It was 2015. I did a Tarot reading for myself. I picked a card to represent my Desires and then I drew cards to see my Expectations and my Needs.
The Expectations card was the Knight of Cups. My first thought was, "I expect someone to come rescue me."
It was like a punch to the gut. A bitchslap even.
I hated that it was true.
I had work to do.
I started offering Psychic Bitchslaps to my clients, and I got to work unpacking that bit of myself that expected someone to rescue me and set out to rescue myself.
I got out of the toxic marriage I was in at the time, I built a business on my terms, and I even bought a house.
That "business" is basically just me babbling on social media and gathering people who want to support more of my babbling on social media - which turns out to be enough people I've been able to live on their donations/tips since 2019.
"No one is coming to rescue me," is a lesson I had to learn. That expectation someone was going to come rescue me was subtly affecting my behavior and hindering my efforts to make real, lasting changes in my life.
It still took me a couple years to move out of the cramped living situation I was in, and another few years to finally let go of that shitty marriage, but I eventually did.
And only once I gave up that expectation of someone coming to rescue me.
I watch the American political circus, and I'm reminded of that reading and that phase in my life.
The expectation that someone is coming to rescue us, and the way that affects behavior on a grand scale.
Except there's no one coming to rescue us. The Blue Wave Fervor that's sweeping the social media platforms right now is superficial hope. Necessary, yes, but not a real fundamental change to the system that will truly benefit the masses - far better than the alternative, but still status quo.
We have to save ourselves.
How?
By trying things.
Because reality is we don't really know what's gonna work to dig ourselves out of this mess our ancestors drove us into.
Right now, I'm exploring crypto and web3 and seeing a LOT of possibilities there, but I don't yet have the skills and knowledge to say for sure that's the way. A way, perhaps.
There is no one singular way to a future where we can all thrive.
But one hard truth is that no one is going to build it for us.
We have to build the world we want to see ourselves.
And the permissionless possibilities of web3 make it that much more possible to try new things and see what might work.
I've got ideas forming - I see DAOs as a potential way to build virtual villages that are economically viable and sustainable as small, autonomous communities with a collective purpose. You don't have to belong to one, and you only need commit what you can and are willing to commit. With the Moxie experiment happening on Farcaster, as well as the ongoing experiments with tipping tokens, we see new ways that people can begin to build sustainable incomes outside of the mainstream financial and employment systems, which are more and more failing us and driving us to seek new solutions in the first place.
This technology is giving anyone with access to the internet the ability to experiment with building new ways of connecting, building community, and participating in economy.
That's revolutionary.
I dig it.
Gwynne
