The Blueprint—accepting what I do not know
It feels like I’ve reached a fork in the road, and I’m standing before it with the awareness of what I know—and what I do not know yet. I can clearly picture this expansive landscape of mountains and meadow stretching out before me, with a cartoon-like wooden sign marked by arrows pointing in opposite directions. It’s almost reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, and the moment when Alice meets Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Wonderland at a crossroads, they toy with playful riddles meant to confuse her just as much as guide her. It feels as though they’ve stepped out of their story and into mine, here to make me question which path to take.
I see myself standing, ready to go, but having no idea how long it will take once I’ve chosen the path to follow. Maybe it’s just a short walk. Maybe it stretches on for days. I simply don’t know, and that’s where I think I (we, collectively) get stuck as humans: afraid of what we do not know, and most often staying compliant or passive in what is comfortable and familiar. The old story vs the new, which is more likely to be taken?
If you follow astrological practices, it would seem this feeling of showing up and making a decision is aligned with the beginning of my Saturn Return, and it’s presenting me with a choice. Before I get ahead of myself, for those who don’t know, what is a Saturn Return, really?
As one definition describes it:
“In horoscopic astrology, a Saturn return is an astrological transit that occurs when the planet Saturn returns to the same ecliptic longitude it occupied at the moment of a person's birth.”
And as astrologer Chani Nicholas explains:
“It takes between 27 and 30 years for Saturn to travel through the zodiac, so everyone experiences a Saturn Return in their late 20s, again in their 50s, and in their 80s. Whenever a planet in the sky ‘returns’ to where it was when you were born, it asks you to check in with the themes it represents—and requires you to face how you are (or aren’t) showing up in those areas of your life. Since Saturn is the planet of accountability and wake-up calls, its first return can feel sobering. It’s often after your first Saturn Return that you feel like an official ‘grown-up.’”
It really does feel like I’m drawing up a fresh blueprint for my life, lines sketched, erased, and redrawn, with versions that never made it to completion layered beneath the current draft. Like a house that evolves over time, this phase is about reinforcing the structure I’ve already built while revisiting parts of myself I’ve left to collect dust—rooms I’ve closed off, projects and passions I’ve pushed aside for other paths I wanted to take. I’m grateful that I’ve allowed myself to discover and learn new skills along this current path, each one like a tool I can now bring back to this renewal of self. And I have every reason to believe there’s a purpose to it all, that even the frustrations and challenges have been shaping the foundation I’m standing on now.
Maybe that’s why I write about the past so often, what I’ve experienced, where I’ve been, because the framework of my life feels clearest when I can look back at how it was built. Rarely do I speak of the present or what’s ahead. Perhaps that’s the Pisces in me, navigating with the currents and only making sense of things once they’ve passed. I tend to process in hindsight, looking back into the depths of my mind, where memories rest like water gone still—not transparent, but reflective. And in that mirrored surface, I see more clearly than I ever could in the moment, because I can finally see what I did not know then.
”Confusion clouds the heart, but it also points the way, quite down the mind, and the more the song will play.” This lyric from Trevor Hall's song “ You Can't Rush Your Healing” reminds me of when I was teaching and pursuing what felt like a true passion, when I felt more aligned and confident in my path, even in moments of self-doubt or imposter syndrome. When an ember within me burned strong enough to push me toward what I wanted, and to envision what I wanted for myself, even if I didn’t know exactly where or what that was, I felt as though I was working from a blueprint, an outline I trusted, even when parts of it were unfinished or unclear. That quiet sense of direction used to guide my decisions, and somewhere along the way, I’ve felt myself lose that rootedness in my commitment to stay true to that feeling.
And I feel that’s what this moment—this fork in the road—is asking of me now: to trust the outline again. To return to the ember and tend it, knowing it’s the fire that is intended to light my way forward. To keep sketching the lines as they appear, certain that even if I can’t see the whole picture yet, this is the path worth building.