birthday sale & sexy friction

hello, friends. today is my birthday, and as i'm not a huge birthday person (at least when it comes to my own birthday), i find it way more fun to offer some discounts and special offers, as a way to say thank you for reading, supporting, and being here with me. i also wanted to share some thoughts that have been rattling around in my brain, which i hope are useful and inspiring for you here in november 2026.

first, the birthday sale:

1. not a paid subscriber to my newsletter? let's fix that! with meta cannibalizing itself and social media becoming increasingly exhausting to navigate, my newsletter truly is getting my best shit these days — everything is made by me, i never use AI, and i make sure that every single thing i send you is packed with resources, insights, and tools to keep you engaged with your cards. plus, paid subscribers get access to private discount offers, my wonderful discord server, and are the first to know when i'm cooking up something new.
   
   use discount codes birthday-bronze, birthday-silver, or birthday-gold for 20% off your new monthly newsletter subscriptions, from now through november 11th!

2. curious about my hermitage membership? wanna come bitch about the world card with other amazing tarot readers? this membership is permanently locked at $66/month, but starting today you can get a little discount if you pay for three months at a time. just select the three-month subscription option at checkout — and current hermitage members, you can adjust your payments to a three-month schedule too, anytime!
   
   (wanna gift somebody a hermitage membership, or any of my other products, for the holidays? you can do so via my website, or by emailing me at 3am.tarot@gmail.com — a three-month membership makes a great gift!)

3. struggling with court cards? impatient for my newsletter to tackle court cards (i promise we will in 2028! swords is next year!) and wanna get into 'em now? my popular series order in the court includes lectures, exercises, spreads, and hot takes on all sixteen court cards — and can help you feel excited to see them pop up in your readings, instead of irritated or confused. get 25% off this resource with the code BIRTHDAYCOURT, now through november 11th!

whether you take advantage of any of these offers or not, i sincerely thank you for being here, for reading these words, and for supporting a queer trans writer in a very scary time. i'm so glad you're here.

i've been thinking a lot about fire and friction lately: about the things we let ourselves be passionate about, about the ways we self-censor, about cultural obsessions with cleanness and purity and conformity. in part this is because we're in election season here in the united states, where politicians are too often expected to defer to big money and israel and the military industrial complex; where being too passionate or righteously angry or caring too much is somehow seen as unprofessional.

it's so fucking annoying, y'all.

the internet is a store, but it used to be a library: it's becoming harder and harder to connect with people, and the rise of AI means that even if we see something that moves us, or read something that we enjoy, we have to catch ourselves and try to figure out if it was made by a human or by a bot. it's dehumanizing, both to us as viewers and consumers but also as artists, as writers, as creators, as people, to not be able to simply feel first. we have to be constantly on guard, questioning motives, challenging reality, wondering if what we see and taste and hear and feel are real or not. who is performing, and who is simply living?

what is fueled by messy passion and monstrous need, and what is simply generated to try and turn a profit?

tension and friction and conflict too often get a bad rap. so much of AI slop, of political greed, of prioritizing power over people is really about trying to smooth things over, control outcomes, and ensure that certain people never have to deal with discomfort of any kind.

why bother being bad at something if you can just tell a computer to make something you can claim is yours? why bother trying to advocate for other people when you can just tell yourself that everyone is only out for themselves anyway? why bother doing something in the dark when those who are constantly in the light get all the glory?

the desire for comfort, for ease, and for stability are at an all time high. and it's not like i don't get it — i want all of us to have more than enough, for everybody to have access to good food and clean water and free healthcare and safe housing and real community and ongoing support. but wanting to not have to survive in a system that is actively trying to destroy us is not the same thing as being afraid of tension, avoiding friction, or evading conflict. allow me to explain:

tension is good. it's sexy. it's anticipatory. it's engrossing. it's captivating. tension is being stretched out and lengthened, engaging with force in a tactile way, a feeling of tightening and extending. tension can bring both expansion and release, can show us where stress lives, can help us identify where softness is useful and where it's actually detrimental. tension is potential.

friction is fun. it's active. it's warming. it's activating. it's hungry. friction is rubbing up against something, rocking back and forth, a sensation of resistance and movement and opposing forces pressing into each other. friction is what lets us make progress, challenge what is front of us, find out what we're made of, strengthen our desire, reach a desired conclusion or climax. friction is useful.

conflict is interesting. it's generative. it's exposing. it's vulnerable. it's exciting. conflict is butting heads and interrupting hearts, putting ourselves on the line, standing up and burning hot. conflict is a chance for us to be our full selves, to let our desires and needs and hopes and fears show, to fight for what we want and clash with those who stand in our way. conflict is striking.

you really wanna live a life without any of these things? without tension and pressure, without friction and desire, without conflict and growth? i sure as fuck don't. i don't want a life of stillness, of stagnancy, of plateaus. i don't want to be lethargic or passionless, never willing to put myself out there or say what i believe in or demand what i deserve.

sure, i want rest. i want ease. i want stability. i want to not worry about every goddamn election season for the rest of my life. i want to be able to choose when i work and when i don't, to take my time and chase my passions instead of feeling like a shark who will die if they stop swimming. but that's not the same thing as never wanting to be pushed, never wanting to be challenged, never wanting to grow.

bring on the fire, i say. bring on the friction. i'd rather live a life of messy, conflicted, human passion than live in a world without heat, or tension, or color. i'd rather have relationships that push me to be better than friendships too fragile to bear any strain. i'd rather write things with typos than not write at all. and i'd rather be brave enough to be wrong than to only do things when i'm sure i'll do them perfectly.

when i think about passion and conflict, about the freedom to burn for something, i think about the four and five of wands. but when i think about the figures of the tarot who are willing to do the damn thing, who have fire in their bellies and hearts on their sleeves, i think about two cards in particular: the page of wands and the knight of cups.

as i explained to some friends the other day:

i see pages as running wild and seeing where they eventually end up, while knights are running hard with a little more focus and want others to see them doing it. pages are interns, curious types who are jumping into a new arena and want time and space to figure it out on their own terms. they're less concerned with rules or traditions, with how everybody else is doing it — they want the chance to experiment and explore, to take risks and make mistakes, to sort things out in their own way.

knights on the other hand are apprentices, and they want to be witnessed in their efforts. they are trying to make a name for themselves, to share what they know and what they can do, to be admired and appreciated and praised. where pages want to do their thing and get to be little gremlins fucking around on their own, knights want interaction, growth, expansion, and tension.

and what's beautiful about these two kinds of figures is that both pages and knights are completely fine ruffling feathers, pissing people off, or creating tension. it's not necessarily their goal, but if it happens, it's fine.

pages don't mind conflict, because they don't necessarily care what other people are doing, or how they're doing it, or why they're doing it. pages want to figure things out for themselves, to experiment and explore, to try. and knights don't mind conflict, because a reaction means someone saw their efforts and had a feeling about it, had a response to it, built a relationship with it. knights wants to be noticed, engaged with, attended to, even if the result is messy or unresolved.

the page of wands and the knight of cups are both wildly passionate, deeply devoted, strange and sensual creatures who love hard, burn bright, and are willing to go down swinging. the page of wands is the embodiment of raw passion, someone who wants to chase after their biggest dreams and boldest hopes, who is at home in the fire and the heat and the friction. and the knight of cups is a living love song, someone who isn't afraid to be seen in their vulnerability and tenderness and neediness, who swims with joy through the rough rapids as well as the cool, still waters.

these are figures we can look to when tension or friction or conflict start to feel like dirty words, when we want to be brave but aren't sure what bravery might look like, and when we find ourselves restricting our passions or reducing frictions at the expensive of our humanity.

i wanna be messy and human with y'all. i don't want a world filled with AI slop or emails that people couldn't be bothered to write themselves — i want weird, awkward art. i want half-finished songs and poetry fragments that are overwhelmingly vulnerable. i want films that make me cry, stories that make me laugh, games that make me feel, experiences that make me dream. i want big emotions and big ideas and big ambitions, big swings and big risks and big opportunities.

i want too much, because i don't think that's a real thing. and i want it messy, authentic, filled with sexy friction and delicious tension and the kind of conflict that pushes us to be even more too much than we already are.

it's my birthday, and i simply wouldn't be my nosy, curious, obsessive self if i didn't end this little missive with a bunch of questions. so today, i ask you:

what are you burning for? who lights you the fuck up? where are you safe to be passionate, to generate heat, to express an opposing view or a messy feeling or a hungry need?

what kind of crucible or threshold or crossroad are you in right now, and what does it mean to you? where are you being stretched thin, pulled in two directions, pressed up against something you aren't sure you want anymore? where are your desire and fire leading you, and how often do you ask them?

and — what are you thinking about making, or doing, or saying, or trying, and what is getting in your way? what point of friction or inner conflict are you calling an obstacle, that might actually be a starting line? what tension are you shying away from, when you should really be chasing it with all your might?

wishing you a year of passion, friction, courage, and compassion, friends.

and remember that if you'd love to hang out with me and some other amazing tarot readers on november 22nd to bitch and moan about the world archetype (and also to dig into our relationship with the tarot overall), couples counseling: tarot edition is open for enrollment! snag your seat here, or sign up for the hermitage and get access to this live workshop along with over $2k additional resources to transform your tarot practice.

know someone who might love my work? forward this email to a pal or two and invite 'em to join us! 🖤