I booked a solo trip to Bali 🏝️

and I can't stop crying ⌇ the Sagittarian urge to live out our dreams

· ✧ ˚ this is a pretty experimental one. proceed with caution! · ✧ ˚

I’ve been thinking about dreams a lot lately.

Not just the ones you lie in bed with, but that you carry in real life.

They whisper in your ear, telling you things only you can hear. I want this. Her life looks so good. Why can’t I have that? Do I even deserve that?

Yes yes yes. But it’s funny — we spend so long living in scarcity that we forget it’s OK to want for more. That desire is a sign that you’ve grown too big for the container you have built around yourself, and it’s your birthright to push the envelope. To see what else is out there.

I have a lot of Sagittarius energy in my chart — I was on a call with a dear friend, and I told her I felt so sick of my life:

“I wake up and then if I have a reading, I prepare for it but otherwise I putter around the house and have no idea what to do with myself.”

“Of course you’re going stir-crazy,” she says. “Of course you wanna blow up your life. You are meant to be out there, pushing boundaries. Having a 9th house sun is wanting to taste the smorgasbord of life. You need to fully live it out.”

me in Bali circa 2017 for a family trip ✷

I have no idea what I want because since the pandemic, the adventuring, seeking, risk-taking part of myself has lain dormant. Silent. Afraid. She’s too afraid to even explore a new café, let alone a new country. This feels so terrible to admit because I have a Sag moon and I am always telling people to ‘get out there’, but it’s true.

I’ve stagnated. And it feels horrible.

“I feel like I am stuck, and have no idea how to break out of it. Break up? Move? Burn my entire life to the ground?”

As I was listing out these options I covered my mouth in shock. I have only ever known chaos and scarcity, so of course I want to repeat those patterns. Try to break up with Shawn to get my freedom back, when in reality he has never once restricted me. He only loves, and gives, and the nest he has built for us is so warm and safe that I find myself stuck in it. Drowning in comfort like quicksand. But this love is only a sanctum, not a cage. And I hold the keys to my own liberation. 🪽

"What do you want right now, more than anything in the world?”

Since coming in contact with my Desires during Scorpio season, it has been an endlessly rotating buffet of want. I want to get f★cked standing up in a janitor’s closet. I want to travel the world. I want a red love, a hot love, something new to keep me warm. But I also want stability. Reliability. Someone who’s on my team, who remembers my doctor’s appointments and picks me up from the airport at 2AM. I want it all. But there is one thing that takes precedence.

Travel.

Freedom.

Adventure. 🏝️

When I look at all the women I admire, whose lives I want to emulate, whose names give me a sharp pinch of envy — they all share one trait in common: They are out there, living their lives. Exploring foreign lands. Tasting new sunsets.

The want is like hot lava in my belly. It fills my lungs until I almost choke on it. 🫦

I want to travel again.

I want to see the world.

I want to weave my luggage through the terminal like a pro.

I want to buckle my seatbelt and hear the captain say, “Prepare for take off.”

Somehow, over the past four years, I gave my joy away. I told myself to settle. To be safe. The world was in chaos! People are dying! Just keep your head down and focus on building your new astrology business and everything will be alright.

But the funny thing, the crazy thing is, I spend all day telling people to go after what they love.

After a while, it takes a toll on you. It alters your brain chemistry. It helps you believe in the endless possibilities of life. 🌀⭐️

Your natal chart is a star map with a star-spangled arrow pointing straight at your truest desires. Some of us want so desperately to be seen, to be creating, to be sharing our work. Some of us want to love deeply, fully, to lose ourselves in partnership and emerge as One. Some of us want to nurture families, build careers, invest in community.

Me? I just want to be of the world. In it. Losing myself in the endless beauty of every passing moment. Living each second to its fullest.

I thought I needed to stay put for a love to last. But I’m learning now that there is no love if we are sacrificing the truest, deepest parts of who we are.

I am a Sagittarian soul. My Moon asks that I wander. My Sun asks that I explore. I am always gathering wisdom, always experiencing, always getting that little bit closer to the Truth. The Truth of my desires. The Truth of my life.

“Go, my love,” he looks at me, brown eyes honeyed with knowing.

“Go, now. And be free.”

I booked my tickets to Bali last night.

I couldn’t stop crying.

Bali was the last place I traveled to in December, 2019. It was the last place in the big, wide world I’d been to before the lockdowns.

It feels so special, so sacred, so poignant, to head back there again.

As a woman. As a practitioner. As a seeker.

4 years. It’s been 4 years since I traveled alone. 4 years since I navigated airports and transfers and schedules by myself. I have never done a full-on solo trip before. It’s been 4 years since I boarded a plane to someplace new.

My heart feels full to bursting.

I cannot wait to begin. ⌇

I find it so hard to accept that I can have it all — a loving partner, and a life of adventure. Comfort, and novelty. A stable foundation, and an ever-changing vista.

No one said it would be easy. No one said it would be handed to me on a silver platter. But I can choose it. It CAN be my life, if I want it bad enough.

And I do. I do.

And so this time next week I will be ringing in the New Moon in Sag on a foreign land. Tasting new sunsets. And I will look around with tears in my eyes, and say:

“Finally. Finally. We’re here.” ⋆˙⟡

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What desires are whispering to you? What dreams have you left on the shelf?

Maybe it’s time to take them off it.

Happy Sagittarius season, my friends. Did this piece resonate with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. This post is free, so I’ve opened the comments to all. I love you so much!

— Gwen

The Asian Astrologer 🪐

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