The “To Div” Note
What I optimistically call “woo admin” ends up being more of my practice than I care to admit. The time spent organising Yijing reading records and cooking up little Python scripts to regex search the plaintext for patterns is generally out of proportion with what I would like it to be. Maybe the aether will get me to write a post about that one day (and the unintended spiritual benefits of it, as sarcastic as I may be about my own time-sinks). But I want to mention one thing that has become key for my reflections, albeit in an unstructured way:
I have a “To Div” list, as in, things I want to divine about. While I follow the elaborate SADALKASTEN method for keeping track of my general life, this can be done on a pen and paper as much as in Obsidian.
It’s essentially a list of things one would like to divine about, but aren’t necessarily urgent. The trick is to note the dates when you think of all of these possible questions.
Comparing what you didn’t divine about — but felt close to doing — during a given period with what you did divine about1 is incredibly piercing for seeing what your real priorities are.
At the beginning of the year, my hobbies seemed key to me: I wanted to not just get back into various things that had previously brought me joy, but I wanted to excel at them. I have, unasked, floating in my To Div.md questions about the board game go 囲碁 and about music hobbies. What did I actually ask about? The mood of a friend going through a tough time, messaging old friends, and whether I should look for work in particular places. The disconnect between my intentions going into the year — games! Hobbies! — is compared with the beauty and challenge of reality, in messy relation with other humans with their own ups and downs and the realities of living in a human world determined by capital.
Ah well.
Peace,
⭕
Assuming that, like me, you regularly have an oracular practice such as Yijing, Tarot, or horary astrology, that you work with at least every few weeks.↩︎