Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Jessica:            Joe, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?

Joe:                  Thank you for having me, Jessica. I really appreciate it. I love your show—[indiscernible 00:00:26] show—your way.

Jessica:            Thank you.

Joe:                  So here's my question. It's based around career and success. I've always felt that if I could just find the thing that I'm good at and pursue that, I'd find my perfect career and financial success. And as I'm saying that—sounds wild. Currently, I work as a freelance photographer, but I'm not where I'd like to be with it. Seeing as how I'm in my mid-40s, I often feel that time is running out for me. Lately, I've been considering a career change by applying to grad school at a program focused on documentary filmmaking with a focus on issues of justice. This would entail moving to a different state with a higher cost of living, and that feels daunting, not to mention—if I can just interject myself—that everything that's going on in the world—it feels maybe not the smartest thing to do to uproot myself.

                        I moved a lot as a kid into adulthood, and I really want stability. I feel I have that in some ways now, as I've lived in my current city for 13 years and have an amazing friend network. But it's a small city, and I'm not sure it's big enough for the impact I want to have in the world. Any info you could provide with regard to my career path and how to find success would be much appreciated. Thank you again for your wisdom week in and out.

Jessica:            You're welcome. And we're sharing your birth info. You were born November 27, '79, in San Antonio, Texas, 12:08 a.m.

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. I got questions on your questions.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            The first one is—success. Please define it.

Joe:                  I knew you were going to ask me that. I guess the first thing is a sense of contentment, feeling like I'm doing something good in the world.

Jessica:            So are you talking about impact, or are you talking about feeling?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Your feelings, or are you talking about impact?

Joe:                  Oh, that's—I think both.

Jessica:            Okay.

Joe:                  And then being able to pay my bills without worrying about it.

Jessica:            Your idea of success is being able to pay bills without worrying about it? I just want you to be clear about your words. That's it?

Joe:                  I guess I want more than that, but it feels weird to ask for that.

Jessica:            Okay. So success is survival?

Joe:                  No.

Jessica:            I mean, is it not, sir?

Joe:                  I mean, it is kind of, but it's—

Jessica:            I mean, it sounds like you're—okay. So you're wavy on the whole money part.

Joe:                  Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Joe:                  Wavy. I like that.

Jessica:            You're welcome. You're welcome. Use it. It is what's happening. Anything else that you associate with success?

Joe:                  Enjoying what I do, the work that I do.

Jessica:            Okay.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm just going to read back my list because I was taking notes: contentment, pleasure, feeling good about it—so you said basically the same thing multiple times; that means it's real important to you—having an impact, and making enough money to pay your bills—you said without stress, but I will say I don't think there are many people of any income bracket that have no stress about bills—do you know what I'm saying?—which is why I kind of pressed on you about that. And then, when I pressed on you, I was like, "Oh, you just feel guilty about making money," so it's much bigger than having a fictitious number in your head where all your problems go away because—

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            —the more money you have, the more bills you have, and then it's still meeting bills, right?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            So you got money issues. We'll come back to that. But I want to—and I mean, to be fair, you've got Pluto in the second house. I mean, you're allowed to have money issues. That's a placement that makes sense.

Joe:                  Thank you.

Jessica:            You're welcome. But my question for you is, with what you're doing right now for a living, does it give you contentment or pleasure or does it make you feel good?

Joe:                  It feels right now like a stepping stone because I'm not just [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            Oh, wait. I'm going to interrupt you. I'm going to interrupt you on that.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Stepping stone is not an emotion. I'm asking you about emotions. I'm going to be a pain in your butt. So, when you think about your work as a photographer, does it bring you pleasure to work as a photographer in the capacity you're doing currently?

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            I just want you to hang out there. Just hang out there. So it brings you pleasure. It feels good. There's contentment, yeah?

Joe:                  In a sense.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm going to push you on this a little bit.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            When you are functioning as a photographer—not when you're thinking about your career, not when you're looking at your bills, not when you're thinking about the world—when you're actually taking pictures, professionally speaking, do you experience contentment?

Joe:                  Yes. I love it.

Jessica:            Okay. So this is exactly as I suspected. Your definition of success you are already kind of living already. So here's the thing that happens in your mid-40s and your 40s. If, in your 20s and your 30s, you set goals for yourself and you worked hard and all the things—it's kind of a line—what happens is, a lot of times, we manifest. We succeed—a lot of times we don't, but a lot of times we do. We succeed in achieving our goals. Your goals, as you described them to me in this hot-pink room, are exactly what you have.

                        And what's hard to do is to recognize at a certain point in your late 30s and your early 40s, "Oh shit. I need new goals. I need better-informed goals that actually make sense with who I am or what reality is or how I've changed," because you can tell yourself—because your question—I mean, I know it's incredibly heartfelt, and I know I'm not letting you talk too much yet. Don't worry. I promise I will. But I think you have a lot of ideas and narratives, and they're all valid. And again, we'll get to them in a second. But I wanted to start with how you're identifying success in this exact moment.

                        If you go to grad school, if you move to a new city, it's not going to change it because you've created kind of a wall, and your head is already touching the wall. So there's kind of nowhere to go. You can go sideways, but there's nowhere up unless you move the ceiling on your vision for yourself because your vision for yourself is contentment and impact and feeling good and enough money to survive, which is, I'm guessing, precisely what you have.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So we're going to hang out in that for a hot second. If I could wave a magic wand—if I had one, I could wave a magic wand, and I could say to you, "I can give you any amount of money per year. What's the number? What's your magic number of how much you'd be earning a year?" It's a magic number. It's not a goal, right? We're just playing.

Joe:                  Two million dollars a year.

Jessica:            Okay. Two million dollars a year.

Joe:                  Just a number.

Jessica:            I know. I know. I can feel it. I can feel it. Can you feel it? It's like you said the number, and then something inside of you started to backtrack away from that number, yeah?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And then you reminded me it was just a number. Okay.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Cool. Okay. So two million is too big.  Two million is too big. I agree. Two million is a really big number. Okay. Let's fuck with another number.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            You pick a number under one million, but any number you like that feels like a good number where you're like, "Oh, if I'm making this money, I'm not worrying about my bills." You obviously—we're thinking beyond that, but you know what I'm saying, that magic number that exists in your head of what is a good income.

Joe:                  Nowadays, I feel like, for me, 75,000 would be a decent income.

Jessica:            Okay. For where you live currently?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            But probably not for the bigger city where you'd go to grad school.

Joe:                  I actually don't know.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. So one of the things I want to encourage you to do—and I should ask, are you set to inherit money, or do you have a partner who finances your life in any way?

Joe:                  No.

Jessica:            No and no?

Joe:                  Neither. Neither.

Jessica:            No and no. Okay. Okay. So retirement's on you and all that kind of stuff, right?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm going to give you homework outside of our reading today.

Joe:                  Okay. I love homework.

Jessica:            I mean, I know you do, and I am here for it because I also love homework, giving and getting. Okay. The homework is to look at the average rent—and you're renting or owning?

Joe:                  Renting.

Jessica:            Renting. Okay. Great. The average rent in the city that you live in. And then pick two or three cities in the country you live in that you'd actually want to live in those cities. Maybe LA is on your list or something—a couple cities, average rent, not, "Oh my God. I got a deal. Nobody else in the city has this." Average rent. I also want you to look at the average cost for somebody in their mid-40s or maybe their early 50s—right, because we're not just thinking about this year—for healthcare because, if you're self-employed, you're paying for your own healthcare, right?

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I also want you to look at just average expenses. This is not a precision assignment. It's a broad strokes assignment.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            I want to encourage you to look at what it costs to live annually in your 40s, 50s, 60s, basically, because healthcare gets more expensive every year. It's a bracket. And I want that number to be in your head to inform how you're identifying financial abundance, security, success—all these different things—because part of what is up for you is that you've kind of backtracked and sidestepped the money topic, and so you're not coming from a place of being informed about the realities you live in. It's more emotional.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's just like—it's easier to make choices to invest in your future when you have data, right?

Joe:                  I can see that. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And that 75 number may be exactly the number, but the reason why I'm kind of pushing up against that number is because you plucked it out of the air, from the way it looked energetically. Maybe it was based on some data you had 15 years ago or something, but it's plucked from imagination land as opposed to really grounded in, "What does it cost to be a person and to be a person of a certain age?"—because those are two different questions.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            The thing that's so rough about self-employment and aging is simply that, as you do age, there's more likelihood that you're going to have medical stuff come up. And so you need a budget for that, unfortunately, in the United States.

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Now, I don't think that—I don't know. I don't know that money is the biggest part of this question. I wasn't thinking that it was, but seeing your waviness made me be like, "Oh shit. Do we really need to talk about money?" So I want to just put it to you: should we hang out with this topic of money, maybe come back to it? What is your instinct there?

Joe:                  I feel uncomfortable about it. So, most of the time, when that happens in a spiritual setting, I know I need to go there.

Jessica:            Great.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            I like that. Let's hang out there. Okay. Let's hang out with the astrology for a minute because that's nice and literal. So Pluto in Libra in the second house—my question for you is—and are your parents still around?

Joe:                  My mom is, and my stepdad.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. And were you raised with your mom and your stepdad?

Joe:                  Yeah, mostly. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. And did any of your three parents really struggle with money?

Joe:                  Yes, all of them.

Jessica:            All three of them. Okay. Great. And did one of them kind of have a bunch and then lose it or burn it to the ground?

Joe:                  Yes. Yep.

Jessica:            Which one?

Joe:                  Multiple—

Jessica:            Multiples?

Joe:                  Both parental father figures. Yeah.

Jessica:            Great. Your mom has a type. Excellent. So that's how you get Pluto in Libra in the second house. So you have all of these really kind of formative takes on the corrupting power of accumulated wealth and resources.

Joe:                  That rings true.

Jessica:            Yeah. And then develop an anti-capitalist lens—it's not hard to see it reiterated backwards, forwards through time and space.

Joe:                  Yes. Exactly.

Jessica:            But I want to hang out less in our—and I'm going to say shared politic; I'm just making assumptions here—shared politic.

Joe:                  Correct.

Jessica:            I'm going to move away from the shared politic and hang out in the trauma pattern of seeing how, in your lived experience, you had these parental figures who, for them—they had resources, and then they made terrible choices with their resources. It revealed toxic parts of their nature, and it cost the people around them dearly.

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            And so listen. It looks like your mom is okay. Is that correct?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And the reason why it looks like your mom is okay—because you don't have hard aspects to her from Pluto in your birth chart. So it was traumatic. It gave you all kinds of complex money issues. And also, it didn't destroy your mom, luckily. Also, I knocked on wood because why not? But here's the thing. You said you want to make an impact. And making an impact is a desire and intention to work with power. And when working with power, you're working with power.

                        What I want to get at here is this. If you are unwilling to be powerful, then it's hard to work with power. And you can work with power for other people. So making documentaries that speak truth to power is not about centering yourself as powerful. But if the ambition is to be successful, as—I mean, your definition needs work. But if it is to be successful and to embody your own power and capacity to show up in the world in these ways, then your judgments and resistance to being in power will be an internal struggle, and they create a waviness, as I called it, a little wobble, that you kind of get lost in.

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So I hate to say it, but your money issues are a part of this. And there's a part of this that is about you understanding that you are not like your fathers, if I may call them that.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, you can learn from mistakes. You can make mistakes just like one of them or both of them and learn from those mistakes and keep on going. And that is separate from your politics. I want to hold those two things a little bit separate because having an anti-capitalist politic paired with a fear of having a lot of resources and what you might do with it or what it might do to you can kind of help you justify not really examining this stuff.

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            If your definition of success had nothing to do with money, this wouldn't have come up. But it does have something to do with money, and honestly, I think it should. I mean, I'm a Capricorn, but I really do believe in—we have to navigate the material world. And I don't know if you have a lot of people in your life who are older than you, significantly older than you, but it's expensive to grow old, right?

Joe:                  Mm-hmm. I guess I've never talked to them about that, per se. So you saying that—I'm like, "Oh. That makes sense."

Jessica:            When you say "them," do you mean your—is it only your family of origin that you have in your life that are older, or do you have older friends?

Joe:                  I have older friends. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And you've never talked to them about money?

Joe:                  No, not really. No.

Jessica:            Interesting.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Do they all own homes?

Joe:                  Some of them do, yeah.

Jessica:            But not all of them?

Joe:                  Correct.

Jessica:            Okay.  So you have friends who are in different class brackets, basically.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Not everybody is comfortable talking about money. You're not comfortable talking about money, if we're being realistic. I mean, I don't want to name names, but you're not comfortable. That said, another piece of homework for you is to say, "I got a reading with this fucking astrologer, and she gave me this homework to talk to people who were five years older than me or more and ask them about how they are materially functioning." How is late-stage capitalism landing on their shoulders? Do they have a retirement fund? Do they feel stable? Is their mortgage paid off?

                        You can talk to people about money, and some people aren't going to want to talk to you about it. They're not going to be comfortable. And that's okay. And some people will. Just talk to the people who are comfortable. You're good at navigating other people's boundaries, eh?

Joe:                  Mm-hmm. I think so.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. I think you are, too. This whole topic exists in a bubble, in a ballon that you've tied to something in the back of the house and you haven't looked at in a long time. And it is really important to have—and you're how old right now? Forty-what?

Joe:                  45.

Jessica:            Okay, 45—to have 45-year-old-you take care of 50-year-old you. 45-year-old you should be thinking about 65-year-old you because when you think about it, 30 and 65—equidistant.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            15 years back, 15 years forward. 30 wasn't that far away, was it?

Joe:                  It doesn't feel that far away.

Jessica:            Yeah. 65 isn't either. (laughs)

Joe:                  (laughs)

Jessica:            Your face. So this conversation is about the things you said it's about. But for me, it's also about, what can you sustain? You're probably going to be working for the next—what—20 years?

Joe:                  At least.

Jessica:            Okay.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            25 years, 30 years? We don't know.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And so there's layers to this, right? There's thinking about, is what you want to do to be able to make enough money to be able to pay your bills? Or is what you want to do to be able to make enough money to pay your bills and to invest in—I don't know—a self-employed IRA or some sort of—do you have anything like that?

Joe:                  I do, yeah.

Jessica:            Great. And does it feel like you could retire one day on it?

Joe:                  Not yet.

Jessica:            No, but you don't have to yet. You're only 45. That's fine.

Joe:                  Sure.

Jessica:            But you're pointed in the right direction?

Joe:                  I think I'm in the process of doing that.

Jessica:            That's fine. That's cool.

Joe:                  I've taken steps, but it doesn't feel fully integrated into my life yet.

Jessica:            That's real. That's fair. That's real. And also, a big part of the homework I'm giving you is the homework of thinking about it consciously as a 45-year-old, talking to your friends who are older, talking to your family of origin, just bringing this issue into the present, because it will help you to navigate these choices. And it might make your 75 go higher. It might not, but it might, right?

So let's just throw that in the mix, not because what we were talking about is setting a goal. We were talking about what is a fantasy number where you don't have to worry, and you went from two million to 75,000. For the record, that's bananas. That was just like—you shocked me. I was really shocked at two million, and then I was equally shocked at 75,000, for the record. It was shocking. And I don't usually get surprised, but both of those things truly surprised me. So there's probably a number that's different from both of those numbers that's your number.

Joe:                  Okay. Thank you.

Jessica:            You're welcome. I'm glad you have a good sense of humor because I am teasing you. All of that said, let's get into the pragmatics here. Will you say the name of the city you live in right now?

Joe:                  [redacted]

Jessica:            Okay. I just made the assumption anyways [crosstalk].

Joe:                  Really?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah, I did.

Joe:                  Oh, that's funny.

Jessica:            And when you think about having to go to grad school, where do you think of?

Joe:                  [redacted]

Jessica:            Okay. And you have a lot of community where you are, eh?

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            So there's layers of this question. One is you want to make an impact through film and not photography?

Joe:                  Well, as I'm preparing to answer, I'm realizing that there's some part of me that's like, "Is it making an impact if it's easier?" And photography feels easier than film, which—that's kind of weird as I'm saying it.

Jessica:            What feels easier, the medium—like, you as a creative using the medium? Or do you mean accessible to people?

Joe:                  Me as a creative because I have way more experience with photography, and film or video is relatively new to me. And so there's kind of a learning curve there. I have started learning, and I've done some projects. But to take it to the next level, I'm—that would take some more learning, basically, practice.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. And do you have an idea of what kind of film you want to create?

Joe:                  Like, the topic or the—

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. You have a vision. I mean, you didn't just think, "I want to make movies." You thought, "I want to make movies about"—

Joe:                  Like, documentary. Yeah. So my biological dad was adopted, and he was Indigenous. And because of that adoption, there's kind of a break in that—not kind of. There's a break in that line. And I want to do research about that, his lineage and my lineage, and kind of reclaiming that for myself and documenting that and, in a way, also talking about—there's a lot of Latino people, Mexican people—Mexican American, I should say—who are in ICE and are very right wing and kind of going against their own best interests and harming their communities.

                        And so I want to somehow tie the indigeneity piece—because I think a lot of Latino Mexican people, Mexican heritage people, don't see themselves as Indigenous. And that's just such a crucial erasure that has been done. And so I want to speak to that.

Jessica:            Okay. So I want to just acknowledge, as you're talking about that, you have total alignment, right? You say that, and it's the most aligned I've heard you be in this conversation so far, right? Because it's the thing you're really clear about.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Your definition of success—I don't know where you were. Not in your body, I'll tell you that, sir. Not in your body. So that's really clean and clear. Some of that sounds like a research project. It sounds like that could be one film/documentary situation. It could be, actually, like a series. It could be essays. That could be multiple projects, right?

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Now, I am unclear how one would—and I want to be clear I'm not saying I don't think it's possible. I genuinely am unclear how a person would monetize any of that.

Joe:                  Yeah. I mean, it's art, right? And so I think that it would be me applying for grants, me having funding through grad school, potentially. The program I'm interested in is fully funded as of now. And maybe it would be picked up. It could be picked up by Netflix or something like that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Do you know what they tend to pay for documentary-style films?

Joe:                  I do not.

Jessica:            Strong recommend you fucking Google it because they notoriously don't pay well.

Joe:                  Oh. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's a simple search engine engagement for you. So here's what I'm hearing, and I am a terrible literalist, so I might not be hearing the whole story. But part of what I'm hearing is you want to do this thing. Grad school will give you skills, but it will also give you the space and potentially cost you money, but it could also give you money. And then you would graduate, ideally having made one or two projects—right? Guessing. But then what? Then, in Trump's America, you're relying on public funding for the arts for survival.

Joe:                  Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            So here's my pain-in-the-ass Capricorn, nothing psychic or intuitive, nothing astrological take—is that doesn't sound like a plan.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            That sounds like gum and like really old, pre-used duct tape, kind of. You know what I mean?

Joe:                  I was like, "Gum? Oh."

Jessica:            You're sticking things together. They're not going to hold.

Joe:                  Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            This is not a long-term plan.

Joe:                  And I have that sense, also. It feels not fully fleshed out, and—

Jessica:            Yes.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And how many years is this program?

Joe:                  Two.

Jessica:            Okay. So, basically, 48-, 49-year-old you is in the same position that 45-year-old you is in, unless—

Joe:                  With more skills.

Jessica:            With more skills, potentially more debt, right?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Because you're not working and you're in school.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And now you're in your later 40s, and you're either going back to where you are now to make money or you're starting on a new career path. I'm not trying to say don't do this, but I am bringing some reality into this vision because my instinct is this is not the first time in your life that you've had this vision, and you're passionate about the vision. But it's not rooted in a plan.

Joe:                  Yeah. I would say that's true.

Jessica:            Yeah. And this is one of those things—and I want to say I am a huge fan of aging. I'm a huge fan of being older. And I think about age and time all the time because I'm a goddamn astrologer. But this is one of those things where I am of the mind that in our 40s, we need different kinds of plans than we needed in our 30s and in our 20s because you're at this bridge between your youth and your older years.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And when we don't traverse that bridge really intentionally, what happens to most people—and if you have friends in their 50s and 60s and you may talk to them, and they may be like, "Yeah, that happened to me"—is all of the sudden, you're like, "Oh my God, am I old? Oh my God, the world is not responding to me the way I thought it would. Oh my God, everything's different." And that's real, and it's not fair. It's not cool. But it's real. And I want to just kind of ground you into what your 50-year-old self wants because it's so soon.

Joe:                  I appreciate that, because there is a part of me that's like, "Oh, I have to have these kind of bigger dreams and believe they're possible." But if they're not rooted in reality, then it's kind of for naught. And so I appreciate that call back or call out.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's more of a—you're trying to walk to the store, but you haven't figured out where the store is, and therefore, you don't know how long of a walk it is. You don't know what the weather is, so you don't know if you can wear shoes with holes in them or not. You just don't have enough data, right?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And the truth of the matter is you could work on any or all of those projects while working as a photographer inside of your community.

Joe:                  It's true, and I have had that thought, too.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            You could apply for grants now because there's not going to be more arts grants in year 2 of the Trump administration than there are in year 1, right?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            The things that you want to do don't actually require training. I mean, it helps, but you could take classes online, right? They don't actually require an education. It helps, but it's not a necessity.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And they don't even require you to quit your job.

Joe:                  Yeah. And there are resources that I have yet to access here where I live. And I'm in the process of looking into those also.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm glad to hear that, because listen. You've got your North Node in the first house in Virgo.

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            And this speaks to the need for you to own your own needs, to have a sense of agency around how you choose to live, right? It's that Virgo, day-by-day, detail-by-detail kind of way.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, if you know that you are—I don't know—in a partnership, have friends—like your community, like the town you live in—you know what I mean? You already have resources set up, and you like these things—now, I haven't asked you if you like these things yet, but let's assume you do for this part of the conversation. Then destabilizing your life and changing all those little supports that you have—I need a real compelling reason to encourage you to do that, like super compelling, right?

Joe:                  Yeah, especially now, right?

Jessica:            Yes, especially now.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And so I guess the question that I should ask you is, do you love your community and your town, and do you have good friendships? Are you in a partnership and in housing? Are all those things pretty stable and good?

Joe:                  Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So here's good news. You don't need to blow up your life to create what you want and make an impact.

Joe:                  Which I've done in the past.

Jessica:            I know you have. I can see that. And it's because you're not tapping into that Virgo superpower that you have, the ability to look at the details—not to lose yourself in the details, because you have done that. I'm talking about planning the damn details. What's it cost? What's it require? For instance, in terms of doing the research about your dad and his path and the social/cultural/historical context, you could be doing that research now.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            That research might take you two years—

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            —in which case you could be taking, once a quarter, an online class on film, or you could be working with friends who already have those skills. There's so many ways because the space between the kind of photography you do, from what I'm seeing energetically—please tell me if I'm correct or not—and film or video-making, it's not a massive gap. Am I right?

Joe:                  Yeah. Correct.

Jessica:            No. Yeah. There are photographers that it would be a really big gap, but you're not the one. You have that moody, environmental eye.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Joe:                  I do.

Jessica:            Okay. All right. I'm going to be really annoying. Get ready.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            We're coming back to your definition of success—

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            —because that was a big part of your question.

Joe:                  Yeah. It is a big part of my life. I think about it a lot.

Jessica:            Interesting, because your definition was—and I say this with care and respect—very weak.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            It was a very weak response. And that's good information for you to have, that something that you think about a lot that's really important to you—you don't even have a—you have one, two, three, four, five placements in Virgo in your chart, and you don't have a definition of the word "success." That's bananas. That's literally bananas.

                        I'm going to pause. Grab your phone. Look up the definition of the word "success." We're doing it. Let's get Virgo.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            I know you're a Sagittarius, but my God, so much Virgo.

Joe:                  I mean, I'm really Virgo.

Jessica:            So Virgo.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            What's it say?

Joe:                  Number one is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose, the attainment of fame, wealth, or social status, a person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains fame, wealth, etc. And the archaic definition is the good or bad outcome of an undertaking, which is actually very neutral.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Okay. I love this. I'm going to share with you two different definitions that I'm pulling from the definition. And where did you read that from? Webster Dictionary or something?

Joe:                  I don't want to tell you.

Jessica:            Don't tell me. I don't want to know. I don't want to know. I regret asking. You're good. We're good. There's the accomplishment of purpose, which I think—okay. That's something you can get into, aligning with purpose and accomplishing that sense of purpose. That's really clean and clear, right?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Then there's the other one, which is wealth and fame. Now, personally, me, I do not associate success with wealth and fame. But we live in capitalism, so of course, that is a meaningful part of the definition. And that's the part that we're going to come back to, but we're not going to hang out in it first. Okay. Let's hang out with the accomplishment of purpose as the definition of success. Are you comfortable with that as a definition?

Joe:                  Accomplishment of purpose. Yeah, [crosstalk].

Jessica:            What's the -ish? What's the -ish?

Joe:                  It's very, I guess, black or white. It's like, did I accomplish this or did I not?

Jessica:            Interesting. So what you're saying is you have a hard time assessing whether or not you have completed a task?

Joe:                  No. No. It just feels very neutral, I guess, and I feel like success should feel good.

Jessica:            Yeah. Should feel good. So you feel that accomplishment of purpose is not about feeling good. This is where your Sagittarius is showing, by the way, this centering the feeling good part. Let me interject. I'm going to make you suffer a little less. Okay.

Joe:                  Okay. Thank you.

Jessica:            You're welcome. So—purpose. Let's talk about purpose because maybe you're getting tripped on the word "purpose."

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            I'm going to talk about myself. That might make it easier. My purpose with my work is to meet people where they're at, to help people, to use the tools that I have, to educate when it's helpful, and to not educate when it's not helpful. My purpose is in part to engage with humor and playfulness because I enjoy it but also because—spoonful of sugar, medicine go down. Right?

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            There's double whammy. My work is something that I love, and if I couldn't do it, I would be sad. But just because I enjoy it and just because I'm laughing all the time doesn't mean it's not connected to purpose. Purpose can include and encompass your ethics, your financial needs, the impact you make, the way you engage with the labor. So the way I engage with the labor is really fun, and it wasn't always, because there's a lot of labor before the fun part gets to get bigger with a lot of goals. The more you know how to do something, the less energy you're putting into figuring out how to do something, right?

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So there's that. But all of that is connected to my purpose. So, when I've accomplished my purpose—okay. When I think about giving a reading, like when I was preparing for our reading, I wasn't in any way thinking about what my purpose was other than to give you the best reading I knew how. But once you and I met and we started actually talking, for me, my purpose is figuring out what's happening in this moment. In this moment, my purpose is figuring out how to explain what I'm seeing and how to open something up for you that works for you. My purpose in this moment is not five minutes from now. My purpose in this moment is this moment.

                        Now, this may or may not translate for making films, doing research projects, taking photos—all of these things. But I'm trying to share with you that success is not an end goal. I know you've—

Joe:                  Oh.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

Joe:                  This has been a recurring theme in my life, especially with healing work, wanting to just be like, "Check," and be done with it. So that, what you just said, is helpful.

Jessica:            Yeah. Listen. It's not an end goal. It's a path. It's simply a path. And on that path you will fail. You will have bad days. You will have bad moments within good days. Your definition of success, if you have one, which—again, you've achieved the one you have. I don't think you have a real definition of success. So it only feels like success when you achieve it if it's aligned, which is why you've achieved it and I'm guessing it felt really aligned for a while, and it felt like success for a while. And now it doesn't because it's no longer aligned.

                        And so, in the larger path of trying to pursue a sense of success for yourself, I want to encourage you to consider how it could be, small moments of alignment that affirm your clarity of purpose on a larger path of alignment that holds a lot of room for wrong turns and bad weather. In terms of your sense of purpose, you already have it. You told me perfectly clearly. It was the most clear thing you've said to me since we met. You know what you want to do.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            You're not certain exactly about what it's going to look like or how you want to shape it or where you want it to be seen or heard or whatever, but you are really clear about the purpose part.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            So there's the accomplishment part. You haven't done that yet.  It's not completed. Okay.  You've gotten stuck thinking about, "How do I have to do this? What's the right way to do this?"—

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            —instead of, "How can I integrate this into my daily life?" That's what your North Node in Virgo in the first house wants you to do.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. "How can I integrate this into my daily life? Where do I find alignment in doing this project?" So it may be that you work on—because you are a Sagittarius, you work on both of these projects because they're two different projects sounding to me, right, like two different topics. You work on them on different days, depending on what's happening inside of you or in the world. And you give yourself permission to work on two things at once because you are a Sagittarius; you do have a Mercury/Uranus conjunction. You do good when you have multiple focuses, yeah?

Joe:                  Yeah, I do.

Jessica:            And then, at a certain point, one project becomes demanding, and then you focus in, right?

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Great. Me, too. Don't judge that. Don't be weird about that just because it's not somebody else. That's you. So, on the path of accomplishing your purpose, you will have little accomplishments that build up to big accomplishments. But if you don't validate and if you're not present for the little accomplishments, then you're not going to experience the big accomplishment unless it's wealth and fame.

Joe:                  I got you.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. I'm so glad. So wealth and fame. Do you want to be famous?

Joe:                  Not particularly, no.

Jessica:            No?

Joe:                  I don't think so.

Jessica:            Okay. I mean, I didn't have an idea.  I was just curious. You seem a little wobbly.

Joe:                  I guess—no, I do not want to be famous, not like a famous person. I would like the contributions that I make, when I make them at some point, to be acknowledged and recognized and appreciated.

Jessica:            You want impact.

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. And I think, in this world where fucking YouTube and social media and people are famous in so many ways—right? It's really new world in that regard. I think it's really important to acknowledge the difference between impact and fame. And famous people are impactful by virtue of them being famous, but there are people who make impact but they're not famous. It's not the same thing, is what I'm trying to get at, even though they're related.

Joe:      Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. Do you want wealth?

Joe:      Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. And you're defining that as $75,000 a year annual income before taxes?

Joe:                  No. When you say the word "wealth," I think of generations, like something that can be passed down. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Do you have kids?

Joe:                  No, but I have nieces and nephews.

Jessica:            Okay. So what you said just now—when you think of wealth, you think of something that can be passed down to generations—and I pair that with the two million dollars and then the $75,000. This is all poetry, nothing material. Do you know what I mean?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            You are not talking numbers, my friend, because this is like you've got narratives.

Joe:                  It's an idea. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. You've got narratives.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            So—

Joe:                  A vibe.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Vibes. Beautiful. Okay.  I'm going to be a pain in your ass and say you need to be clear about numbers.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            How much money would you need to—and it's not fucking like guesstimations, right? You're never going to come up with the exact number because anything could happen at any time. But how much money would you be earning annually in order to be able to have enough money to live to whatever age you live to in whatever conditions you can live, and also pass down money? You said generational wealth. So you're talking about passing out a lot of money.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. I see so much waviness and no numbers in you when you say yes, okay?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            So, to that, I will say to you, get a little more information or a lot more information because, earlier, when I referred to accomplishment of purpose, you were like, "Well, how will I even know?" And the money thing is the only thing you could actually quantify because it's a number. And you've really not thought this through at all, which is—or have you?

Joe:                  Like—

Jessica:            The dollars and cents part.

Joe:                  Oh, no, no. Definitely not.

Jessica:            And am I wrong that you're actually quite a pragmatic person in many ways?

Joe:                  Yeah, I am.

Jessica:            Yeah, you are.

Joe:                  I want to be if I'm—not in practice.

Jessica:            I see that you are in many ways.

Joe:                  I am.

Jessica:            This is just wild. I just feel like this is wild. You are saying so many different things. Do you hear it? Do you hear it?

Joe:                  Yes, and I didn't realize that I was like that, honestly. I thought I was very like, "I understand myself. I know myself."

Jessica:            And you do. And also, you live within your means, correct?

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. I think that's what it is. That feeling that you have of, "Oh, this is not a big problem," is you actually live within your means, which is partially your own restraint and partially luck. You've got some things on lock that empower you to—you don't have crazy rent or crazy debts and stuff like that, right?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            But your definition of success was contentment, impact, feeling good, pleasure, and enough money to pay your bills.

Joe:                  Yeah. That sounds meager now.

Jessica:            It does. I'm so glad to hear that. I agree. It's what you have, which is not meager, but it's like your definition of success shouldn't be where you're starting from.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Instead, I'm going to give you this homework. We're about to have a Full Moon, right? So you and I are recording right before the Full Moon.

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Give yourself until the next New Moon. Every single day, at some point in the day—set an alarm on your goddamn phone. Every single day, you're going to hang out with your little—we're not going to judge it—your little definition. You wrote it. It's your definition. Okay. I just took notes—of success, and look around your life and see how you've achieved your definition and feel good about it.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            Experience the abundance of what you have created and sustained because it's not like you created this in the last six months. You have sustained this level of success for quite some time, yeah?

Joe:                  That's true. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. So you're going to spend a full lunation—you're going to spend a full 30-plus days, like 31 or something like that days—hanging out with, like, "Look at me. Big guy did it. OMG. This is my definition of success and I've achieved it? Oh, wow. I could be in such a different position now, but not only do I live within my means, but I have all these other things going for me." You're going to tap into the success you already have.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            Okay? And then you're going to look at multiple definitions of the word "success." When I do this, I like to look at definitions in other languages so that you get different cultural contexts to a concept. Explore it, and then break it down to a sentence that has no more than five words in it as a definition. Yeah, I see you. You like to make this complicated. That's not what time it is. We're keeping it simple, okay?

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            Thank you.

Joe:                  [crosstalk]

Jessica:            You're writing down a sense—I like accomplishment of purpose for you. I like that as a definition of success. But I think you need to do more research for yourself. You need to find your own definition after you've hung out with your successes, how you've actually achieved the goals you set for yourself.

                        I want to just come back around to something, which is, yeah, don't go to grad school. You're welcome. I mean, listen. I'm predisposed—I am not a fan of school. I mean, I am for when it's necessary, but whenever it's not necessary, I'm always like, "Don't do it." So grain of salt, but also, really, why are you going to grad school? Why are you leaving so much stability and support—

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            —to go to a much more expensive state than the one you're living in?

Joe:                  To do something I could do here.

Jessica:            For free, literally?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And also, you work for yourself as a photographer?

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. And you have a nice gig going, eh?

Joe:                  It ebbs and flows.

Jessica:            Don't you want it to ebb and flow?

Joe:                  Yeah, I do, actually.

Jessica:            You keep forgetting you set goals and achieve your goals, you damn weirdo. So you decide for yourself you want to be self-employed, but you don't want to have to work all the time, and you like it that things come and go. Am I wrong?

Joe:                  You are not wrong.

Jessica:            No, I'm not wrong. You set this goal. You achieved the goal, and then you're like, "What's wrong with this ebb and flow?"

Joe:                  Parts. There's parts of me that are like that. There's other parts that are like, "No, this is what you wanted."

Jessica:            Yes. Yeah.

Joe:                  So yeah.

Jessica:            You need to write down your goals—

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            —and put them on a big poster in your office or something, okay? Somewhere. Somewhere that you can't forget.

Joe:                  I do like to do that.

Jessica:            Good.

Joe:                  I haven't done it per se.

Jessica:            You haven't done it in a long time.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            You did it in your 20s.

Joe:                  Yeah, something like that.

Jessica:            It's a 20-something move.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            It's like, when we first learn about these ways of engaging with self-help and self-care, we do these things, and then we kind of—you know, you have to let them go for a little while in your 30s, but here we are, mid-40s. It's time to shine. It's time to recognize that the goals for 20-something-year-old you and 30-something-year-old you cannot and should not be the same goals.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And that doesn't mean you're dying, and it doesn't mean you're old. It just means, if you stop evolving, then you stop growing.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And then life isn't as dynamic, right? Then you're not making the kind of impact you want to make because you're kind of in the energetics of a rut. The energetics of a rut are so demanding. It takes so much energy to stay in a rut that you have no energy for anything else. I see, on this topic, you have the energetics of a rut.

Joe:                  I could see that.

Jessica:            Yeah. But the problem is you're not in a rut. You set goals. You achieved your goals. You're maintaining your goals.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            I've seen countless people in ruts. You are experiencing the energetics of a rut without the material circumstances of a rut.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            So what that means is you are not being mindful enough about your intentions.

Joe:                  I could see that.

Jessica:            Yeah. And it's not navel-gazing. It's not selfish. It's not taking you away from other people or caring for community. You have a first-house North Node. You have to remember how to be in relationship with yourself as the foundation for all your other relationships, including your relationship to activism and community. That's how your chart is written. That's your job.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            Did I answer your question? Do you want to glance at it, make sure—like, did I answer your question?

Joe:                  Well, I mean, there was a part of me that was like, "Tell me what I'm supposed to do." But you have in many ways. You gave me homework, and you said, "Don't go to grad school," which—

Jessica:            I did.

Joe:                  —I appreciate.

Jessica:            You're welcome.

Joe:                  I think you answered my questions.

Jessica:            I love to hear it. So I have a question for you.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            You're partnered, yeah?

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            Are you comfortable with me asking a question about your partnership?

Joe:                  Sure.

Jessica:            Are you happy in your partnership?

Joe:                  Some days.

Jessica:            How long have you guys been together?

Joe:                  Nine years.

Jessica:            Nine years. A long time.

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            He, yeah?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            He's stuck, yeah?

Joe:                  He has been, yeah. He's done a lot of work, but yeah, there has been a lot of stuck energy. Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's interesting because you're saying he was stuck in the past, but you're also saying the word "yeah" a lot. So are you saying he's no longer stuck or he is stuck?

Joe:                  I think he is stuck.

Jessica:            So do I. We agree.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So that doesn't have an easy fix. That's not an easy answer. And there is a part of you that thought, "I'll go to grad school, and that'll fix this problem."

Joe:                  Yeah, I could see that.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. And it would. You would leave, and that would be kind of done, except for it wouldn't be, and you'd drag it out. You've done it before. But—

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            —it would be kind of done. Okay.

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So we're hanging out. We're naming things, right? We're just naming things. This part of your life is stuck. Your career is not stuck. You know exactly what you want to do. You have a sense of intention. You feel call. You have skills. Within your partnership—and I'm going to double-check. You're sure you're cool with me talking about this?

Joe:                  I actually had a feeling you might bring it up.

Jessica:            Okay. Uh-huh.

Joe:                  And you're not saying anything so far that I don't know, at least—I don't often admit it to myself, but—

Jessica:            Yeah. That's fair. You have this one beautiful, precious life. And if you were to endeavor to define success in the context of a romantic partnership, I don't think that you would find the same thing you found with your career that you've already achieved and that you're just hanging out there. And what I've learned doing readings over the years is that, a lot of times, people come in and they're like, "We need to talk about my headache. My headache is the worst headache I've ever had. I've had this headache for a long time. This is my headache," but their leg is broken. In my little, stupid metaphor, can you guess which is the leg and which is the headache?

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Thank you. The relationship is really the problem, not the career. If you were to really identify what success was, be excited about creating something, if you were to be making great money—like the kind of money that made you feel like, "Oh, somebody paid their bills and has money in their savings"—like sparkle money, like "I bought the artisan thing that cost so much money because somebody I want to support made it" money—you know?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            That would create problems in the relationship. There would be mixed feelings in the relationship because it would mean you growing in leaps and bounds. And in relationships, when there's two people and one of them really grows and the other one isn't adaptable, well, it's like when you're dealing with brittle, old plastic. You're from the '70s. You know what brittle, old plastic is. It cracks.

Joe:                  Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            It cracks. And I don't think this is the first time in your life you've been in this situation. But I think you tend to make yourself smaller so as to not have to deal with the cracks.

Joe:                  Yeah. I can see that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Do you all live together?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Are you financially dependent on him to live in the place that you live?

Joe:                  Only inasmuch as we pay really cheap rent because we live in his friend's house.

Jessica:            So the housing is dependent on him; if the two of you were to no longer live together, he would keep the house?

Joe:                  Well, it's complicated because we live in the basement apartment, and my brother and my nephew live upstairs. And so it's kind of an interesting setup. Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's not clear, if you broke up, who would keep the place.

Joe:                  Correct.

Jessica:            And this is kind of your nightmare topic, right, having to deal with the money part and housing security and all these things?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Are you married?

Joe:                  No.

Jessica:            Yeah. And do you want to be married?

Joe:                  I do.

Jessica:            Do you want to be married to him?

Joe:                  I've thought so, yeah, at times. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            This is not the first time you've answered my question by referring to the past instead of the present. That's a fascinating habit.

Joe:                  But it's honest, in a way.

Jessica:            It's not, actually.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            I would say it's a result of being in your head and having a narrative that you're attached to instead of emotionally checking in with what's authentic to you at this time.

Joe:                  Oh, snap.

Jessica:            I'm sorry. So annoying of me. I apologize. So I'm going to go again. I'm going to go again.

Joe:                  Okay. All right.

Jessica:            Based on who you are today in the year 2025, do you want to be married to your partner, the person he is today, your relationship as it is?

Joe:                  No.

Jessica:            Okay. And do you think 2024 you wanted to be married to 2024 him?

Joe:                  No.

Jessica:            No. I agree. Let's go back. 2023 you—do you think 2023 you wanted to be married to 2023 him?

Joe:                  I think it was probably shifting.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. I'm seeing 2020 did a number. It really clarified some things for you. All of this to say, when I asked you, "Do you want to be married to him?" and you referred to the past, now I know that this is a tell. It's that you're not present because you don't know how to be. You're scared of being present. And I want to, again, reiterate it is not honest. It's not honoring your truth. It's not honoring the moment. And I'm not saying this as a criticism of you, but this is something that—you have access to more wisdom than you're giving yourself ability to access, right—

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            —because, in the moment, you already know you want to be married. Not only does he not exactly want that, but you actually don't want to be married to him.

Joe:                  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And you already kind of are. You live with him. You're partnered, nine years deep.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's your real problem. Sorry. I ruin everything. But it is. It is. It is.

Joe:                  I just want to say you didn't ruin everything.

Jessica:            Okay. Good.

Joe:                  I was like, "Jessica is going to read me."

Jessica:            She did. She does.

Joe:                  Yes.

Jessica:            What a jerk. I am going to just keep on calling myself a jerk, just a little bit, because you asked me this perfectly reasonable question about making movies, and I was just like, "Or break up with your partner of nine years," like an asshole. So I'm going to stick with asshole just a little bit. Just a little bit. So let me say this. Neptune is squaring your Venus. Saturn is squaring your Venus. That's what time it is for you.

In English, I don't think you need to make a decision immediately. Okay. I'm going to be very direct. If you believe that this relationship is salvageable—I don't know that you do, but if you believe that, then my assignment for you is to work on having healthier boundaries within the relationship. Work on being different and letting him be uncomfortable with it. That's it. That's all the assignments—two things between now and January of 2026.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            And either the cracks will keep cracking or things will improve. Either way, it's information.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            The Saturn square to your Venus will be completely over on February 15th, 2026. And I'll tell you this, and I'm going to be totally, again, direct. And I apologize in advance, okay? If you stay in this relationship and you're not happy and nothing has changed, then in seven years, you, my friend, will be 52 years old, and you will be in this relationship. And he'll be nine years younger. And no one knows what that means, but it puts you in a really vulnerable position where you're not happy, and you haven't been happy for a really long time. And things are changing fast because things change fast at 50.

Saturn transits happen so that we confront reality and adapt. Saturn Season is pruning season. Pruning doesn't mean burn it to the ground; it means prune. You know how to prune. You've gardened, right?

Joe:      Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. Talk to the man. If you don't feel like talking to the man makes sense, instead, just practice having boundaries with the man. Practice being different with the man. Move the bed to a different wall. Move shit. You know what I mean? Energetically, behaviorally—on all the levels, this is my advice to you. Okay?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, I know we went lots of places. I really do hope this was helpful for you.

Joe:                  It shook things up—

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe:                  —which I wanted to do.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. I'm glad to hear that.

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            And you have a lot of homework, like a lot of homework, which is good. It's like you can keep on working on the stuff that came up for months into 2026 is my expectation. And I'm excited for the—I mean, you called it art, but it doesn't feel just—it feels like art-plus, like it's art and culture—

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            —and it's like a lot of things that you're feeling called to make. I'm excited for you to do those things. I think it's going to be really great. And do you write?

Joe:                  I want to, yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. I feel like—I don't know why you don't just throw together a Substack. There won't be anyone on it—

Joe:                  I've thought about it.

Jessica:            Yeah. There won't be anyone on it at first, right?

Joe:                  Yeah.

Jessica:            So just practice writing and putting things out there and metabolizing the feelings when you have three of your friends reading it, and that's it. And if you enjoy it and it strengthens your practice and all of that, then you'll keep it up and you'll expand. And if it's not a match, then you'll stop. Just play with different ways of communicating your vision is my advice here.

Joe:                  Okay.

Jessica:            Okay? We did it. I think we did it. I think we did what we came to do.

Joe:                  [crosstalk].

Jessica:            I feel like we did it.

Joe:                  Very successful.

Jessica:            Yeah. I feel an accomplishment of purpose. I do. I genuinely do. I feel like we did it.

Joe:                  I do, too. Thank you so much.

Jessica:            It is my pleasure. It's totally my pleasure.