Being a grownup

This Tuesday I celebrated my 28th birthday. I'm officially a decade into adulthood and therefore a bonafide, card-carrying grownup. I also read tarot cards and do a big spread at the beginning of the calendar year AND birthday year.

 This year, my "concerns" as I spread the cards out were balancing all the crazy projects I want to do (running my own press, translating a book, writing my own novel) with all the normal stuff of grownup life that I still haven't nailed down (exercising, flossing, reading more from my to-read pile). So I spread the cards and all these 4s of things kept coming up. 4 of Pentacles, Swords and Wands. The Emperor, who is #4 in the major arcana. FOURS, man. Clearly the universe was sending me a sign. If you arrange things into four you have a nice little square foundation, and indeed, a proliferation of 4s in a spread suggests establishing a structure, routinizing things, getting organized and stable for things to work going forward.

 Clearly the cards suggest that while I really do want to get a million things done, I need to set up some sort of structure for making that happen. So my resolutions for my 28th year are to start small, and start flossing daily. I'm 2 for 2 on that one (#nailingit) and to read more, some friends of mine are starting up a book club to finally read all those books on our to-read pile that we're embarrassed we haven't read yet. Especially as booksellers and book reviewers, which many of us are. So on the inaugural meeting, to fit my new resolution, I'm really pushing for Zadie Smith's White Teeth.