Man, I remember it like it was yesterday, even though it was a good while back. I was really in a funk, you know? Just dragging my feet through everything. Work felt like quicksand, home felt like a cave I just wanted to hide in. I was physically exhausted but mentally wired, always running through the same old problems in my head, over and over again, without ever actually coming up with a solution or even, like, doing anything about it.
I’d wake up feeling like I hadn’t slept a wink, even if I’d been in bed for eight, nine hours. My brain was just buzzing, stuck in this constant loop of “what if” and “I should.” I tried to meditate, tried to journal, tried to just… chill. But nothing seemed to stick. It was like I was in a perpetual state of almost-rest but never quite getting there. My projects, both personal and professional, were just piling up, sitting there, staring at me. Every time I looked at them, I felt this crushing weight, then just turned away, thinking, “I’ll get to it later.” But “later” never actually showed up.
One evening, I was just completely fed up. I sat down at my kitchen table, just staring at the wall, feeling utterly drained. I had my old tarot deck sitting there, mostly for decoration, honestly. I hadn’t really messed with it seriously in ages. But that night, I just reached out, picked it up. Didn’t even think about it, just shuffled it a bit, feeling the worn edges of the cards under my fingers. And I pulled one. Just one card, no spread, no big ritual. Just a quick pull to see what popped out.
What Popped Out
And there it was. The Four of Swords, Reversed. I remember just staring at it for a long minute. My first thought was actually a bit of a sigh, like, “Great, even my cards are telling me I need more rest or I’m not getting enough rest.” You know, that typical interpretation of the upright Four of Swords being about recovery and taking a break. But it was reversed, and I knew that meant something else. My brain, already in overdrive, started trying to spin interpretations.
I flipped through a little guidebook I had, just a quick glance at the keywords. Words like “restlessness,” “coming out of retreat,” “release from confinement,” and “ending a period of stagnation” jumped out at me. I reread them a few times, and it was like a tiny lightbulb sparked in my head. It wasn’t about more rest. It was about ending the false rest, ending the stagnation. It wasn’t telling me to go back to bed; it was telling me to get out of it. It hit me pretty hard, actually. This wasn’t about needing to recover from something external; it was about waking up from an internal slumber that I had put myself into.
The Wake-Up Call
That card, reversed, felt like a slap. A gentle, but firm, slap. It was like it was saying, “Dude, you’ve had enough of this pretending to rest. You’re not resting. You’re just stuck. Time to move.” That night, I couldn’t really sleep again, but this time it felt different. Instead of just cycling through worries, I started thinking about small, actionable things. Not big leaps, just tiny steps.
- The very next morning, I actually got up a bit earlier than usual. Still tired, sure, but I made myself get out of bed the moment the alarm went off, instead of hitting snooze five times.
- I forced myself to clear just one small corner of my desk. Not the whole thing, just enough to put my laptop down without piles of papers around it.
- I opened that email I’d been avoiding for a week, and I actually replied to it. It wasn’t a huge deal, just a simple “yes” or “no” really, but it felt like lifting a boulder.
- I started going for a really short walk every day, literally just around the block. Not for exercise, just to physically move my body outside the house for ten minutes.
It wasn’t easy. Every single one of those small actions felt like a monumental effort. My old habits fought back hard. My brain kept trying to pull me back into that comfortable, stagnant hole. But every time I felt that pull, I pictured that reversed Four of Swords in my head. I’d think, “Nope. This is the wake-up call. I gotta answer it.”
Breaking Free
Slowly, ever so slowly, things started to shift. Answering that one email led to answering another. Clearing a corner of my desk led to tackling a small stack of papers. Those ten-minute walks started getting a little longer, or sometimes I’d just stand outside and breathe deep for a bit longer. The key was that I was doing things, even if they were tiny. I was no longer just passively existing in that mental prison.
The mental fog started to lift bit by bit. I wasn’t suddenly a super productive guru, no way. But I definitely wasn’t that person staring at the wall anymore. I started engaging with my friends more, picked up a hobby I’d neglected, and even started a new small project at work that felt genuinely interesting. It wasn’t about achieving some grand success; it was about the act of breaking free from that self-imposed paralysis. That reversed Four of Swords truly was a signal, a nudge, a demand to stop intellectualizing and start living again. It was time to wake up, and thankfully, I finally did.
