Intuition

How many of my creative decisions are even my own?

Never change, Southern church marquees.

In August I took a short, unplanned hiatus from this newsletter. I felt like I was re-calibrating, trying to shake off some of that deep summer despair that creeps up in the hottest part of the year. Honestly, I was in a pretty bad place at the start of the month, when I had a visit with a psychic over Zoom.

I made the appointment with Wendy over a year ago. The LA-based “intuitive reader,” as she billed herself, was booked that far out. She was in high demand after publishing a few of her readings on a podcast, in which she seemed to be able to perceive uncanny information about other people. Intuition is something all of us have—like, in the same way that I’ll sometimes hang around a couple and guess they’re going to break up within the year, and I’m basically always right. Wendy, apparently, has that ability on supercharge.

When it was finally time for our hour-long session, I brought some light skepticism with me, and Wendy broke through it right away. Unprompted, she began to speak in detail about my family and relationships, describing some people in my life with astonishing accuracy. When it was time for constructive criticism about me, she didn’t pull punches. It was like I was talking to my old therapist, the one I saw for nearly three years in Philadelphia; except this version of her put aside the usual deference and finally grabbed me by the shoulders and said “cut the crap!”