Four or five years ago I used this platform as a place for expressing a lot of opinions. I think doing so helped me formulate my beliefs. I also think some part of me felt my opinions & beliefs weren’t real unless they were witnessed and affirmed. Then, for different reasons, in this last period of my life I’ve grown much shyer about expressing beliefs here, expressing beliefs at all, maybe. Lots of questions to myself like: what am I trying to prove ? Where do the opinions go, who do they really touch, what do they really change? Am I sharing my beliefs with some version of an “audience” or a “public” in order to feel like I am real ? Why do I feel the need to share my beliefs, as opposed to just living them? I started trying to focus my energy much more on how my values and beliefs shape my relationships every day, shape the way I exist in community and coalition. I don’t think it’s an either or at all, but for me it was important, when I had this urge to convince, to just sit with the feeling. I still get the urge to share, to convince, to prove, especially now, when so much is happening that so many of us believe could and should be different (like if the government had just let people out of jail and prison, cancelled rent and paid everyone not to go to work, opened up empty condos to unhoused people, and made sure all medical care was free, so many fewer people would be dying in Los Angeles, and all over the country and the world). But I do try to ask myself, when I want to speak outward, is my motivation to be witnessed in these beliefs, and in turn to feel like the ambient, often imaginary outside world views me in line with how I view myself and want to be viewed? I don’t think that’s a bad motivation. But, also, as a very loved one reminded me on the phone the other day, how we are perceived by others and who we are — these are not actually, always the same thing. Still, it can feel like they are. That’s all. Saturn is finally in Aquarius again so I feel like my Aquarius ass can relax into its innately airy irresolution.