this. In the past, I would have said, “Okay, now that Saturn is direct, I’m going to book everything in advance, leave enough time for sleep, and schedule in gym time EVERY DAY.” But this time, I’m not going to.

Having a very strong 10th House makes me by default a Saturnian person, since Saturn/Capricorn in the 10th House’s natural ruler. As I may have said before, I have always been a very goal-and-work-oriented person, even as a small child; a lot of my self-esteem (actually, mostly all of it) comes from the ability to follow through on a task and achieve something at the end. Not to mention that my natal Saturn is retrograde in Scorpio, which means among other things that if I set my mind to do something, you will have to kill me before I stop working. If you were to ask me what the most crushing thing in the world was to me, it would be a toss-up between not honoring a deadline and turning in subpar work. Whenever I have to miss a deadline, the work handed in eventually has always included a “you have no idea how much it would have hurt my soul to give you half-assed work” or “I have literally been up nights crying about this” disclaimer. And I have- I take the work I do very, very seriously, almost to my detriment. I realized recently that that’s probably part of the reason people at work have been so slow to give me other opportunities- because they see how hard I work at the job I’ve had, and they think I’m too valuable to lose. Meanwhile, other coworkers who have done my job and failed miserably at it are now my superiors.

It’s really upsetting to realize that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” is true, because it’s unthinkable to me that anyone would just not care about doing whatever they’re doing to the absolute best of their ability. I mean, seriously- if I had totally failed at one job, it would never, EVER occur to me to say to the people in charge, “Well, this isn’t really my thing, but I’d love to do [higher-ranking job],” and actually expect them to say yes. I would like to think that they’d recognize the work I was doing without my having to say anything, and make the appropriate promotion. But this has always been the case with me: I’m self-sufficient, I don’t ask for help, I push myself to be the best, and ultimately no one ever volunteers to help me in any way. It happened in college too; I had no mentors, despite my begging and pleading for a mentor, because none of my professors seemed to think I needed it. Now in the workplace, since I don’t appear to be floundering around, I’m left to wonder why my requests to branch out are going unaccommodated, or worse, if maybe despite my hard work I really am not capable of doing a more challenging job.

It’s been very difficult, but gradually I’ve been trying to let myself fail a little bit. I’ve realized that I can’t keep assigning the same level of importance to everything in my life. There are some things that, while serving some purpose, are not necessarily vital to my livelihood, and I’m seeing that it’s totally okay to let them drop. Because ultimately, if I set too many goals for myself, I won’t be able to meet them all and I’ll be totally disappointed. I’m not sure that most people are as hard on themselves as I am on myself, hence why I have a behind-my-eye headache right now and a lot of my coworkers probably don’t.

So instead of setting myself up to fail by setting goals, I’m just going to do things one by one and as I’m available to do them. If I make myself go to the gym, I will find excuses not to, and then I’ll hate myself. If I push myself to stay up all night working on something, I’ll inevitably get tired and it won’t get done, and then I’ll hate myself. I might as well try to minimize the hating myself as much as possible, at least before Saturn opposes my Sun, at which point I’m sure the self-hate will be in full throttle.

My goals for this afternoon are to cure the behind-the-eye headache, see if I can actually get through the second half of Carl Monson’s oppressively boring Blood Legacy, have something resembling a lunch, and get to Clinton Hill for much-needed best-friend quality time. None of which involve work or exercise. In your face, Saturn direct.