virgo dates.

My Virgo friend Andrea takes me on a trip to the hot springs.

6:16 A.M.

andrea

by

renee

Angela, who we met at the hot springs.

renee by andrea

May 30, 2024

WATCH

the spring workshop

THE SEASONS SERIES:

The “Seasons Series” is a seasonal workshop all about how we can realign ourselves with the cycles of nature to manifest the visions that we have for the year. The premise is to use the Spring Equinox as the start of the new year rather than starting in January with winter. Using the metaphor of “seed planting” we leverage the energy that each season provides to nurture our seeds into fruition.

1/4: The Spring Workshop

Happy New Years!

March 25, 2023

The Spring Workshop was the first workshop of the series.

This is where we began to think about the seeds that we were going to plant in spring.

Getting ready before the guests arrive.

My friend Stacey helping me set up.

-A mini workbook and writing prompts to help get us thinking about seeds we wanted to plant for the year.

-Microdoses provided by Farmycology.

-A pack of wildflower seeds

The details. Workbook designed by Nicole Lewis.

Going over the qualities of each season.

Spring: rebirth, new growth, balance, creativity, seed planting, setting intentions

Summer: action, outward energy, growth, gaining experiences, socializing, collaboration, creation

Autumn: harvesting the fruit, celebration of all your hard work, full circle lessons, finishing up last minute things before winter

Winter: rest, downloading, envisioning, internal reflections, nesting, clearing away the old to make room for the new coming in spring

Photos: Ashley M. Garcia

Brain dumps and brainstorming. Writing about the seeds we’re going to plant this spring.

Jemma

Megan

Angie

Finishing off with a new years sound bath. Speaking affirmations toward the group as I played.

Photo by Stacey

A new years toast with non-alcoholic bevs from a brand called Recess!

Footage and photo from Budderfly

Thank you to this beautiful group!

I can’t wait to check in on the growth of your seeds at the Summer Workshop!

To read my own personal experience with the development of my seeds this spring, click here.

spring lessons

For Those Who Don’t Know Me:

My name is Renee Rodriguez and I’m a freelance photographer from Los Angeles. I’m navigating the seasons of life as an early 30 year old using the lens of spirituality, nature, art and astrology to make meaning. This blog is a documentation of that.

I mention “planting seeds” a lot. Seeds is just another name for ‘goals’. Spring 2023 is when I planted my seeds (set my goals) for the year and this blog is also a documentation on the progress of those seeds. I’m tracking my way back to my creative nature.

After spending almost all of my 20s in a state of internal reflection, this year I knew I had to push myself to start taking more external action. But this proved to be harder said than done. This entry is recapping the challenges I had this spring when it came to taking action and how I overcame it.

Thank you for reading! :)

2023 SPRING LESSONS:

Spring: March 20 - June 21, 2023

Aries, Taurus & Gemini Seasons

Spring was a lot harder than I expected and a lot of times I found myself wanting to go back to the hibernation of winter. The darkness of winter was my cozy place to dream while spring proved to be the grounding reality check. Here is everything I learned in spring about making the hard transition from dreaming to doing.

3/25/2023: I hosted The Spring Workshop", where we “planted our seeds” for the year. This is where I made some big declarations. Big talk!

1. CYCLE 1: Aries Season Takeaway

   The start of spring after a long winter can feel invigorating- like you’re ready to hit the ground running. But the onset of spring does not always guarantee clarity or immediacy of action.

   I had planted some big seeds at the start of the year and I knew exactly what I wanted my life to be like. I was excited and so sure I would hit the ground running. So when I felt stuck it was frustrating and underwhelming. Even though I knew that this was only the first cycle of the year and longevity is what I had just taught at the Spring Workshop, I still couldn’t help but be annoyed that working on my seeds wasn’t effortlessly immediate. Aries represents “rebirth” and however exciting this may be, birth is uncomfortable and foreign. You don’t feel right at home on the first night in a new house. At this time, I was also loaded with client work so it was hard for me to work on my creative seeds anyway. Eventually, I just let Aries season be a time to assimilate to the new energy of the year. But still, I wondered when clarity of how to approach my seeds was going to unfold. At the time I didn’t compute that the lack of clarity and ease was the beginning of my challenge in learning how to go from dreaming to executing. As an Aries Sun and a triple fire sign (Sagittarius moon and rising) who loves to start projects but has trouble following through, these lessons of learning to finish things has been a theme all my life. Despite so much shadow work in the last 6 years, this was the one thing I still hadn’t cracked. Now looking back at the beginning of spring, maybe I subconsciously thought I could skip these lessons and move straight to my seeds. Now I realize that these lessons had to be first and foremost. This was one corner I could no longer cut. I didn’t know it then, but energetically this challenge was physically materializing behind the scenes and by the time Taurus season came I had plenty to work on.

3/25/2023: The Spring Workshop. Writing our seeds. Seeds is just another name for ‘goals’. The Spring Equinox is the start of the natural new year so we took this time to essentially set our “new years goals”.

My official seed list before I laminated them. This is the list I look at every week.

2. CYCLE 2: Taurus Season Takeaway

When you set your intentions/plant your seeds with conviction, this can sometimes create a reaction in your life that will make everything go wrong before it can go right.

I had planted some big seeds at the Spring Equinox and not too long after, structures that have been working for me for almost a decade started to fall apart.

I knew I had to figure out how to address my weaknesses of inconsistency and lack of follow through, but honestly I didn’t know how. I had just spent my 20s diving into shadow work, so when it came to working on consistency and discipline more internal reflection felt counter intuitive. I knew that the only way to break these habits was through physical work. And yet, simply taking consistent action on things was so hard for me to just do.

It wasn’t until the first day of Taurus season (and also a day before mercury retrograde) when I had messed up a memory card on a really important shoot that I was triggered off. It’s not the first time it’s happened and it sent me into a spiral. It started a back and forth dialogue where I was scrutinizing my skills and talent, wondering what I’ve even been doing the last 6 years to still mess up like that. I questioned what I was building and why I wasn’t driven or excited about it anymore. It seriously made me consider if I even wanted to pursue my photography professionally anymore. It was the shadows of what I still felt about myself and my talent finally bubbling up.

The next week, as I was still processing everything, one by one big gigs that were already scheduled started to cancel on me. I couldn’t believe the timing. The previous week I was considering quitting and it was almost like I got what I asked for. I was anticipating a fruitful summer and in a flash, that reality was gone. For the first time ever, I found myself financially barely above water. On one of those days I even got a letter in the mail saying my rent was going up. It felt like things went from 0 to 100, real quick. It was peak Mercury Retrograde, the losses kept coming and even though the situation was getting dire, I just could not kickstart any drive. This was the craziest part to me, you’d think I’d hustle up but I just couldn’t. It seemed like overnight the old ways of doing things expired and I was at a crossroads to choose different. It was clear that everything was a result of my inconsistency but further than that I realized that my inconsistency was due to never truly committing. I never committed because deep down I knew that I wasn’t really following my dreams. I had lost connection to my authentic creative nature when I made my art my business. Having misplaced motivations caused me to be half in, half out with everything I did. I think of what author Steven Pressfield calls a “shadow career” in his book, “Turning Pro”. He writes,

“Sometimes, when we’re terrified of embracing our true calling, we’ll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar; its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us. Are you pursuing a shadow career? Are you getting your Ph.D. in Elizabethan studies because you’re afraid to write the tragedies and comedies that you know you have inside you? Are you living the drug-and-booze half of the musician’s life, without actually writing the music? Are you working in a support capacity for an innovator because you’re afraid to risk becoming an innovator yourself?” (pg.13)

The seeds that I planted at the top of the year were in support of me finally following my calling - whatever form that may take. In order for me to step into that, an old paradigm had to be dismantled before I could move forward. I realized that in the past I had attempted to fix the consistency problem with motivations that were inherently misaligned, which is why it never stuck. Of the many downloads Taurus/mercury retrograde season gave me, one big one was that I needed to start believing my creative business and how I support myself could be one in the same with my soul calling. Eventually I realized that what was happening to me was the opportunity to merge those things. These were my creative seeds growing. Everything going wrong was scary, especially with my finances. But slowly my ego let up and so did the fear, something started to remind me that this wouldn’t be forever. I had to hold onto that. I finally saw that the universe was gifting me an opportunity for a complete reset. I would be sifting through all of this for the rest of spring and into early summer before I could emerge new again.

Live from my Taurus Season Pity Party. This was the start of what I’m now calling my HUMBLE ERA. haha. A note from my boyfriend 2 weeks before he’d leave his 9-5 job to start freelancing with me. At the same time of one of the lowest points in my photo business career, my boyfriend happened to be thriving with growing his own video/photo side hustle. It was pure divine timing for him to leave his job when I needed support the most. Among the many downloads I got during Taurus season ‘23, one of the biggest was that I needed to stop trying to do things alone.

4/25/23: First official day in the Babe Cave.

10 minute workouts on Youtube.

The affirmations I’d see every time I’d hit the Babe Cave.

3. CYCLE 3: Gemini Season Takeaway

Starting an unknown path will always feel hard in the beginning. Actions taken at the beginning feel fragmented but with trust and persistence, a picture will surely form.

Coming out of Taurus season into Gemini season did not mean I was out of the tunnel yet. I was having a pity party all Taurus /mercury retrograde season and even though I knew I had to make moves, I was still stuck in thought. I was still very much in a negotiation with the shadows I knew I had to let go of. There was an anger toward myself for getting in that situation and it was this anger that prompted me into the Babe Cave, the little home gym I created in my garage. For once in my life I viewed working out, not as a means to looking good, but as a genuine release. Aside from creative seeds that I planted this year, I also planted seeds for my physical health that I nicknamed the “Body Codes”. I thought that if I couldn’t put action into the creative seeds just yet, I could at least go to work on the body codes. At a time when I couldn’t see how I was going to come out of this hole and ever make my dreams happen, the one thing that gave me hope was how I started to feel when I worked out. As I released the stress and anger, I’d catch glimpses of my potential starting to peak through and it kept me going. I wrote affirmations on the mirror and zoned in on my reflection during workouts. This helped me remember who I am when I’m not overthinking. Pure fire and absolute potential.

It was a way of building momentum in my life and regaining command. It all started with committing to 5 minutes of working out a day, I strategized by telling myself to start from absolute scratch so that I could ensure longevity. I set the bar low on purpose and I didn’t place high expectations nor overthink on what I was growing. I only focused on the present moment during my workouts, using each rep and each minute completed to represent a point toward building up my self trust again. I realized that I spent so many years tending to my head and heart that I forgot about actually moving my vessel. Energy had grown stagnant in my body and no amount of inner work was going to change that. I had to move. This had proven to be the theme across all parts of my life and I was using the body codes to kick start it all. My inner fire had weakened and the only way to relight it was through activating my body. Over the course of Taurus season, I maintained these 5 minute workouts until they turned into 20 minute work outs and those 20 minute work outs eventually turned into 45 minute workouts. By the end of Gemini season I was not only seeing progress in my body but I also witnessed myself maintain something for more than a month. I hadn’t seen myself do that for anything in so long. On so many levels the body codes was a way to prove myself again. It showed me how I could recreate the same experience with my creative seeds. I started to trust that if I accessed momentum with the body codes when in the beginning progress was so far away, I could definitely apply the same trust to my creative seeds. And so finally, a week before summer and with mercury retrograde coming to an end, thinking time was finally over. All of spring I couldn’t help but feel paralyzed on making moves with my creative seeds but actually I was right on time. My breakthrough was happening right in line with nature as she entered into her most active season of the year.☀️ Using the confidence I built with the body codes, I pulled myself out of victimhood and I finally dove in on my creative seeds with action. The body codes unlocked in my body the remembrance of the flow state. I realized if I wanted to access the same flow state with my art, I had to let go of overthinking and inauthentic motivations once and for all. Just like with working out, I told myself I could start small and without expectation, not as a means to an end but rather as a way to release bottled up expression.

Gaining confidence and momentum.

Left to Right: Early Taurus Season to Early Cancer Season.

BeReal: reneeforprez

Cycle 3, Gemini Season: Breakfast. Telling my boyfriend Robert about the inspiration for a blog.