I am a cactus

I am known (to myself) for checking my Free Will horoscope from time to time if I'm feeling bored or listless or if I'm ever curious whether or not the stars and my birth date within the universe, under the moon and planet alignment in the 1970s has anything writ within it about the cute guy I'm interested in or whether or not I should make dinner plans. Spoiler alert: no, no it doesn't. Astrology holds about as much water with me as the magic eight ball when it comes to real world advice that I'd consider but Free Will astrology tends to be more philosophical than astrological and I'm nothing if not a philosophy groupie. Here's this week's:

Leo (July 23-August 22)

The silkworm grows fast. Once it hatches, it eats constantly for three weeks. By the time it spins its cocoon, it's 10,000 times heavier than it was in the beginning. On the other hand, a mature, 60-foot-tall saguaro cactus may take 30 years to fully grow a new side arm. It's in no hurry. From what I can tell, Leo, 2015 was more like a silkworm year for you, whereas 2016 will more closely resemble a saguaro. Keep in mind that while the saguaro phase is different from your silkworm time, it's just as important. 

This astrologer has no way of knowing whether or not 2016 will anything more than another forgettable year in the life of just one more Leo destined for obscurity. However, just as my hubris allows me to see the face in the moon, so too can I see a bit of relevance to myself in this (likely) automatically generated blurb.
I DO have trouble recognizing when things take time; I do want to make like the silkworm, but with two extra legs and be enveloped in that safe cocoon (after eating constantly). I want to arrive to the point where I can relax and assume my place once again as the observer, And the quicker that happens, the better I'll feel. Yet when I get there, I regret not enjoying the ride more. So maybe I'll let my side arm (side piece?)  grow organically.

Either that or this horoscope is telling me that I ate constantly in 2015 and now I look fat. Thanks a LOT, universe.


The third day of the year is drawing to a quiet close and I sit in my bedroom and stare at this computer screen, willing myself to return to a million projects. I've been staring for a few days at the same paragraph. It involves writing a brief biography and justification for why I should want my poetry in a particular literary journal. It has been requested by this journal of any submitter to make his/her writing stand out to the editor by writing about the writing which, if you've ever written anything before, is fucking hard. I am horrible at detailing my good points, preferring instead to let my self deprecation be charming to those who are charmed by that sort of thing (as I am) and ignored by those who aren't. By the way, it occurs to me that that is the reason I always fail at online dating. But that's a whole other, succinctly-summarized-rock-climbing-photo-accompanied-tale.

I contemplated going with: My name is Allison and writing is fucking hard. The only thing harder than writing is writing about my writing and I'd really rather you just read the poetry and decide from that instead of having to sell it to you. We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are.You see us as you want to see us...

But then I thought better of it because I'm not actually a neo maxi zoom dweebie getting duped into writing everyone's essay for them while simultaneously being the only one not getting laid. (Though I may as well be.) So instead, I sit and stare intently, seeing nothing and I do so until the siren song of the Internet calls me back, crashing into the rock of memes and Facebook and YouTube and ridiculous things I regularly do.

Speaking of which, bbiaf.