The final third house theme I would like to address is incredibly broad: communication in all shapes and forms. It speaks to ideas, data, language and all the various means of sending and receiving information.
So let’s start with the mind. When it comes to mental stimulation and developing ideas, I am in a very good place. I get to spend a lot of time thinking about and exploring topics I am naturally drawn to, such as the arts and education, psychology, transformational processes in individuals and organisations, emotional wellbeing and trauma healing. I am applying what I have learned and am continuing to learn in my professional life almost every day. And I have are other interests, such as astrology and essential oils that I enjoy reading and learning about as well.
However, my mind, like any mind, is not always on that positive and productive track. As I have described before, negative, dark and fearful thoughts can take up a lot of headspace. But such thoughts, as astrologer Chani Nicholas pointed out in her reading this week, are a form of communication too.
At the moment, I am making really good progress in therapy, which is helping me to understand these thoughts as a part of myself speaking up, making itself known. What this part is trying to convey, is different from what it literally says. Underneath the thought (you are not good enough) lies a message (I feel vulnerable). It takes time to learn how to translate the thoughts and receive the messages. To tend to the part of self that is so deeply afraid of separation, loss and pain. But investing this time is very much worth it.
One final note on the mind: as I established in the first part of this House III inventory, many of my daily activities are cognitive, to the detriment of time spent outdoors, in nature, getting exercise, working in the garden, making artwork etcetera.
On to another aspect of communication: data and information. You could interpret this as the type of information you gather, perhaps your ability to access the information you seek, but you might also want to think of the ways you collect, filter, process and store the data.
The first thing that comes to mind, is: there is so much information out there, everywhere, all the time. I used to love sitting at the table, either at home or in a cafe, with the weekend papers, slowly finishing a pot of tea, eggs on toast and then a few cups of fresh coffee. I am a very curious person, I care about what happens in the world and I have always enjoyed reading. For some reason though, I have stopped following the news altogether. I am not reading any papers and I am not watching television, listening to the radio or following the news online either. No head space. Too much information.
Opening up again to the good things media has to offer, is not a priority at the moment. I will therefore not include it in my steps for the following weeks. It is, however, something I might circle back to. I can imagine that a shift in another part of my life will also shift things in this area. I would love to find a way to take in the information I am interested in without getting overwhelmed by all the extras, such as commercials, adds, chocolate letter headlines, gossip, drama and speculations. So that is one for the wish list, but I will leave it for now.
There is a similar reluctance to spend time on the efficient storage of data that I collected up until this point. No matter how good it might feel to get rid of what I no longer need, it will take forever to tidy up my digital shelves and chests of drawers; the amount of files and information stored on my phone, tablets, laptop, old laptops and external disks, all the data in various inboxes… I can not even imagine how much work that would be.
But still. Although I do not want to dive back into the past and do a data clear out, I would welcome a more efficient way of storing pictures, files, contact details and emails in the future. I am ready to make a clean start, not only when it comes to managing my emails, but also when it comes to social media. More on that in a minute.
First, let’s look at transferring ideas, concepts and information from the mind (or indeed electronic devices) into the world. This too is part of the House III realm. You might, for instance, want to look at languages and language skills as part of your inventory. I guess for me, what I mentioned about ideas and mental stimulation, also applies here: I have no complaints whatsoever. Nothing that I wish to change in regards to expressing myself in my mother tongue or any other language.
I have loved words for as long as I can remember. I grew up reading lots of books, learned as many foreign languages as I could in secondary school and then went on to study literature and build my career around it. At this moment, English is the only foreign language I actively speak and write, mainly because there has been very little travel since the start of the pandemic. I do not mind; learning or brushing up any other languages is not a priority right now. We’ll see where things stand come the new moon in my ninth house of travel on 28 July of this year…
Improving my language skills happens naturally, particularly since I began to write this blog. Practice really does help. This, at least, is my experience. A few years ago, before I became a freelancer, I was not writing that much. Providing piles of copy for various projects has significantly improved the ease with which I write.
Another way of looking at the transfer of information, is to reflect on activities like writing, editing, translating and speaking. As I touched upon in my House II inventory of money, assets, resources and self-worth, I have, in recent years, earned my keep by practicing all of these activities. In doing so, I have come to realise how important it is for me to express my own voice and creativity. Editing or translating the work of another author becomes a struggle when their voice is very different from mine. This is something I have learned the hard way and am now much more mindful of. But in fact, I rarely take on editorial projects or translations anymore. I have shifted my focus (see also House II) and am not acquiring copy writing assignments either, but it will be good to consider the amount of creative space I am given when it comes to those projects too.
As for the shift in focus: I am looking forward to more coaching, working with younger people and also – this is where speaking comes in – teaching and public interviews. Writing this blog, is of course, another way to be creative and express my own voice.
In the fourth and final part of this House III inventory, I shall look at three more aspects of communication: content, recipients and means.
My rising sign 