I love a fresh start—a rebrand, if you will. And the Magician is peak rebrand. That high energy you feel when you start a new project and things start working out. The pomp. The circumstance.
It’s so fun.
You can get easily addicted to the Start.
Starting fresh feels better than the drudgery of the Messy Middle. You have all the hype but none of the drama that taints the imaginary You that accomplished the thing.
So, if you’re like me, when things get messy, you “learn” from your mistake and start fresh again. This time is new and improved though. But, if you keep starting over, you never really get anywhere. You’re just creating a First Draft of your goal over and over with a different coat of paint.
I realized this when watching a video about Milo Winter, the author of Age of Scorpius. I don’t know how I ended up in this rabbit hole but I’m fascinated by the whole thing. Largely because I’ve been there—not at Milo’s scale of course.
I feel like it’s a rite of passage to put a big project out in the wild, hype it up, and then fail spectacularly.
Thankfully, unlike Milo, I didn’t go through this when TikTok existed, much less Music.ly. But, watching Milo repeat the same mistake I, and countless adults have made, brought home a few lessons that I really needed to learn.
The Magician is adept at starting but not at completing the Work.
At number 1 in the Tarot, the Magician only has experience beginning. They have Zero idea what the finished product looks like nor any idea of the actual work required to complete it.
The Magician’s greatest Strength is in believing in the idea before it even has form. You’ll get just enough delusional energy to get going even when the odds aren’t in your favor.
The reason why believing in the value and beauty of your own ideas isn’t second nature is because that belief often has to be a little bit delusional. It has to come before you’ve got external evidence and feedback proving to you that it’s good. – Erifili Gounari
Of course there’s a catch though.
If you only rely on Magician energy to move your project forward, you never actually get to the good parts. You never actually make the masterpiece—only the rough sketch. That’s because the Magician’s energy needs guidance—guidance that often comes from spending excessive time on a project, or gleaned from those with more experience.
For so long in my life I kept starting over, thinking that I had figured out what went “wrong” the last time and that I could correct it this time. But watching Milo Winter do exactly that, and clearly fumbling, really taught me that you need to actually edit the draft and put that edited work out there in order to keep the momentum going.
Mastery isn’t in the 10,000 hours you spent writing first drafts. It’s in the 10,000 hours you spend afterward editing, reworking, and tweaking based on feedback. It’s the targeted practice that only comes when outside folks judge your work and tell you what isn’t working. It’s the 10,000 no’s before the 1 yes. It’s the days, weeks, and months of revision before publication.
You can’t keep starting over.
Eventually you have to allow your brain the ability to progress past level 1 so you can get to the endgame sooner rather than later. Commit to your decisions, lock in, and then tweak things as you get more information. The more you do that, the more your life will become the one you’ve always wanted.
People who seem always to get what they want in life are often people who simply know what they want and can direct their energy. – Rachel Pollack
References
- You gotta watch the whole Age of Scorpius saga. It’s personal canon at this point. Shout out to Book Lover Laura for putting together a YouTube playlist. Also, who knew the Book world gave soap opera like this LOL.
- From Hero to Zero: The Fool in the Tarot
- You have talent. What you need is audacity by Erifili Gounari
- Mastery isn’t in 10,000 at all. But, the point of Malcolm Gladwell’s theory is to push the notion that targeted practice matters. Here’s more about why 10,000 hours is more shorthand than anything else.
- Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack, pg 34
