The Maverick, the Magician or the Muse
I've spent my life trying to be a muse, but lately, I'm becoming something else instead.
Late last week, my dog Frodo and I were taking a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood when my bluetooth headphones started to cut out. The battery wasn’t low, and the Spotify playlist I was attempting to listen to was one I’d had on repeat for the past several months. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening, except that it was.
A few days before, I gathered with my usual group of psychic friends to practice our multisensory abilities. When the gals read for me, A. laughed when she asked me if I had a dog. “I have three dogs. Why do you ask?” Spirit told her that I needed to walk the dogs. That’s when they were trying to connect with me. It was a dedicated time that I would be able to tap in. All I had to do was pay attention.
This seemed easy enough. Although R. walks Archer and Sally (the black-and-whites as we call them), I take our one-and-only brown dog Frodo. He is the first pup I’ve ever had, and at 10 years old, I feel he’s earned the right to putter around and sniff stuff and pee on all the objects. Our walks are lackadaisical. We do not rush.
So, it made sense that this was a good opportunity to tap into the universe, save for one thing: I like to listen to pop music while we wander. We’re talking lyrics-heavy songs that I like to belt out to myself. It’s not exactly an ideal setup for the spirit realm to whisper in my ear. If the universe wanted to reveal the intuitive insights that would help align me with my highest good, it was going to have to get my attention.
The maddening stop-start of my headphones on the fritz was enough to give me pause. I turned off the music but kept the noise-cancelling headgear in place. “Ok, Spirit,” I said. “I get that you’re trying to tell me something. I’m listening. What do you want me to know?”
The message that came through was everything an intuitive hit should be: kind, compassionate and a little bit surprising. My marching orders were clear. I needed to stop focusing on everyone else. Worrying about people in my life—particularly ones who refuse to change or do inner work—was distracting me from focus on my own shit. Continuing to put my energy into other people (some of whom have zero interest in change) only served to keep me small.
Here’s an example. I like to spend an inordinate amount of time imagining and developing solutions to problems I see people having, although no one has asked me to help them and, in most cases, probably don’t see themselves as even having any problems much less any that require a solution. If only people would live the life I had decided is best for them, you know? Because then I could finally turn focus back to my own life. You see my (self-created) dilemma.
So, yea, I needed to stop doing that shit. If I want to shine brightly and achieve all the life successes I so desperately desire for myself, then the universe was correct. I was going to have to focus on keeping my side of the street clean. I needed to stay accountable to myself. No more letting my mind wander to all the ways I could help people if they would only listen to my amazing advice. My energy would be better spent on doing what I have to do to move forward.
This message felt profound, and because I don’t believe in coincidences, I’ve noticed that it is being reinforced again and again in various areas of my life. For one thing, my headphones work just fine now. I got the memo, and now I can listen to my “Your Top Songs 2023” playlist with abandon. Perhaps the more interesting intersection of what I heard and what I’m now experiencing, however, revealed itself when R. and I started watching “WeCrashed” on Apple TV+.
Many of you may have already seen it, as it aired in 2022. We decided to start it on a whim the other day, and I’m already obsessed, not least of which is because I cannot figure out what Jared Leto actually looks like as a person. Every time I see him, he looks completely different from the last time I’ve seen him. It befuddles me constantly (and in case you were wondering, I don’t think he can fuck. He seems a little too loose cannon to be good in bed. Not Christian Bale crazy-in-a-sexy way. Jared Leto in a might-breakdown-crying-mid-bang unhinged way.)
Sidebar over. The real reason I’m obsessed with this show is that Anne Hathaway’s character Rebekah seems to be going through a far more dramatic version of what I’m reckoning with currently. One scene in the show really forces the point. When Rebekah meets with a brand stylist to help transform her from some important guy’s wife to a boss bitch in her own right, he asks her the following question: “What are you? A maverick, a magician or a muse?”
Rebekah answers the same way I would have for the previous 35 years of my life. She’s a muse. I’ve been trying to be a muse my whole life, as long as I’ve known what the word meant and probably even before. Rebekah changes her tune when she realizes that muses don’t get the cover of Vanity Fair. That’s for mavericks and magicians, of course. I changed mine when I realized that muses elevate other people’s creativity and brilliance. I’d much rather bet on my own.
I don’t want to be a maverick or a magician though. I want to be a sorceress. I fucking am a sorceress. And I’m going to be my own goddamn muse. This is a new perspective for me, but thankfully, I have someone to help keep me honest. She’s not a muse either. She’s a sorceress in her own right and a true inspiration. My daughter. She’s the reason I stopped trying to inspire others to be extraordinary and focused on being someone who was extraordinary herself. Now, she’s the one teaching me to stay on track.
A final anecdote to drive this home. Baby E. is a force. She does whatever the hell she wants when she wants how she wants regardless of what you want. She’s about to turn one in less than two weeks (um…how? Many of you have been here since the beginning. Time is officially a construct because I cannot fathom it has been 12 months since she tried to free birth into the world), and the Bean is now into books. She loves to snuggle into my lap and make me read “Are You There Little Puppy?” eight billion times a day. Along with “That’s Not My Puppy” and “If I Were a Bunny…”
These books suck, but she loves them, and I love that she wants to snuggle me while I read to her. What I’m leaving out of this story is that Bean REFUSES to let R. read to her. She’ll give him maybe 10 seconds of time before she’s like “nah” and walks away. We joke that she doesn’t think R. knows how to read.
Last night, she took the vibe up to a thousand. E. walks over to R. with a book. She hands it to him. He’s pumped. This is the moment. He reaches for it and just as he takes hold of it, she pulls it from his grasp and brings it to me. It was absolutely ruthless. I couldn’t stop laughing. It was just so insanely HARSH.
But that’s the kind of behavior that indicates to me that the Bean is going to be just fine. She is endlessly true to herself in the way that pretty much only children and societal outcasts can be. R. and I have the job of encouraging her to continuously honor herself. We are tasked with protecting her from a world that wants her to dance to the beat of a common drum instead of the one that’s fully her own. She’s an Aries and a Petrovic, though, so she probably won’t need us to do much. Vanity Fair is in her future. She’s got this.
The questions, then, comes back to you and me. Are we going to be muses or something more? Can we imagine an outcome where we find our own version of magazine-cover success and run toward it with abandon? Can we put the pop music on hold long enough to hear the universe when it speaks to us? And most of all, can we focus so intently on keeping our side of the street clean that it’s hard to get caught up in anyone else’s trash (real or imagined)?
I think we are all capable of doing these things. Maverick, magician, sorceress or something else entirely, we’re here to shake things up. Muse is not enough for us. We want more.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix
P.S. Hey! I’m hosting a tarot workshop on 4/24, and if that’s your kind of thing, I’d love to see you there. It was inspired by a reading I did for the aforementioned psychic group. If you enjoyed my post about the tarot card that reads as “divorce” to me and want to learn how to read for yourself (and potentially predict your very own divorce), sign up today! Feel free to respond to this post with any questions. I’ll get back to you ASAP.