Enough

For The Nothing Key & The Highway Man,

—from a fool--

Saying The Quiet Part Aloud

The Gifts Offered Were These:


The Glyphs: for remembering.
The Spreads: for way-finding.

The One Room Schoolhouse: for solidarity & cross-pollination.
The Brooding Goofball Ethos: for grounding.
Reversal Theory: for Under-Grounding. (This one was my favorite.)
The Triple Arcana System: for precision.
The Masked Arcana: for shapeshifting.
The Interrobang Tarot Deck: for arrows in the dark & pregnant silence.
The Black Ink Tarot Deck: for friendly, spicy teaching.
Embroidery: for Beauty.
Subtext: for Gnosis.
Poetry: for Truth.
All The Above: for the Revolution, babes.


And that’s enough.

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Why I Am Quitting The Fuck Out Of Tarot (But Not The Rest of My Arts…)

First off, I am NOT quitting my whole business! Patreon is staying, and I’m gonna keep selling the finished books, decks, and spreads. But alas! My tarot burnout is not healing with rest. Every time I sit down to think about a tarot thing, my brain zonks out to possums screeching over Poltergeist TV static and BossaNova elevator music. The tarot-specific copywriting possums in my brain are on strike! (Forever.)

I’ll tell you why I can’t create new tarot content or teachings anymore, and ask you to listen, because what happened to me here is happening to others too, and I believe many of this field’s challenges are actionable. The truth will make you wonder why I ever did this work at all. So I shall explain why this mattered, blow my cover, dish what the fuck I was *secretly up to* 😁 this whole time, and why the finished work still has my blessing. (Buckle up.)

Then we’re gonna take a little break. I’m gonna pause Patreon subscriptions for April and May to rest, and workshop the next act off camera. No one will be charged in that time, and you do not need to cancel unless you want to. I’ll be back this summer with something even funner. So don’t freak out! We’re not done here yet.

I’ve had some wonderful experiences through this adventure, and I do like many of my audience members and colleagues as people. Thank you so much for your support over the years to those who chipped in—I do appreciate it. Some of you funded and signal boosted this work incredibly generously for years. You’re the best! 

If you respectfully enjoyed the work, but did not have the spare funds to chip in, buddy, YOU are who the work was for to being with! Stay strong. Enjoy the stuff, think good thoughts, make good art, agree or disagree with me in interesting ways for you, and cite your sources responsibly as you flood your culture or community with your own arts, crafts, teachings, and readings. You can pay me back anytime by paying it forward, by staying respectful to working artists, and by keeping your own art alive in this trash-fire world.

Keep following along for a few last closing-out letters, tips for working with the decks when they’re being saucy brats, and news about Act II.


If you would like to help: buy the books! Enjoy the books, recommend the books if you sincerely enjoy them, review the books, and snap up whatever spread bundles you like. I’ll throw some together for the Patreon shop. I would LOVE for these works to find and serve their people NOW, in case I do have to take them down or rewrite them in anti-trans censorship, which is Not A DRILL!!

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Why The Fuck Did I Do This?

I entered this work from a place of intense illness and complex trauma—gifted and shafted--restarting from nothing, with one foot in the grave and about $500 left in the bank, hoping to finally escape a prior decade of serial abuses, manipulations, and endless labor exploitation in the aftermath of the Great Recession. I had a lot of limitations—paid advertising and live gigging were off the table from the start, among other things. But I’d had fourteen years down in both tarot & advanced multimedia arts before I even started this blog, and between backstage work and odd jobs, I had a LOT of proficient and random-ass skills. 

I’d always wanted to draw a deck someday for fun. I finally had the free time to, and badly needed a career with no more shark-bosses. So I decided to draw one deck for myself, and blog the progress to get my rusty illustration skills back up to industry standards. Then I’d take my plucky little portfolio, ride the coattails of the then-hot post-Wild-Unknown deck boom, and break into a lifetime of anonymous & meaningless hack work in graphic design and commercial illustration, through a trendy, niche backdoor. Good plan, Marin! (Exactly none of it worked… 😆)

When I set up Interrobang Tarot, I was portfolio building and client-fishing, babes--establishing a reputation as an on-trend illustrator, with authentic tarot knowledge, and ZERO interest in running a psychic scam. I wasn’t even sure I'd print the deck I was doodling. 🤷🏻 I planned to take the whole site down in two years or so, as soon as I broke into steady freelance work. I’d had a whole graveyard full of deleted blogs and hare-brained side hustles nobody’d noticed.

Then I wrote the WTF?! spread for me, and threw it up on Tumblr on a fucking whim, and it took off overnight very much to my surprise. And then… I noticed people commenting that they’d mistaken it for a joke, so they tried it, but it kicked up all their shit!, and spoke the truth, and made them cry, and oops! tarot is real. 

🤣 Now, I’m just enough of a bastard to find that hilarious when the spread says exactly what it does right on the box. 🤣 Though it was not my original intention to make anyone cry! 🥺 I thought, “aw shoot—the spreads work for other people.” And then, “now there’s an idea…” And that’s when I (an idiot) decided to use this space to help people (whether or not I got paid)… in ✨mother-fucking sneaky ways!!✨ Hehehehhh… Because why?

Blossoms & Buttercups, My Edge-Lord Credentials:

Because I have an **extensive** personal and academic background in cultism, manipulation, abuse patterns, religious and spiritual corruptions, propaganda and counter-propaganda, political theater, and fascist history. LOL. I started learning the arts of equivocation, bullshit-clocking, cult-spotting, and deprogramming when I was four. (Totes normal ex-vangelical baby things, btw. Woot! #emptythepews) I studied a buttload of Christo-fascist propaganda and New Age flim-flam in adolescence, then went on to study stagecraft and painting at Smith College in the Bush years, with intensive projects in Weimar German history, political theater, propaganda, black history, and Octavia Butler. Graduated with honors and a bunch of awards, but could not do grad school or a normal job because Recession + illness. So I like to do fun and gentle, little, rogue culture-fucking and counter-programming side quests whenever I spot the opportunity instead. 🤷🏻


I’ve long been haunted by the understanding that propaganda and trickery are so often more effective on human psychology than direct and respectful methods of teaching. Oppressive systems always require grassroots support, recruited through mass-disinformation.


I’ve been haunted by the question of whether the propagandists’ and graphic artists’ techniques could ever be harnessed, not to tell people what to think, but to facilitate free thought, autonomy, discernment, wisdom, and the asking of good questions. Could we micro-dose or redirect those techniques to help people become more resistant to manipulation, and more autonomous within their own decisions and worldviews? Not so much counter-propaganda as anti-propaganda, or un-propaganda.


And if so, what’s the most respectful and consent-centered way to do that sort of thing, without being a flaming creepazoid, or fostering more gullibility in other directions?


I’m also a sincere tarot practitioner and have witnessed some spooky, inexplicable ghost activity in the company of other sane, sober, and grounded co-witnesses. So I’d recognized pretty young that a lot of people turn to spirituality both because they’re hungry and hurting, but also because they experience weird and moving shit they can’t explain, and crave context and support. Spirituality does a lot for people, and because of that, it often finds us at peak vulnerability, and constantly gets hijacked and abused for oppressive agendas. It’s one of the areas where we’re most susceptible to propaganda and toxic programming, and once cultic shit roots in, it’s incredibly difficult to undo the damage in one lifetime. Sooo…

Why Did I Keep Going In Tarot Despite What It Cost?

1) I did love this craft enough to commit devotionally for a limited run. And I totes thought there’d be more organic, give & take growth along the way.

2) Tarot is one of the most compelling and symbolically rich folk arts of our generation! No WAY was I gonna miss my window to get on in there and folk it up a bit more. 😉

3) Since I got WAY more attention for Interrobang Tarot than I’d meant to, I felt on the hook to complete at least one deck and book combo. That took a long time, cause Fortune’s Inkwell kicked my ass, though I’m very proud of how it turned out.

4) My divinations told me right up front I was signing on for a ten year thing if I accepted the work. 🤷🏻 Thought I’d knock it out sooner. Did not see the book coming. I’d made no promises, and could have abandoned ship, but I wanted to make good on the sunk costs, and see Fortune’s Inkwell and the tarot decks born. This all took exactly ten years—and now we’re done. 💫 I’m quitting at the first good opportunity.

5) I was recovering from some significant injuries, illnesses, and trauma from the start, anyway. The convalescence and workshopping stage for the next act took the same timeframe as the public-facing side of this past act.

6) There were things I needed to understand about humanity and The World through the tarot at this time, for my own recovery, in a window where I had great difficulty hanging onto my love and respect for our species (and still do, tbh).

7) And I had some public service and activist work I wanted to complete through this project, once I realized I had the opportunity….

Gaybies and Gentle-Thems, My Evil Plans:

• One of my goals here was to drop critical thinking skills resources, good information breadcrumbs, pro-diversity messaging, and gentle, non-controlling, take-it-as-you-will, deprogramming supports into the New Age to alt right pipeline. Not to judge New Agers! Just to cast some lifelines away from the dark side of The Force there.
  

• One of my goals was to drop therapeutic resources and psych literacy links into spaces where I knew people were looking for psychics when they probably needed therapists, abuse supports, crisis lines, or qualified counseling. And to leave some pro-medicine and pro-therapy messaging in communities where people often get shamed for taking helpful, necessary meds by guru-type jerks. 
  

• My biggest goal was to help teach diverse and low-income people how to divine effectively and responsibly for themselves and their friends, so they wouldn’t be dependent on fraudulent psychics or controlling gurus, and so they would better know how to find the good and ethical readers when they did want to book a reading.
  

• One of my goals was to share the DIY resources I was generating to work through my own problems with other people in mellow, self-paced ways, cause eh… if this helps me, it might help somebody else too?
  

• One of my goals was to toss some grounding pop-culture and pro-normie messaging in the direction of Serious Occultsville, to counter some of the insularity and elitism in this potentially beautiful scene. I understand that this comes from external judgements, rejections, mistranslations, and even abuse, but it can unintentionally steer seekers into high-control groups in their home communities. (Please note that not all tight-knit circles and covens are high-control, but it’s very mixed out there—be careful.)
  

• And on the esoteric side, I’d hoped to share some old-as-dirt and new-as-now, folk-esoteric wisdom, and drop some quality, historic folklore breadcrumbs into the hipster scene, in ways that would be FUN, accessible, democratic, and alive & kicking for the modern age. Let’s disrupt some anthropocentrism, and stir up some spooky, lyrical animism, with a healthy dose of punk-rock cussin’ & pop-culture jokes. Sounds fun.

Those were my Evil Plans this whole time! And part of why I designed so many spreads that do real things to look like jokes & fluff. IDK if any of it worked at all. I don’t get to see that part. 😭 And it was a terrible business decision!!! LOL! Don’t do as I do, guys. I’d hoped to build bridges, but I think I came off too goofball and naive for the Serious Occultists, yet too spooky for the Light & Love Brigade on-platform, and wound up wayyyy too niche to survive. 🤷🏻 I’d come from ridiculous degrees of high-masking in retail, and repeated that pattern in different ways here. I had to self-curate heavily for this work, downplay my academic background, hide my class & personal history, keep a lid on what I really think, and stay diplomatic about a LOT of beliefs and practices I find troublesome.… But I stand by the work, and hope it helped. 


It haunts me thinking the out of context stuff out there could be luring people into dangerous flim-flam in the hands of the wrong psychics or “re-bloggers.” Take care of yourselves!  

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Some Stuff I Did With My Own Behavior:

Before we get into the shit part of the shit sandwich—which is serious--I want to acknowledge some difficult choices I made that made my situation harder, and take accountability for the part of this picture that I either caused or exacerbated myself.


1. Having worked backstage in LA shortly before I began this project, it was a high priority to create good work modestly, without seeking much personal attention. I shared enough selfies to be personable by millennial standards, and to get some news seen over the algorithm at any given time. Aside from that, I took practical and symbolic measures to keep myself low-key, with the focus on the work. That worked *a little to well.*


2. I have attention regulation problems that are not medicatable, so I’m a bit of a chaos-muppet around time and project management. I’m very very easily lured away from whatever I should be doing by fun and shiny side-quests, and I often take on more than I can chew any given season.


3. I chose to be out as queer and nonbinary in my work, while producing work that 90% has nothing to do with being queer. This scares off most (but not all) of the straights with the queer-sauce, yet bores off most (but not all) of the queers with the muted-palette boondocks esoterica, and confuses the fuck out of algorithms. And it attracts a lovely-wonderful but tiny crowd of multiply-marginalized misfits, who’re just as broke AF as you are. 😆 


4. Because I was out as queer and anticapitalist, I felt tremendous pressure to offer low sliding scale pricing on my work for my most marginalized readers, and because I was an unknown artist from the boondocks, there was tremendous pressure to create free and open content on a rolling basis. Content marketing was the only kind I could afford. This completely devalued my time and offerings, and made me a red hot exploitation magnet.


5. I felt great urgency to complete decades-long draft material and works with high sunk-costs before anti-LGBTQ censorship took hold in the states. So when my social engagements fell off a cliff anyway, I decided to go ALL IN on finishing an interconnected body of lyrical, folk-esoteric long-form works… without taking time to promote any of them as they rolled out. That’s nuts! I knew I’d have to figure out how to launch the whole platform later, and that I may have to redact and rewrite second editions. I only chose to work that way because of the political climate. It was a historically savvy, but difficult and costly decision to make.


6. And I have a strong personal preference for black and white decks, or neutral with a pop of color here and there. I LOVE understated & vibey neutral-colors things. This is not a popular preference! There is much less market demand for black and white or neutral decks & books than full color in the tarot world.



BUT NONE OF THIS excuses other people’s bad behavior, and the use and abuse I have encountered cyclically in the arts, and this field specifically.

Here’s What I Received In Turn, And What This Cost:

I entered the tarot and illustration fields at a bad time to be unknown and still workshopping my voice. Though my work and concepts went semi-viral or spread widely more than once, and my material was consumed and used and resold far beyond my reach, I did not have a robust enough platform to stay above the water line once social media algorithms started suppressing queers and visual artists. Enshittification was well underway, and entrenched by the time my artistic voice matured. This made it impossible to grow my supporting audience as I completed the long-form work. I don’t want to get too bogged down in this section, so I’m gonna keep it to brief bullets, but know that each of these experiences is a whole thing and the tip of the burnout iceberg:

• Seeing my work help generate more income for people who wittingly ripped it off than I make myself some years. (Confirmed fact.)
  

• Generating more views and engagements for re-posters than I receive on my own feeds, over and over, by an order of magnitudes sometimes, and without receiving return follows and engagements.
  

• Watching my graphics and spreads turn up in random Etsy shops and download bundles on a rolling basis…
  

• While only 100 to 200 people tops support the work directly any given year through subscriptions or shop sales. Of these, well over 50% opt for the bare minimum sliding scales I’d set in good faith for my lowest income readers. Most of my paying audience valued the work at an average of less than $20 annually. (I do appreciate that many of you following closely bought at least one book or deck this past year, but this is not sustainable.)
  

• I put together a polished web presence and I suspect many people just assume that someone else is picking up the tab or helping out here but they’re NOT. 
  

• 99.9% Of my works’ viewers and consumers offered nothing back at all over the years. And many used my content to promote their own hustles.
  

• I moved my blog over to Patreon because so much of my content was getting ripped to sell classes, downloads, or psychic readings I couldn’t vet. I couldn’t keep my work from boosting scammers, and I couldn’t risk anything innovative taking off without attribution again before my books were done.
  

• I only stopped feeding the beast on social because the time started costing more than the effort returned. My posts about finished projects or cool shop merch never got seen. I was not being lazy, flaky, or antisocial; I was minding my costs & benefits on a sinking ship, and prioritizing production over a waste of damn time & angst.
  

• And I only set my accounts private to protect against trawling and identity theft after I’d been thoroughly algo-tanked and buried alive anyway.
  

• Did test the waters on paid advertising; not effective at all at my budget.
  

• Success in this field now comes with guaranteed bootlegging and identity theft, and complicity in psychic scams we want nothing to do with. I have serious ethical reservations about continuing to glamorize this craft to newbie seekers in an information landscape this predatory, post-scamvalanche. 
  

• I had a great deal of my portfolio stolen to train AI, while getting slaughtered by the algorithmic suppressions that targeted queers and visual artists.
  

• Then I watched a whole bunch of leading authors, content creators, and makers in divination, witchcraft, and paganism—whose works revolve around themes such as: “right relations,” anti-capitalism, environmentalism, and anti-f4sc1sm—use their platforms to post AI art, boost AI apologetics, and gaslight working artists. I have lost my regard completely for a great deal of the occult community over this hypocrisy.
  

• I lost my own social media following of ten years to N4zification… right as my decks finally launched.
  

• Precious few in my audience came through on word of mouth buzz, reviews, and recommendations that might have helped offset these damages. I keep having to beg, debate, and educate people one on one that no, it’s not an ethical violation to review my books on Amazon. People can’t find this work without reviews!
  

• 80-90% of the Kickstarter funds for the decks went right into production, fulfillment, and taxes. That’s how Kickstarter works unless you blow up. I was careful with my accounting, left plenty wiggle room for manufacturing errors, and did take a modest profit despite producing two decks at once and needing to reprint one of them. That's a win! BUT it’s vast majority production funding, not income. And the slice of the pie there left for emerging human artists is greatly reduced post-AI. 
  

• My campaign took about 6 months of full time solo work. I will only get paid for that time if/when the rest of the print run sells out, but I cannot possibly recoup minimum wage now in illustration or in the tarot community, with how much time and money it costs to get attention and generate sales there post-AI.
  

• Queer tokenization is a recurring theme. I keep seeing my work described and dismissed in terms of my identity—which I’d only disclosed for solidarity—as opposed to its subject matter & substance. I’ve even had people ask me to my face if shopping at my table would “turn them gay”—saying the quiet part aloud.
  

• And my spread craft—while meaningful to me and countless others—completely eclipsed and devalued my artistic portfolio and the innovative depth work I offered this community, and has become a serious professional liability to me as an artist. 
  

• The long-form multimedia work has always been here. I never billed myself as a meme-lord! In ten years, I produced hundreds of articles and videos, hundreds of tarot spreads, over a hundred illustrations and paintings, two tarot decks, four books, two demo albums, a full length volume of piano nocturnes, and an uncounted number of random-ass handmade crafts, tees, photos, posts, and memes.
  

• With the exceptions of print manufacturing and early reader feedback, everything you see here, I do by hand without contractors or assistants. The interdisciplinary skill set, research, expertise, and labor investment that goes into this platform is fucking insane.
  



• The overwhelming majority of my viewership said “worksheets only from you, please!” and didn’t even give the deeper works a chance all this time. …And then expected rock bottom prices at that. 😭
  

• I’m losing sleep over how little time I may have left to distribute the GOOD, juicy, DEEP, and most giving and potentially helpful works in my catalog—mostly overlooked to date—before my work gets wiped off the map with a stroke of a pen for having been openly nonbinary in a fraction of it.
  

• And every time over the years that I’ve tried to correct a balance, raise a price, hold a boundary, or communicate even in gentle ways that I was pushing through burnout and toxic working conditions, I lost FAR more support than I gained in response—including this season—even as requests for my time, teaching, mentorship, and emotional labor steadily increased. 
  

• I’ve had a 15%+ drop in income here this season with maybe 4 or 5? out of 300+ Patreon followers upgrading to $3 per month. That was with tarot on the table and Highway Trash School materials rolling out generously. This is not a super-human fountain of content and support, this is my job. $3 Is not too much to ask for my time here, and if that doesn’t work for you, then I can’t work for you. 

That is how little my contributions were and are valued by the tarot community, and why I can’t keep working and giving in this medium. This cumulative nonsense, over the course of a decade, tells me that this community doesn’t want what I have to give here. And the grind is SO exhausting, none of this is fun anymore!


The social media landscape’s predatory hostility to working artists means I need to start over from scratch anyway, and this community’s behaviors and attitudes mean new tarot content has no remaining place in the rotation as I do.


While I do not judge at all that many peoples’ financial situations have likely changed post-election, and we’re all very stressed, the chronic imbalance here is irreparable on my end. My labor and teachings have been taken for granted in tarot-land for years, and the boundaries, terms, and needs I’ve always stated right up front went chronically unheeded and violated. I wish you guys well, and move on without malice, but the only recourse I have left is to cut my losses, change what I give, and seek better soil to plant my work, and a more supportive audience to share it with. 🤷🏻


I’d take full responsibility for crashing & burning if my work was crappy and no one was interested. But my work would not be consumed widely, regularly stolen, and off generating engagement for other people across the internet if it was crappy and no one was interested. It would be downright self-harming and disrespectful to myself, to the work, and to my sources of inspiration for me to stick around or EVER return to this field again. 


My skills, my labor, my care, and I are worth more than this, and so are the projects completed. I gave a LOT here, and I am all used up.


You are all welcome and invited to join me for Act II! Again, I do appreciate your support, those who chipped in over the years. The tarot works already created are blessed and still here for you. I don’t want them to go to waste! I would love for them to be for something and to help people, so this fucking decade of devotional labor isn’t wasted.



Here on out, the remainder of my tarot craft is private.

A LOT of extraordinarily talented, generous, and hard-working artists are on the brink of collapse just like this post-AI, but too ashamed to talk about it openly, either because they blame themselves, or because they’re afraid of losing what little support they have left, or because they can’t be open about their class status without losing clients, or they’re afraid of tanking their reputations and future job prospects. 


I’m not ashamed of how I played the hand I was dealt here. I can’t progress in tarot in 2025 because I can’t conduct my business here with integrity, without crossing my values. It’s not on any artists how frequently our works are abused. So I don’t mind being straight with you on the way out the door. I hope this information might help some people.


I am gravely concerned for the next generation of sincere tarot makers. I want to see them thrive! I want to buy their stuff and I’m pissed that I can’t cause a lot won’t get born! 


I also want to warn serious young artists away from this craft and this community.


I want card-slingers and occultists to know that enshittification and AI-burial hits people you know, and people whose works spoke to you. 


I want people to think about what we’re all losing when they choose AI art and text OVER human artists and authors. And I want us all to fight to carve space for the next generation of tarot’s HUMAN artisans, wordsmiths, and translators.


I have no judgement for those who fall prey to these AI art scam-fuckers by accident. That sucks and I’m so so sorry for you. MANY consumers are victims in this landscape, and Kickstarter should know what kind of dodgy reputation they’re developing with consumers for allowing unregulated AI projects. But it is rotten that the broader market doesn’t care, and just wants the shiny no matter where it came from, and no matter that it means NOTHING, and no matter what it cost. 

Among other things, AI enshittification, and the attitudes around artistic exploitation in this field cost us The Spirit Vertigo Tarot Deck, the workbooks of spreads I was planning to write you, a handful of workshops, a stained-glass color edition of the Black Ink Tarot, and a books on Glamor Craft and Tarot & Creative Process from me, along with my willingness to share one more lick of mentorship in this field. Those were the active outlines and notes in my drafts stash—all cancelled. It also costs us all thousands of other works by diverse human artists who can no longer afford to bring their creations to print. Even if I wanted to keep going in this field—which I do not—I literally can’t afford to.

Resigning From Witchery

I still like and love a lot of the people in these communities one on one as people, and it’s been a pleasure to meet and work with many of you! I will critique this field sternly where it’s warranted, but I will not denounce it out the door. But I do need to move on, and I have no remaining interest in serving a primarily “spiritual” market even again. Plus I’ve got some unshakable agnosticisms that clash with not all, but quite a few practices in this community. I reckon symbolic artist & storyteller is my lane, and it’s time to get back to it.


I am done calling myself a witch. That word has become a religion in my eyes, and while I still respect it for others, I will have no religion. Witchery has lost and changed its meaning to me, and no longer speaks to me as an artist. 

Oh no! WhAtEvEr sHaLL I dO if not for witchcraft, you ask?

Welp:


-I shall enjoy the fuck out of some blessed, recreational secularity.


-I shall remain both agnostic and animist in my outlook as a secular person, and in any other ethos I happen drift through.


-I shall sing folk songs about The People’s stories as a Folk-Rock Singer for the working class.


-I may even see if any Kevins & Ashleys wanna go play darts and Uno, and talk philosophy over sugar-bitch mocktails for the working class. That’s a thing I like to do sometimes.


-I may conduct some historical, rogue folkloric research for the working class. I might even do some black-comedy, social satire writing about my findings therein for the working class. This hypothetical humor writing would be fictive and fictional (without explaining the difference), and peppered, as always, with a thoughtful array of slangy cuss-bombs for the working class.


-I shall gussy up in the same lacy shawls and blue lipstick I want to wear anyway, and let people call me whatever the fuck pronouns they were gonna regardless, cause I’m hard outta fucks and here for the work above all else… for the working class.


-I might use some of my fictional, humorous, comedic satire writing to remind the kids what kinda dumb shit not to do when you’re off frolicking in the woods for the working class.


-And then I shall continue to write creepy little nonsense songs and poems about my perennial 💘crush💘 on the WOODS, that make it sound really really fun and cool to go and do exactly that—the dumb shit you shouldn’t be doing in the woods—for the working class.


-All decorated with fine symbolic arts and illustrations, a side of high-quality merchandise tee-shirts, and maybe just maybe some vibey little goth decks I need to get the fuck OUT of my HOUSE for the working class. 🤦🏻


-Whilst, most probably, continuing to indiscriminately hit on both your fathers and your MOTHERS… for the working class. 😉


-And we’ll go see if any Decemberists fans type fans might be a little more receptive to the vibe. 🤷🏻

Gone Fishing

Now, historically… I am not the top-most competent person I’ve ever met or heard tell of at attracting what I am aiming for. LOL.


• The entry level work in my backstage field of study—which I’d loved--dried up overnight in the Great Recession the same year I graduated, and along with the rest of my class, I fell into a life of impoverished work in fashion retail because I had no other options. So I cast a line into a boutique scene looking for a stable gig, and reeled in a Queen of Hearts.


• When that got old, I cast a line into a mellow, little, east coast college town, fishing for guitarists with cars who might like to do garage band stuff in dive bars, and through a madcap a string of WEIRD events, quite accidentally got myself reeled into… a network of lovably eccentric film & television people from Los Angeles. (My absurdist, picaresque checkered past confessions live here if you missed them. Things I could not tell you until my going out of business era. 😅)


• ✨Shortly the fuck thereafter,✨ I cast my line BACK into a small town boutique scene, fishing for a lifetime of laid back and stable, anonymous AF, heart-centered service work, with and for regular people. I reeled in a cool haberdasher, a stoner tromboninst, a Machiavellian artisan, one vengeful manager, a handful of vile, crooked landlords, and an absolutely psychopathic roommate. BIG oops! This did not go well for me.


• On the heels of that debacle, I cast a line into a trendy niche pocket of the illustration world, fishing for freelance graphics clients and boss-less, goth-pop hack work, and yet again, accidentally-for-me, reeled in… the witches & diviners of Tumblr and Instagram. 😆 🤡 🙃 This crowd was SO FUN! And delightful to know. I did stock up on supplies, merch, and audio gear, with some traveling funds for the next round of hijinks, but I never could get my—hours—paid in MONEY, sooo…


• Please understand that I would most dearly love, at this age, to be MELLOW, and quiet, and 💸well-paid💸 (maybe with a tattooed girlfriend?) above all other attributes BUT—--this is not a good time to go make a living as an unestablished illustrator——AND every other freelance writing gig also just dried up to AI. I have 🔥flamed out hard🔥 at thirteen backup plans in a row now. I still have an obsessive love of music that won’t shut up or go away, with NO other marketable trade skills or options queued up at the moment, and I don’t have it in me to bomb at another fucking backup plan. ERGO—I am committing to ⏰two years⏰ of hardcore, full-time, attention-whoring-of-the-songs—like I mean it this time! And then we’ll reevaluate from there.


• For my next trick, I shall cast some folk tunes to the ether, fishing for a modest pool of Decemberists fans type fans, who might enjoy paying certain cute, pallid, lacy persons with MONEYYYY in exchange for SONGS & JOKES about creepy nature stuff, trad shanties, history, and lore, etc. And we’ll see what that hauls up.


Hopefully something a little more sustaining than a one night stand and a bag of Doritos, but who fuckin’ knows? 🤷🏻 👏Let’s go find out!💫


The goal is not to become a rockstar at this age, lol. It is to make good art!! And get paid enough to get from one town to the next, have fun, keep the art alive, and keep moving. I am a boondocks ding-dong fuckup who likes CATS! And SOLITUDE! And BOOKS! And most especially above all, cashing PAYCHECKS! (But I also like electric guitars okay, have always felt most happiest and alive on the Road, and would not object if this picture got any less woodland-Dickensian any damn day now….)


And goddammit, if I ever find my golden ticket along the way into a lifestyle of normal-boring, actually-paying, 


✨🎉🙌🥳ANONYMOUS AND MEANINGLESS HACK-WORK🥳🙌🎉✨ 


that’ll be fine… 


You are WELCOME to join me for the next chapter. Not all of you sucked! I so appreciate the few and far between souls who chipped in here. My Patreon supporters are the least of my worries in this ecosystem. And it was lovely to meet many of you. I still hope the GOOD stuff finds and serves its people. I don’t know where or who they are, but perhaps we shall meet through the tunes or along the road.


Again, if you met this work respectfully, supported it in turn as you could, or never had the spare change to chip in, you were not the problem in this picture! I am not annoyed at you personally, and I am NEVER here to shake working people down for more than they can spare. 


A clusterfuck of systemic problems and entitled behaviors made this work completely unsustainable from the start. If this had been sustainable, you would not get to enjoy Act II, which should be even funner! I’d be too shy to try it. I have to get detoured or tricked into work that falls way out of my comfort zone as a running theme here. Left to my own devices, I would STILL choose to be a florist, or some broom-pushing, backstage paint-serf in any town with a nice dance club and a park, so… 😆 If my life hadn’t fallen apart in 2014, you would not have received any of this work from the last ten years. If my tarot business had not fallen apart in enshittification, you would not receive what’s coming next. IDK if there’s an audience for it, but I do have another calling I need to get to that needs a clean break and full time concentration.… 


(It’s still a dick move to boost AI though! I’ll have none of that all-for-the-best shit on crappy decisions that hurt lots of people—not all of whom can bounce back—and do ZERO good.)

I hope all this BULLSHIT was FOR something!  Snap the books up while you can!!! I would like this good work not to go to waste! 🙏May it serve you well and find its home in time.🙏 


Not definite, but I may take Interrobang Tarot down at some point, cause it costs utility bills to keep running, and it may become a liability to my next career moves—for survival’s sake—in this climate. I gotta build a new site for the next act anyway. You are all welcome to save what you like from the blog for your personal reference, but you MAY NOT republish, reprint, or repost my works elsewhere.

Again, if you would like to help: buy the books, enjoy the books, recommend the books if you like them, review the books. If you super don’t like the books, please phrase your bad reviews as hilariously as possible for posterity. 😁 And snap up whatever spread bundles you like once they hit the Patreon shop.

Some of Your Finest Virtues, In My Estimation

I love how neurodivergent this field is, the bridges you build between neurotypes, and how easily and joyfully you embrace difference and diversity.

I love how many thoughtful and caring people there are in the tarot community.

I love your warmth and senses of humor.

I love that you introspect and actively work to improve yourselves and your communities.

I love your oddities, your quirks, and your fun, gothic fashion.

I love your laid-back spookiness.

I love your creativity and your appreciation for the arts.

I love how eclectic, collaborative, and fucking brilliant the tarot community has been these past twenty years, and I beg you not to lose this hard-won culture to AI.

I love that you seek wisdom, and that you seek alternatives to capitalist default-culture.

I love your love of misfits and rebellion.

I love your Foolishness.

I would love to stay in touch, and maybe even collaborate with some of you again in the future. Best of luck to you all.

---

Pluto rocked my cradle, then every one of my stars. I am tougher than I look, and not dead yet. I need a deep rest—for a couple months—but we’re not done here yet! The only arcanum I haven’t lived yet is The World, and I’m finally itching to step back on the Road, with the full-circle Fool’s understanding of what this world means. LOL—and as always, no fuckin’ clue where this is going…


I may have some parting letters coming up for the kids, and maybe some tips on how to get the Black Ink Deck to open up if it’s being a saucy, inscrutable brat with you, as some classy, little understated goth decks wont to do, apparently. 😆

Interrobang Tarot was my opening set, babes! Stay tuned for Act II….