The Career Astrologer 1 2014 | Page 4

By Mary Wittbold Written as Part of Arlan Wise’s Writing Track at the 2013 OPA Retreat R eserving a seat at the OPA retreat in Myrtle Beach, for an ocean view feast on astrology, was a no-brainer for me. Choosing a track proved far more challenging. Show me a Taurus woman content to select a single entree from a gourmet menu laden with ten mouth water- ing choices and I’ll show you a woman who has successfully solved one of the more dif- ficult, if delicious, riddles in her nature. Raise the bar on her sensory overload by in- forming her that each of the entrees is ac- companied with its own master chef and a bird’s eye view of their particular technique for boiling the bones of a theme into a rich extract of experience, which she can then take to the bank. I didn’t think it was fair of OPA to develop such a tantalizing menu and then expect me to choose “just one track”. Hungry as I was at the time, any one of them would have fed me handsomely. Nearly every description of my Sun sign says that a practical component comes stan- dard with my Taurus nature. This may be true, though I personally don’t use it very often. The last me (or whoever placed the O P A  order for this one) must have had their rea- sons, but the present me wouldn’t have bothered with the extra expense. I find it way more fun to fly by the seats of my pants than to deploy a parachute out my bootie only to slow me down. But hey, if it came with the package maybe I could deploy it now, to help settle me down and start to narrow my choices. I meditated on “practi- cal” for a minute and indeed, I did manage to narrow the choices to two that seemed most likely to fill my most pressing dietary voids. As far as I was concerned these tracks represented two different food groups, a protein and a carbohydrate if you will, but both necessary components of a well- rounded meat and potatoes diet. Allow me to digress for just a moment while I feed you a little more background information about my particular dietary sit- uation. I love astrology and I want to write. The beginner’s track was tempting as a means to fortify my astrological diet, which so far consisted primarily of books. I needed to bulk up in other areas to fill out this rather flaccid approach. The writing track The Organization for Professional Astrology 4 piqued my interest thanks to a long and un- requited desire to write. This urge, by now long repressed, was the excuse I used for de- viating from my father’s sage advice by switching my major from business to Eng- lish. I had long ago paid the karmic career path debt for that move but had yet to reap the supposedly forward thinking benefit. Speaking of forward thinking, when I take the time to reread anything I have written I usually wind up rearranging my sentences. They almost always make better sense when I place the second sentence that I have written before the first one. Truth be told I don’t know if this suggests my think- ing is forward or backward, or that I am be- hind or ahead of my thoughts. I do know that I have a sufficient quantity of hard as- pects to explain away either scenario. I’ve determined that this idiosyncrasy, my diffi- culty determining whether the chicken or the egg should come first, is a repetitive pat- tern. I know it should tell me something about myself, but for the life of me I have no earthly idea what. In any event, the lazy in me nuzzled up to the thought of a quick THE CAREER ASTROLOGER WINTER 2014