Are you a Human doing or a Human being?

I get so caught up in doing that I forget how to be. I forget how to care for myself. I forget to eat nourishing food and instead just grab what is easy so I can “get back to work.” I used to love cooking.

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Or, I say I will go for a walk, but then get caught up “working” and decide I’ll go tomorrow.

This addiction to work is crippling. It’s detrimental and causes me to live a half-life and lose sight of what matters most: life itself.

I know I’m not alone in this. As a culture, we celebrate work addiction. We prioritize busyness, productivity, and profit over time with family, caring for our bodies, and doing things we enjoy. This habitual focus on work over life becomes embedded into our being until we don’t even think about it anymore.

In 2017, I left my job as a consultant. So, for the past five years, I’ve been self-employed as a makeup artist and as the artist-writer-consultant I am now. You would think in that time I had learned to take charge of my own schedule. But no, I’m still operating in the same paradigm of productivity that I was when I was employed full-time and working 60+ hours per week. My life may have changed, but the addiction remains.

I struggle to turn off and convince myself that because I love the work I do, I’m not always working.

During lockdown, I realized that I was sacrificing other aspects of my life (friendships, family, relaxation, play) because I was so enmeshed with my work. Even though I made my own schedule, I was constantly overscheduling myself with an impossible-to-meet workload.

I left my job because of burnout, but I was still on the hamster wheel. It looks something like this: completely focused on work, adding more and more to my to-do list, my body gets sick, I crash, rest for a day or two, just to start it all over again.

I’m embarrassed to say that’s how I’ve been living for the past five years, but it’s the truth. I am by no means fixed, but I am more aware of the pattern and slowly working to bring more balance into my days.

One of the tools I use is Level 10 Life, a productivity tool created by Hal Elrod. I have modified it with my astrology studies and have morphed these ideas into one.

Using our birth chart, we have 12 life areas called houses, and every month, the Moon spends about 2.5 days in each house. Since the Moon rules our inner emotional landscape, the part of ourselves that is related to our inner stability, it makes sense that using the Moon as a symbol to remind us where we are operating from today could center and focus us.

I cannot own this idea. I first encountered Vanessa Corazon’s Moonsight Calendar back in 2018, prior to that I was tracking the Moon manually through astro-seek.com and writing the transits in my calendar.

Using this method creates more balance for me. There is space for all aspects of myself. You don’t need knowledge of astrology to practice this, but you may get bit by the bug and begin studying it as a result (like I did).

Each day is unique and holds its own potential. There will never be another day exactly like this.

We get pulled into the monotony of our lives, and we forget this. I think this is the true meaning of Carpe Diem: seize the day.

Using the Moon, we see there are times for introversion and extroversion. There are times to be still and turn inward (12th house), times to care for your home and family (4th house), and times to be creative (5th house) and communicative (3rd house).

Each day is a new page and holds its own potential. Are you making the most of it?

If you’re curious about how to implement this method in your own life shoot me an email or reply in the comments.

With love,

Margaret

Originally posted to Substack on 9/16/2022.