TW: Death, dying, cancer, PTSD

I had an astrocartography reading done yesterday by the incredibly sweet, brilliant, and talented Paulina Davie. I had reached out to her about a reading in the midst of a lot of anxiety over living on my Saturn line, and wondering if life is always going feel like such an uphill battle. I was especially worried that living on my Saturn line meant that I wouldn’t ever find success in anything, not just my day job. This has been a source of anxiety for awhile, but especially recently as I’m preparing to launch an app I’ve been dreaming up and building for over a year. The good news, that doesn’t seem to be the case. However, over the course of our conversation, Paulina kept asking me what my Why was. Why build an astrology app? Why offer astrological consultations? So, while this blog is still new and I have some runway leading up to releasing my app, I figured it would be a good time to let you get to know me and my why.

So, without further ado… Hej! I’m Paige.

(photo admittedly of a much younger Paige in Egypt, but my convo with Paulina also inspired me to choose this photo)

Currently I work full-time as a data scientist in cybersecurity, which I would’ve at one point considered my dream job. It wasn’t always my dream job though. I also spent many years imagining myself become an astronaut, volcanologist, lawyer, and a medical researcher investigating the cure for cancer. When I graduated college with my first degree in Anthropology, the plan was to go to law school. And, I had even gotten into law school! Yippee! But, I did something in my early twenties that I wish I would’ve done more in my mid/late twenties: I asked myself if I really wanted to a lawyer. I was looking at $200k of law school debt to get my JD. And my options were to sell my soul for a high paying lawyer gig, or do what I wanted an make no money and very slowly put in years as a human rights lawyer and eventually have the debt forgiven. But either way, I also knew I was not going to graduate law school and have much of a life. And I just couldn’t bring myself to spend that kind of money on a degree that didn’t result in me feeling like I had any time to actually enjoy my life.

You see, death had already made a very lasting impression on me. I lost the woman who raised me to ovarian cancer when I was 15 and she was in her 50s. Ever since then, I felt like it was this race against time to live my life and make it count. And putting in 80 hour work weeks just didn’t quite seem like it was worth it to me. When I didn’t go to law school, people were… disappointed to say the least. They didn’t understand my decision. Adults in my life called me flighty and unable to stick with things. (Reader: I was 22.) At this time I had managed to take a hobby I had started in high school and turn it into a full fledged business. So, I just ran with it, and told people this is what I was doing now. I was a professional wedding photographer.

(I feel like it would be weird to add in a wedding client pic here… So instead, here’s a pic of one of my favorite giant slabs of granite)

And honestly, I did like working for myself. I enjoyed setting my own hours. I liked the independence of it all. What I didn’t like? Being sexually harassed at almost every wedding I worked. Being told, “Your prices are really expensive, I can just have my uncle use his camera.” Or, “These are beautiful photos, you must have a really nice camera!” Those things slowly began to chip away at my enjoyment of the work. I started to wonder what else I could do and if I should go back to school. I stumbled upon data science by accident just because I really enjoyed studying statistics, and I thought it sounded fun. I began researching the field and realized living in Arizona was not a great option for finding a job in data science. Thankfully, I had already been yearning to leave for cooler weather and greyer skies, so Washington felt like the perfect place to relocate to. So, I started making plans to leave. And by July of 2018, I was making my way up North.

(Me at the Grand Canyon, one of my last AZ adventures)

I got to Washington and I was HYPED. Everything was so green! There was the ocean, the rainforest, snowy mountain tops, alpine lakes, and flowery mountain meadows. I wasted no time and set out to start hiking as much as possible when I moved here. Only a few short weeks later, I went on my first backpacking trip. I was super excited, but also a little bit nervous. It was a beautiful Washington day, that turned into a very chaotic Washington night. Clouds quickly rolled in, hail pelted us, and lightning crackled in the distance. We were completely exposed on this mountain top, but there was thankfully a fire lookout with a lightning pole not too far away. We tore down camp and hid out from the storm as it rolled through. As it finished up we noticed there was still some light left in the sky. The decision then became, do we set up camp again? Or just hike back down and car camp? (It was only a 2-3 miles, and the fire lookout was already occupied. They were just nice enough to let us hide out in there while lightning was overhead.)

We made the decision to hike back down, not knowing that this decision would forever alter the trajectory of my life. You see, while I was an experienced hiker, I had some Arizona ass hiking boots. (Read: they did not have nearly enough traction for a place that has slick landscapes from the rain.) About a mile or so in, we had to walk past an area where some trees had fallen. I got around and under the fallen trees just fine, it was the wet leaves on the ground that did me in. One second I was looking back to see where my friend was, and the next I was falling over the edge. I managed to grab onto a protruding tree root as I fell, the force of the stop slamming my knee into the mountain wall. I screamed out in pain, and in fear. Thankfully, my friend was not far behind at all, and managed to pull me back up. Had I been alone, or not grabbed onto that tree root, it’s unlikely I’d be alive, as the fall was high enough to have killed me.

We didn’t have any sort of service, and neither of us owned a device we could even send an SOS on. We had no choice but to continue hiking back down, despite my very unstable knee. I thankfully had hiking poles to help, but I winced and cried through the pain the whole way down. That one simple decision to hike back down left me with a grade 2 MCL tear, PTSD, and a constant anxiety of feeling like I’m truly running out of time. I spent many nights lying in bed, tears streaming down my face, not sure where I was as I woke up from another nightmare. I found myself having full on breakdowns on the trails for at least the next year or so. And a very teneuous relationship with hiking, backpacking, and ledges to this day. I still find it to be deeply troubling that my time on earth could’ve ended at the mere age of 24.

As a disclaimer, I do now carry a garmin and make sure plenty of people know where I’m at and when to expect me back. I also never hike alone, and have boots with plenty of traction, as well as various spikes I can put on when extra traction is called for. Some lessons are learned the hard way, but they are learned nonetheless.

(Photo from that fateful day, taken as the storm was rolling out.)

It’s hard to believe that was nearly a decade ago. The fear is still just as visceral today as it was then. (My hands were shaking as I recounted the event.) I’ve spent many years in therapy dealing with the trauma of my childhood, and the trauma of my own brush with death. I’ve told me therapist on many occasions that there’s this part of me that relates to Alexander Hamilton (from the musical) and how he feels like he’s running out of time because of his own experiences with death. While simultaneously, I feel like Burr, knowing that I need to make choices, but [anxiously] waiting for the right ones. Which brings us to present day me.

When I think about why I became a data scientist, some of the reasons were good. I genuinely enjoy math, statistics, puzzles, patterns. Finding meaning in data. But if I'm being honest, I also did it because there was a part of me that still wanted to earn the love I never felt in childhood. A woman in STEM? Hell yeah! It’s what my parents always wanted! Surely this will finally get me the love and validation I desperately wanted.

But reader, you cannot earn love and validation through a career choice. If your parents didn't love you without a computer science degree, it's unlikely they'll love you with one. And my body knew what my brain took longer to admit - the tense jaw, the Sunday dread, the feeling like I was going to throw up before every work week. The panic attacks and melt downs. The depression and the burnout. Not to mention that I constantly have to mask at work, never getting to fully be myself. You cannot make a circle fit into a square. You cannot force yourself to be something you are not.

Surely I owe it to my 24-year-old self to find something that actually helps people, not just a company's bottom line. To live a life doing something that feels more authentic to me, and that allows me to live without the mask on. Surely I deserve to be able to feel like I can be accepted for my whole self. And if I’m being honest, I’ve spent too long seeking validation I’ll likely never receive. But, as I’ve gotten older and worked through more of my own trauma, I’ve realized that the only love and validation I ever truly needed was my own.

I was an astrology skeptic for many years to be honest. Not just from my science background, but also because I grew up a deeply conservative, religious area of Arizona. I was frequently warned against going into metaphysical shops because, “that’s where the devil was.” It didn’t help that I never felt like I related much to my sun sign. (Come to find out later I’m not only a night chart, but the moon is my chart ruler, so it explains why I feel very much like my moon sign.) And while I have no qualms with modern astrology itself, I did come across many modern astrologers who added to my skepticism. We’ve all seen those posts rooted in engagement bait and fear mongering. It does nothing to add credibility to the field of astrology, and it’s far more harmful than helpful.

In searching for hope, meaning, and answers, I found the tarot and Hellenistic astrology. (The evangelical to astrologer pipeline is strong.)
I spent hours lost in textbooks and deep diving astrology rabbit holes. I began to track my own life through profections, progressions, and finally zodiacal releasing. It was relieving to feel like life made sense, but also frustrating to realize how many things there were to keep track of, and how there really wasn’t a great app for helping you keep track of these things. It would constantly drive me crazy that astrologers would read for rising signs, and they would never call out sect as a differentiating factor. On one hand, I get it. Not everyone even knows their birth time (though we could argue if they don’t know their birth time then they don’t know their rising sign.) And even if they do, explaining sect to people is a bit of rabbit hole when a large part of your demographic is only really aware of their big 3.

When Jupiter first moved into Cancer, I was not only a night chart, but I was also DEEP in the trenches of my 8th house profection year. As you’ll recall, the moon is my chart ruler, making me a Cancer rising, and making my 8th house Aquarius. I’m also the right age for Saturn to have been in Aquarius when I was born. So, we’ve got the out of sect malefic present in the house that is currently profected. And this is a dignified Saturn. Reader, it should not come as a surprise that Jupiter moving into Cancer while I was still in a Saturn profection year as a nightchart didn’t do much for me.

And I see stuff like this all the time on threads.

“Is it possible I’m still in my Saturn return?”

“I’m this age, but I’m pretty sure my Saturn return has already started.”

“Why did my Saturn return feel okay, but the last couple of years after it feel really hard?”

While I’ll never fault people for doing generic rising sign readings, I also want to point out that there’s a hunger for answers and deeper understanding for how these cycles in our life work. And I truly believe that astrology has those answers, which is why I started building my app. I set out to build something that was in depth enough for Astrologers themselves, but approachable enough for people who haven’t spent years of their lives studying astrology. I wanted to help people make the connections they needed to in order to better navigate their timing. It’s an app that centers their lived experience as the stars continue to wander in their synodic cycles. Sure, knowing that you’re going to experience your Sade Sati, Saturn return, and then Saturn profection years all back-to-back-to-back doesn’t necessarily make those experiences better. (Ask me how I know… lol) But, it can help you understand why you’re experiencing what you are, and provide the necessary tools to navigate it better. (I promise this app focuses on more than just Saturn.)

So, why build an app? In truth, it started out because I was just tracking all of this stuff myself. The first version I built of it was in a databricks notebook that I ran cell by cell, seeing what was even possible. But, as my ideas expanded for it, and I spent more time actively engaging in the astrological community, I began to truly believe this was something that would help other people, and hopefully make a difference in a small way. It seems silly to think that an astrology + tarot app would profoundly change someones life. But, I do think there’s something to be said about being able to see the cycles of your life at work. And being able to look back at what happened say during the last eclipse and understanding the events that unfolded were incredibly fated. Or perhaps it’s realizing that every time the moon transits the 12th house of your natal chart, you feel a certain way. Maybe it’s my Sagittarius moon speaking here, but if I can help someone find some level of meaning in the events that unfold in their life, then isn’t that enough? If they can connect with their timing and cycles, and can better navigate the astrological landscape, isn’t that worthwhile?

(The Saturn-Jupiter conjunction of 2020)

The why of it all? Because life is short. I could’ve died at 24 from falling off of a mountain. I could still die relatively early in my 50s from ovarian cancer. I could die today, or next week, or next year. I don’t know when my time on this earthly plane will come to an end. (And I have too much anxiety to be out here doing length of life calculations from traditional astrology. Some things are better left a surprise.) So, I’d like for my time here to mean something more than making a tech company billions of dollars. I’d like to help people find meaning in their own lives through whatever way I can help. Be it from the app, astrological consulting, or maybe even this blog. If my brain is going to keep telling me that I’m running out of time, then I need to do things that feel like my time was used well. And that’s why I can’t just wait until I’m retired or something. Nothing is promised in this life other than death. (I’d say taxes, but we all know billionaires aren’t paying those.) So, when I look back on my life, I don’t want to see Sundays spent with crippling anxiety and dread over the upcoming work week. I don’t want to see regret that I never found work that would offer me a greater sense of fulfillment and purpose. I don’t want to feel like a cog in the machine.

So, dear reader. That's my why. Because I know is that death has a way of teaching you how to live. And I don’t want to spend my life feeling like I was waiting to start.

Maybe that's enough for now. Maybe that's everything. Maybe I’m like Hamilton, living like I'm running out of time. Or maybe I, like Burr, have not been standing still, but have been lying in wait for the right moment. And maybe that moment is now.

This post is dedicated to the people in my life I’ve lost over the years. Your lives and deaths have left an indelible mark on my heart, and have inspired me to not take my time for granted. I love you and miss you always.