Dear Madame,
All this Virgo stuff is making me a little crazy. I feel it shouldn’t, but it does. You know my chart already, so you can see my North Node’s in Virgo, and as you’ve explained, this is an area where I’ll need to put a little more effort and consciously cultivate those qualities in my life.
But I gotta tell you, after watching a couple of those organizer videos you posted, I broke out into a cold sweat! All those little bits — the papers and the color systems, and the million tabs and boxes! I know I’m a sensitive person, but I had no clue how watching Filofax demonstrations could produced that level of anxiety! So please help me. This is a little embarrassing. I really want to conquer that North Node.
— Planning to Plan
Dear Planning,
I have good news for you. And then still more good news.
The first piece of good news is that no human need conquer their North Node all in one season. Give yourself the rest of your life to get that baby down. Your North Node vision will evolve over time.
The second piece of good news is that the universe is soon gonna give you a solid bump up: first, next week’s solar eclipse will shine up your Virgo zone; and second, come November we’ll all be doing the Virgo North Node shimmy for two years. We’ll all become pickier, or if you prefer, more discriminating, together.
You won’t be alone. With Jupiter in Virgo for the next 11 months, you’ll likely find others attempting to get their Virgoan act together. Just look around. Honestly. It’s in the air! And because your natal Virgo North Node is in its natural home (the 6th House) all those classically Virgo things will be easier to spot and apply in your life.
Hate to use a cliché, but it’s true: you need to think of this season as less of a challenge and more of an opportunity.
Remember that when we looked at your chart, we saw major new movements on all four fundamental fronts in your life: health, home, partners and profession. You got it all goin’, babe! And you’ve just begun to get a taste of big changes in your life. Thus, all this comes at the right time: you really do need added value to your Virgo sort-and-process zone. Imagine it like an old fashioned mailroom: the Big Boss at the top can’t execute her executive self without someone delivering timely data to her desk. And you need “executables” on four fronts!
Don’t panic, though! Give yourself permission to window shop options for your data delivery. One woman’s methods might be another woman’s madness. Find the method or madness that best suits your needs and check out that option. Then check out another option.
The key here is options. You have them, and you’re not stuck with one answer.
Give yourself time, too. Anxiety is real. It has real and potentially lasting effects on your nervous system and body. To mitigate the approach-avoidance dance of anxiety, try the exposure treatment. The exposure approach allows you to experience little doses of change so you can acclimate to the idea that this new whatever-thing isn’t so bad after all. This takes a little time, but giving yourself TIME is a gift you need now to grow into your Virgo mode.
Depending on how challenged you feel, you may start with a tiny step, like buying a nice pen. Doesn’t need to be expensive. A small purchase toward a little Stabilo or gel pen will do. Sit with the pen; write with it; draw. Notice how much or how little you enjoy that feeling of it in your hand as it moves against the paper.
Like it? Keep it. Not so much? Move on. No judgments on YOU. But notice how every single detail in your pen observation is Virgoan in nature — the attention to quality, experience, flow, output. The little things that actually do mean a lot.
Was that so scary? Not really. And you got a bonus — a good pen!
Now move to the next step, keeping the stakes low. Watch a new video, or take out a book from the library about your growth zone. Educate yourself about something new. Or buy an inexpensive little calendar or journal. A small investment. Repeat the process above, with attention to quality, experience, flow, output. Get comfortable with the new thing. Observe and breathe through it. You got it.
And so on. Baby steps, observe, breathe.
Practice conscientious attention to details in the privacy of your own place before taking this Virgo show on the road. Begin writing plans for personal goals, things that matter only to you. Make charts for home chores that no one else will see. If you keep at it, by November you’ll feel confident enough to make that holiday gift list and formulate a strategic attack on your baking, knitting, purchasing and traveling goals that would be worthy of any armed services logistical central command. You might even get half of it done!
Speaking of, Santa-lady, put me down for a new Moleskine.
Yours in the struggle,
Madame Z
I can totally relate to this struggle sharing the Virgo North Node astrology, I much prefer to sit back in my pisces south node shared with my sun and mercury, definitely my comfort zone. But I am stretching to come to know Virgo better, meaning, to know this side of me better. One way of doing this is to focus more on organizing by organizing less, i.e., getting rid of things, in all manner of speaking. Simplifying allows for a more qualitative focus and it really makes me feel much better. I think I have struggled on this aspect my entire life, always too busy to clean up the fine details, the mundaness of life, now I am focusing on the mundane, all in time for fall cleaning to boot! It’s a cleansing figuratively and then some…Thanks for the question, Planning to Plan and Your response and sharing Madame Z.
A huge clearout is in order for me too, Pisces Sun! Thanks Madame Z – love these posts….
Thank you.
One thing I’ve noticed about anxiety is that more options and more data are rarely (or never) the answer. I imagine this is why meditation is so successful with anxiety reduction.
I’ve worked in situations where the fear of letting go impeded any progress. So we took all the piles of stuff on her desk, and put them in boxes rather than let them go. They were still with us in the room and in sight, but that beautiful desk beneath the geological layers of paperwork quite inspired both of us, and she was able to begin again, building up rather than tearing down.
“One thing I’ve noticed about anxiety is that more options and more data are rarely (or never) the answer”
As someone who can be very indecisive about what I want (thanks to having my choices undermined as a child), I can testify that having more ice cream flavors to choose from, or more restaurant options offered for dinner, can often make the process unnecessarily difficult. I’m much better than I used to be in these situations, for sure.
If I’m stuck because neither option A nor option B quite feels right, then yes, having an option C can sometimes be very helpful, if its qualities fill a vacancy that A and B were not covering. But if options A and B are both attractive, it’s rare that having an equally attractive option C will help the decision-making process any.
Regarding the clearing out and simplifying: Years ago I had a conversation with someone whose brother had this rather incredible (if ruthless, by my sentimental-about-things standards) method of dealing with boxes when moving. Apparently he’d label his boxes of stuff with the date. If, one year later, he had not opened the box, he assumed he did not truly need what was in it, and would get rid of it without even opening it.
I just cannot even imagine…
Heh heh. That’s the stuff of nightmares for all Bulls. Ha!
I was kinder and allowed the boxes to stay nearby.
Didn’t want a full on anxiety attack.
Great story.
I think it comes down again to attachment and the emotions that are wrapped up with keeping it. Now I look at an item and think,, what do you want to do with this? And what has it taken to keep it? I consider the space it occupies, time it takes to dust and maintain it, space it takes in my brain and memory to recollect its whereabouts. This is where I now am at, maybe its just a sign of aging, maturing or perhaps, as I would like to think, just coming into realizing more of my north node in virgo.