Bye!
Fuck, you guys, I’m gonna miss you.
Two weeks ago, after I sent out the last post, some friends and I had a mini celebration. There was pie and a screening of episode two of Are You The One? (~~~sexually fluid season~~~) and my friends got me just drunk enough to be allow myself to be convinced to play “drivers license” on guitar at 1:00 in the morning. (Sorry, Astoria.) It was all new-ish friends, people I hadn’t known when I started Pop Tarot in September of 2019, and I found myself not quite sure how to explain to them what this had meant to me. In September of 2019, I was still in bipolar year one. No longer in constant crisis, but still constantly on the edge of crisis. (Also, and I totally forgot this until I went and looked at the date just now, I had gotten dumped like the week before I sent out the first post.) When I started Pop Tarot, I promised myself that, no matter what, I would send something out every week, even if it sucked, even if the rest of the week was just trying to function. And I fucking did it (with one exception). I’m more proud of that than I can begin to try to express.
I’m proud of a lot of shit, actually. I’m a much better writer than I was when I started. I’ve never written anywhere near this much, or anywhere near this regularly. By the end, I was no longer ashamed of the posts I didn’t think were good, which is lit. I’m truly honored to have gotten to share the guest posts. Like, really, genuinely honored. Also, humbled. Y’all are incredible. And there’s so much I’m just generally happy about. I made friends! I’ve never done that not irl before! And I’m in a coven with some of them! It’s extraordinary! I’ve had the honor of reading for some of you, and being read for by some of you, which has been an absolute joy and a kick in the ass.
Thank you— thank you— for reading Pop Tarot. That even a single one of you read one post is so meaningful to me. I hope it has made your witchcraft a little more of whatever you needed it to be. I hope you’ve learned new shows and books and songs. My genuine greatest hope is that there is at least one person who, through the course of reading this, is a little less abashed about loving low culture. And I really hope you stay in touch. You can find me @james0ctober on Twitter, and my website has a contact form. Tell me if you watch Black Sails or The Untamed! Tell me if you run into a song that reminds you of a card! Tell me if you watch a show that makes a card finally make sense!
Housekeeping: I’m gonna shut off paid subscriptions after I hit send on this. I did not make much money off Pop Tarot, but it wasn’t none, and I’m nervous about losing that income. If you never paid for Pop Tarot (or if you have some extra $$ and want to throw it my way), you can do that @james0ctober on Venmo and Cash App and at jamiebeckenstein [at] gmail dot com on PayPal. I didn’t link to my The World playlist last time, so here it is. And shout out thank you to Isaac Fellman, Calvin Kasulke, and Charlotte Wang for helping me edit that last post.
A final self-promo paragraph: hi! Hire me for things! I would like nothing more than to read for you, and I read on sliding scale, including barter. I also read for groups of all sorts, and at events (people remember parties with tarot readers, is all I’m saying). I teach tarot lessons individually and in small groups. Some non-tarot stuff you can hire me for: writing, oral histories (individual and institutional, if you’re curious but also like wtf just reach out and I can explain more), dramaturgy (mainly new work), sensitivity reading for trans stuff, queer stuff, and mental illness stuff, and Trans 201 trainings (for when your workplace/ group/ whatever knows the basics but not how to apply it to their lives). You can also buy a book of spreads I created here. I am looking for part-time work, remote or in NYC, hmu if you’d got anything.
I’m bad at endings. I always have been. So I’ll end on a repeat, something that it’s really important to me that you take with you. Seriously, for real, from the absolute bottom of my heart: thank you.