I’m up at “midnight” after sleeping a good 3 hours, and found a great article on astrology, which has given me some more career insights.

http://www.astro.com/astrology/in_dgtenthhouse_e.htm

Think what you will of astrology, but the language and discussion around its concepts has shed more light onto my life than anything else, other than direct observations from people who know me well.

Regarding the 10th house:

““What’s my life direction? Is it time for a change? Am I in the right field?” Into the 10th we’re pushed and prodded more than any other area of life. Meet someone new and you can’t help asking a 10th house question: “What do you do for a living?”

“The Midheaven represents the Sun’s culmination, its highest reach on the day you were born. Correspondingly, it signifies how high you can go this lifetime.”

Even though, as the author of this article admits: “in deathbed scenes, people rarely express regret [nor] gather comfort from their career choices… Rarely do the dying obsess about 10th house things.”

But what really hit home was this insight: “Whatever the sign in your 10th house, you’ve got to grow your professional image beyond your childhood strategies and take your place in the world with maturity and strength. To do this, you must take a journey as old as myth. Just getting older won’t do it. You have to kill the king, or in modern parlance, face the boss…Modern astrologers give Saturn the natural rulership of this house. Saturn is the planet of authority. And claiming your authority is THE 10th house passage. A child has no choice but to listen to its authority figures. An adult must grapple with these figures, good or bad, and overtake them.”

She goes on to talk about authority, and how others treat you when you have it, which I have experienced: “Some days it seemed that mythical parent-child battles were all that was really going on. Become an authority figure and you’ll quickly find this out. Your intentions are misperceived, your praise is never enough, your criticisms are exaggerated and devastating. In fact you’re not really you at all, but some god or monster, depending on their filter. If you want to be liked, forget it, because everyone really does need to kill you in order to grow.”

I like the concept of claiming your authority as a crucial career-defining step, however. It’s empowering.

It reminds me of an activist I worked with over the past few years, who had a message for me to pass on to my CEO(s): “Leaders need to lead.”

We must resolve our childhoods and claim the ground we want to step onto. This is part of becoming “who you want to be when you grow up.”

And it seems fitting as I enter my 35th birthday, and begin another new job. Will I finally step into my Taurus moon, and give the Gemini act a break? Yes, I’ve done oh-so-many interesting things and have oh-so-many interesting stories, but it may be time to settle into my now-better-known better qualities and take off from there.