Jessica Conoley's Blog: LitUP

There are 27 pages left in the notebook I’m supposed to fill with hand written words before I’m allowed to type or edit them. I have killed 7 pens and bought replacements. It feels like those words will be ready for typing next week at this time. It’s a good feeling.

This week’s 7 cards is up.

Remember you can observe the chaos and stress of what’s going on around you without choosing to amplify it. A reminder to all because I feel I did not do that well at it yesterday. Just keep swimming. You’ve got this.

J

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One of my client’s is writing memoir -type work. I advised his readers would want to see pics of younger him. He hemmed and hawed at the the thought. I said, “if you send out a pic to your email list of 19-year-old you to support your post, I will send a pic of 19 y.o. me out to my email list in solidarity. ”

As promised, here is a photo of me in my college dorm room with my room-mate & my real hair color. It would be 1999. Overalls were all the rage. The shirt I’m wearing had been my mom’s and she wore it when she was in college.

This week’s 7 cards is up.

I’ve killed 4 pens on my new writing project & am at 108? handwritten pages.

Have a good week & don’t forget that the resting part of your day is just as important as the doing part.

J

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After 16 years of seriously writing I may have figure out how to “fast” draft a book. Turns out my fastest way to draft is by hand writing.

In January I started a new project and my intuition told me do not type anything into the computer until this notebook is full. And as I have learned fighting with my intuitive guidance is futile, I have been doing what I was told.

My editor brain is too strong on the computer, and it is impossible for me to not edit on the screen. So the solution is take the project off line until I have 160 hand written pages & then I’m allowed to transcribe & revise. I’m 53% of the way through this draft, and it feels good to be on the downhill side of this project.

Since this isn’t the first book I’ve drafted I have learned a few things to make it easier on myself.

1) The inside front cover of the notebook is for idea notes about scenes I think I want to write.

2) The last page of the notebook is for a table of contents about what I wrote. I number the pages, and at the end of each writing session I make a quick note to remind me about what I wrote on that day’s page.

3) I’ve learned to surrender to whatever comes out. Some days I sit down with the intent to write one thing and something completely different comes out.

Thus far I’ve killed one pen–purple. I write each new scene in a different color. My friend kindly gifted me a rainbow pack of erasable pens. (Eraseable pens have come a long way since 1994–the last time I used them.)

***

The new 7 cards is up this week. Thanks for your patience while I got it out. I did 10 back-to-back readings on Sunday and I needed some recovery time.

If you’re feeling like things are overwhelming , intense, & fast-paced right now you can blame the planets. 7 planets are in Aries (which you may remember is the god of war) so it’s all intense, act, fire energy right now. & NO planets are in retrograde–which is what helps things slow down.

So breathe. Take time for yourself. Act in alignment with what is authentic to you & if you can manage it, don’t react or add to the drama. You’re doing great.

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We’re seeing big changes everywhere. Energetically it’s a shift of revealing what is broken, so we can rebuild in a healthier way. But the transition period is hard, and it sucks to witness and experience the chaos.

I struggle like everyone else with how do I act in alignment with my values, when it feels like my only options are bad options. The internet & where I hang out on it is one place where I face that dilemma.

I would love to divorce instagram & the Metaverse, but to have an impact and connect with people who need my work it feels like I have to have a social media presence. I do think there are healthier ways to internet, and am willing to explore new ones which is why I’m participating in the beta test of https://communities.social/

It’s a new social media platform that is ad free & attempting to build community connection in an ethical, democratic way. If anyone else is on there please connect with me. You can find by name, Jessica Conoley, or handle @intuitivejess.

I don’t know if communities will work, but it’s the most aligned platform for me that I’ve found right now. And the only way we know if things work is if we try them, so I donated a little to the start up & set up a profile.

This week’s 7 cards is up. My new cat makes an appearance at the beginning, which made me very happy. He’s 90 days into living here & finally starting to relax a little bit.

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I’m seeing it across all my clients and feeling it myself. People who have been stuck; feeling like they couldn’t accomplish anything, are now able to act. It’s not through force, or effort, or self-shame–it’s a very strong, loud compulsion to sit down and act.

This is showing up as working on projects they thought they would never work on. For some it has also meant pivoting to a new genre, or taking their work to a new emotional depth. For example one of my comedy writing friend has pivoted to writing about his war experiences in Vietnam, and it is absolutely fascinating to witness the transition. (Check out Dane Zeller’s latest work here.)

I have been working on a secret project that has told me I’m only supposed to handwrite it until the composition book is filled. Once that is done I will be allowed to transcribe it and cobble it together into a long form piece. It’s work I’ve wanted to do my entire life, but I’ve been too scared to until now. I’m still scared, but I trust my intuition and write in a different colored pen during each writing session and am curious what comes out of it.

This week’s 7 cards is up.

I’m also experimenting with releasing abridged versions of the 7 cards a few weeks after the Patreon version is available on Youtube. If you’re curious, you can check them out at https://www.youtube.com/@jessicaconoley

Have a good week.

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Tomorrow, Tuesday the 17th, is Lunar New Year & this year it feels like the right new year for me to celebrate. I’m super excited to spend my day with a friend on her farm burning things and having a French picnic.

I’m also super excited because the year that we’re closing out is the year of the snake, and my body has apparently taken that literally. My skin has been sooooo itchy over the past month, and I know at least 2 others of you have been experiencing the same thing. If you’re having physical symptoms of shedding, my hope is that tomorrow is a turning point & our body’s start acting like healthy horses instead of snakes growing out of their skin. That the discomfort of things we have outgrown leaves our body and we find a new energy and natural rhythm to move into.

This week’s 7 cards is up, and the free preview is the SHAPESHIFTER card which I pulled for the actual Lunar New Year day. (LNY is also an annular eclipse and a new moon so lots of planet stuff.) A good day to set intentions for how you want to move forward in your life.

I hope you get to see the sun today and something makes you smile.

Jessica

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This week’s 7 cards is up. Group coaching is at NOON this Saturday. It is also a romantic day of love according to the calendar & marketing. Enjoy your love day if you don’t turn up at coaching.

I got to buy a new car this week, so my brain is full of car things & grown up-ing and word stories are not coming to my brain at the moment. It should be all sorted out by next week, and perhaps I can word again.

I am happy to report this car does not eat oil & the heater works, and it has the biggest moon roof which are all the things I wanted. I am even happier to report that my mechanic (who is a best guy mechanic for sure) gave it the thumbs up so I have peace of mind in buying my first used car of my life. Also, I do not understand people who like car shopping. I am very glad this is something I only do every ten years or so.

Have a good week. Enjoy the sunshine when you get it.

J

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I’ve never been so excited to upload a video in my life–not record it, literally upload it.

I know my public facing work has been inconsistent the past few years, a huge component of that was technical. I had abysmal internet upload speeds, for example, these 30-minute weekly readings would take anywhere from 2-5 hours for me to upload every week. Some weeks it would take multiple days to get the video to upload at all.

There came a point I had to weigh the energetic cost of fighting technology.

The writing/creating part of my work is and has always been energy giving, but when it came time to distribute the work the tech issues turned into an abyss of energy drain. I decided the energetic price was too high.

I know a lot of business coaches would have urged me to post regardless of the tech frustrations. They would have said keeping my name visible and maintaining an online presence was the only way to grow my business. But, that’s not how I coach or live.

I coach through the lens of energy, and I follow my own advice. The 3 question energy audit confirmed the price was too high to battle technology.

I allowed myself to trust that time is always in my favor, time is always on my side. (A mantra I like to recite re: delays. You’re welcome to borrow it.) I decided when the world was supposed to have consistent access to my work, I would have access to internet that didn’t eat up all of my free-time and focus.

My time over these past few years was better spent on the behind-the-scenes work. Excavating my shadows for hidden power and the misbeliefs that had sabotaged me in the past. Grounding into the voice of who I am as a writer right now. Refining my coaching skills , witnessing transformations in my clients, and developing tools to help future clients.

I know the delay was given to me so I could privately experience a full transformation. The delay was given to me so I could fully own my power and know my authentic voice. The delay was given to me so I could find the courage to tell the stories and finally share my truth. The delay was given to me so I could know my worth and own the success that comes next.

Last Tuesday, the internet tech came out and I finally had access to a tool I need to do my job efficiently. It took me 18 minutes to upload to Patreon, allow the video to process, and upload to the cloud for my V.A. to do her thing.

February 17th is the Lunar New Year, and there’s an energy transition from shedding things that no-longer server you to forward action. Looks like my internet arrived at the perfect time to help me take my work to the next level.

***

This week’s 7 cards is up. Yes, it can appear the world is a trash fire. But what if this is actually a catalyst moment for sustaining, conscious change that was impossible at any other point in time?

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“Honey, you’re not made for manual labor.” My Grandpa Tom told me that when I was fourteen and looking for my first job. He would know. He grew up in south-eastern Missouri picking cotton, then hopped freight-trains to find work during the Great Depression.

“You’re so good at putting oil on troubled waters.” My Grandma Sue told me that more times than I could count. She would know. Time-after-time she saw me sooth the dysregulated people around me, even though that was never the responsibility of a child.

I spent most of my life trying to figure out who I was through the reflections of what other people saw in me. The reflections were helpful and completely lacking—because two things can be true at once even when it causes discomfort.

I’ve been trying to figure my role for what is happening in the world right now. I think of all the things people have told me I can or should do and find myself paralyzed because none of it feels like it will be enough.

But in the space between my thinking, there is feeling, and I know myself well enough to know that feeling is something I do better than most.

I feel your pain. I feel your joy. I feel your confusion. I feel your desire to heal. I feel your rage. I feel your love. I feel your abuse. I feel your victory. I feel your past. I feel your future. I feel all of it, not just for you or the person in front of me—I feel for the whole room, the whole building, the whole block, the whole city, the whole state, the whole country. I feel it all.

There was a time when all of that feeling threatened to straight up destroy me. Had me curled in the fetal position, questioning my sanity, begging for any possibility to make it stop. Then one day I pushed through my fear into a man’s apartment where he said, “What if it’s not about turning them down? It’s about turning you up?”

And with that one little phrase I understood. I had fragmented myself into what other people could bare to see, what was palatable, what kept them comfortable. I was scared to pull all of myself together because what if it was too strong, too loud, too much.

I walked out of his apartment a changed woman. My nervous system no longer able to be hijacked by other people.  An ability to alchemize all of the emotion others were unable to hold now activated.

I’m not made for the manual labor part; I’m made for energetic co-regulation.  I’m made to amplify the calm so people can intentionally respond instead of blindly react. I’m made for the part almost none of us can see, but every single one of us can feel.

****

If you don’t know what to do either, that’s a very normal feeling for right now.  Watch the 7 cards clip this week and see if it brings any clarity to how you are best suited to help.  I promise you, there is something.

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It’s only been 5 years that my intuitive skills have screamed to be used, and I have to remind myself that 5 years out of 46 is not very many. I have to remind myself I’m in the baby stages of consciously working with and refining my abilities. I have to remind myself I don’t know what I’m capable of, or what the physical toll is.

At the beginning of the year, I offered to do in-person tarot-card-readings at my friends’ brewery every Sunday. I’ve done readings there a handful of times before, when we’ve had large events/parties, and I’ve learned a shit-ton every time. (I’ve also had a few spectacular energy-hangovers afterwards–but I am happy to report I think I’ve learned how to avoid those now.)

I offered because I wanted to learn more about how and what I was capable of regarding intuitive readings.

Intuition is like a muscle. The more you use it the stronger it gets.

(I also offered because, historically, January is an abysmally slow time for breweries because the world is “getting healthy” as part of their New Year’s resolutions. I figured if we offered readings all those customer who say, “I’m so sorry I missed when you were doing tarot cards! I really wanted a reading, but…” could finally get a reading, and we may get more customers in the door than January normally warrants.)

Here are 3 of the things I’ve learned from doing in-person readings consecutively at the brewery:

I will only read for one person at a time. If you want to tell your friends about your reading that’s your choice, but you deserve to process without having a group looking on. It can get intense, and last weekend was the weekend readings kept making everyone cry.

Ten is my maximum. There’s a distinct energy crash that happens around the tenth reading. I can (& have) pushed up to 14, but I feel like a drunk-cartoon mouse at that point and find it difficult to function mentally (& sometimes physically.)

The real-time validations build my confidence. Every time a person confirms something like, “I did get sick in Bali!” or tells me, “This is spot on,” followed by an explanation that goes deeper into whatever has come through for them, it helps me feel like what I do is meaningful, accurate, and a worthwhile use of my energy.

The past weekend is the week I pushed to 14 readings, and it was too much.

I recorded a 7 cards reading on Monday, but it felt clunky and off. 8 cards came out; every message felt wrong; the final sum-up card felt like complete & total bullshit. I tried for 5 consecutive hours to upload it, and it never would, so I accepted that message wasn’t supposed to go out.

For those of you who still want some guidance this week, the cards I pulled were:

GROUNDING

CLEANSE

MEDITATE

MIRROR

LEADERSHIP

CONNECTION

BOUNDARIES

SOLITUDE

Next week I’ll cap myself at ten readings on Sunday and have more confidence we can get back to regularly scheduled programming.

Have a good week and I hope you get to see the sunshine where you are today!

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