It’s a full moon, and I am gassed.
This last week has been balls to the wall. I taught the last live class of So You Want to Learn Astrology, and then had the Month 4 kickoff for the current Grove cohort. I’ve been grinding to finish the first chapters of Astrology for Artists, which are due to my editors on Friday. I’m also finessing ~dates~ and writing the guidebook for Set Yourself Up 2026 (pages are due to my designer this weekend). And there is, of course, normal client work! Plus, I’ve started strength training again, and my body is happy but also painfully sore.
I’m gassed, dude. And maybe you are, too. After all, there’s the ~general state of the world~. The never-ending onslaught of corporate Black Friday emails (good job on the boycott, everyone! they’re so desperate!). The arrival of officially cold weather here in the Northeast. The darkness that seems to hit at 4pm sharp. And also the fact that,
The Full Moon in Gemini arrives at 13 degrees, at 6:14pm Eastern this evening, December 4th.
Rest is called for. Or at least, whatever rest we can shove in the margins.
The quiet energy of tonight’s lunation stands in stark contrast to May’s New Moon in Gemini, which I called “the best week of the year for writers.” Personally, it held true: those projects I dug into six months ago are very much growing and bearing fruit here at the end of the year. But even as I approach exciting, Full Moon-coded milestones like turning chapters in, I am reminded of how much energy is required to hold such births.
High periods of output, of production, are often exhausting. And this isn’t a bad thing, so long as we find time to rest and recharge… which is unfortunately discouraged in late-stage capitalism. Which so many of my clients struggle to do. Which, being totally f-ing real, I myself struggle to do. Especially when teaching more, writing more, doing more is required to cover my rent.
It is very hard, as a self-employed person, to “justify” rest. I often say I buy myself time to write (the novel, and other projects that don’t pay), but I also often feel like I have to buy myself time to rest. And with paid subscriptions plummeting by the day, that feels like an increasingly hard thing to do.
These days, rest and time feel like luxury items that few can truly afford.
Even knowing intellectually that rest is vital, I have a hard time integrating it, especially when struggling to pay my bills. I feel gassed on almost all fronts: physically, emotionally, financially, intellectually.
So I’m not going to come in here and preach at you to rest when I am struggling to take my own advice. I know how hard it is to let off the gas when it feels like you’ve got to fight for every inch and every dollar. Rest can be really freaking scary, especially for those of us whose nervous systems were wired to be on edge, lest the other shoe drop. It can be hard to cultivate a true, genuine state of relaxation.
But the aspect the moon will make after it’s full is an opposition to ride-or-die Mars, so if we don’t slow down and intentionally tend our own nervous systems, nothing else will.
Draw yourself a warm bath tonight. Make a pot of tea. Chuck your phone in the other room and nap in front of the television. Get off screens. Cancel plans and stay in. Let yourself be bored. Let yourself focus on something that isn’t the state of the world.
At least, that’s my plan for the evening.