Starting Over, Musings, and What This Means for Me

Apr 25

Hey everyone, welcome to the new website! The old website unfortunately got destroyed by the algorithms so I’m having to start over. This was, honestly, incredibly upsetting at first considering I spent 14 years and thousands upon thousands of hours + the requisite blood, sweat, and tears to create it.

But I was bashing my head against the wall for over a year trying to fix what I can’t fix since I don’t control the algorithms. So, I eventually had to accept that I had to give it up, and eventually, I got excited by the possibility of a new venture.

I know WAY more now than when I first started that website in 2011. Back then, I was still doing freelance astrology writing, so the website was simply a portfolio to showcase my writing for potential clients. Then it started getting some traffic, and I thought, huh, maybe I can do something with this too.

It was a lot of trial and error and learning as I went along about how this whole “online business” thing worked. I’ve had to learn about marketing and branding (which I actually like!), social media (which I absolutely DON’T), product creation (time-consuming but fulfilling), email list building (ever-changing but great for connecting), and technical stuff like SEO and coding and all that (still have a lot to learn there!).

I’ve found that I enjoy the “business” side of the business, which is kind of rare for us spiritual types. Most of the spiritual entrepreneurs I’ve worked with have great difficulty drilling down on the business stuff (likely because we’re so spiritual, our heads aren’t in the clouds, they’re in the cosmos!). But I’ve got disciplined Saturn in the 1st house of the self and Venus conjunct Mars in the 10th house of career, so it makes sense for me.

The Back Story:

In case you missed it (maybe you were one of the astronauts stuck in space?), another astrologer stole my work and passed it off as theirs. Because their social media following is a lot bigger, the algorithms assumed that I was the fraud, not them (completely discounting my content was more than a decade older).

This made sense with the social media platforms since that’s where their following was; I was surprised to learn that Google now also considers your social media following (most of my website traffic came from Google).

So, traffic started to decline, and didn’t stop. If I kept the site long enough, it’d probably get to zero. While I was able to get the content that was stolen taken down, there is no way to get the algorithms to realize their mistake (unless you know the people at the top of the food chain in those companies, anyway).

Usually when you get hit by Google, you turn to social media to make up for it, but I was shadowbanned on all social media except Youtube (no idea why not Youtube!). I even tried creating new Instagram and TikTok accounts but was barred from being able to. So, social media was out.

I did have an email list, however in a stroke of horribly bad timing, my email newsletter service provider dissolved. See, you can’t use regular email, like Gmail or iCloud, to create an email list (legally). You have to use a service for that. The one I’d been using for over a decade went away, and this happened at about the same time I found out about what the astrologer had done. I was NOT in a good place at that point! (definitely was regretting never picking up a drinking habit . . .)

I tried to migrate my email list to another provider, but was unable to use any of the major ones because they wanted stuff I no longer have with my email list being so old (like all of the opt-in forms and freebies used to sign people up - most of which I hadn’t used in years so they were long gone). When you’re migrating an existing list, you have to get approved, and I couldn’t get approved.

I ended up with a crappy provider that was new and barely functional, so it rendered my email list essentially garbage. And an email list would usually be your saving grace without Google or social media.

So, all combined, it meant the business was dead, and there wasn’t anything I could do about that.

Reflection + Realizations:

This whole experience was absolutely demoralizing. I’d done everything I was supposed to do but still got ruined, and I was the victim! (but ain’t that the way it usually goes?)

I track my own astrology, however I learned a long time ago to refrain from making predictions for myself. It’s just too hard to be objective with your own life. But I did know that Saturn and Neptune moving to Aries would hit my 6th house of work, so I had suspected for a while that there would be some sort of change with my work. Just couldn’t have foreseen exactly what it would be!

I certainly didn’t think I’d be completely starting over. Fourteen years of work down the drain is not something you want to imagine happening.

I started to look back and assess why Saturn and Neptune would trigger this. Where had I gone wrong? I began to realize I hadn’t been fully honest with myself about my connection to the spiritual and astrology community.

So, when I first got started as an astrologer, I was only 19 years old. The kids now are way into astrology and I’ve seen loads of teenagers and early twenty-somethings becoming astrologers, so it seems okay now. But this was 20 years ago, and it was NOT okay to be 19 and doing readings. No adults would take me seriously if they knew my age, so I had to keep to the shadows and hide a lot of my identity.

I don’t care for fame and loathe celebrity, so I didn’t mind that I didn’t become a “celebrity” astrologer (and that most people didn’t even know my name! Not that I kept that a total secret, it was throughout the website; just goes to show how much people don’t pay attention, ha).

But I realized that it started to impact my ability to feel connected to astrology world because I’m not the typical astrologer (I’m mixed race - mostly Puerto Rican; I’m bisexual - mostly gay by now; I grew up dirt poor, and was homeless for a few years). I’ve never really felt like I had a place in astrology world because of this, but that didn’t bother me for a while because I don’t really have a place anywhere with my background so I’ve always been a “freak”. But it started to.

I would say it really started about 10 years ago when I found out another astrologer was a huge supporter of the nameless orange president (I will try to avoid ever writing his name here!) and had a separate social media account with a ton of racist and Islamaphobic content on it.

No, I won’t say who, because I don’t have receipts (I didn’t think to take screenshots and such, and by the time I did think of it and went back, they’d deleted everything). But this is someone very well known in astrology world, consults with celebs, and they definitely know their stuff astrology-wise. But wow, they are a bad, bad, BAD person!

That led me to start seeing more of the racists that were throughout astro world. Many proclaimed love for the orange president, so that made it easy (LOL!).

I also dealt with some crazies over the years. Some essentially cyberstalked me. Some were just random jerks. Some are known, some aren’t. Maybe I should write a tell-all someday, ha!

Then the pandemic happened. My mother, who was disabled and I’d been her caregiver for many years, passed from COVID in 2021. Now, I live in a very conservative part of Florida, so I wasn’t surprised in the slightest by the way people reacted to the whole situation here (or rather, didn’t react at all and pretended like there was nothing to see, nothing’s happening, covering the ears and shutting the eyes . . .).

But I was disheartened to see how many astrologers bought into the anti-science propaganda and were pushing it themselves. I wasn’t surprised by the spiritual types doing it, because they’ve always been at the heart of the anti-science movement (so I generally avoided them). But the astrologers surprised me, and I couldn’t figure out why.

Then credit to Chris Bennan! I was watching an episode of the Astrology Podcast and Chris mentioned how there was this push in the 90’s and early 2000’s by some in the astrology community to try and find a scientific reason for why astrology works.

That’s when it clicked why I was surprised - I got into astrology about 25 years ago, when that push was happening (and I absolutely remember that push). So, the astrologers I was learning from at the time, the various mentors I had and the ones I’d worked with, were pro-science, and I kind of took it for granted that all astrologers must also believe in science.

But that’s definitely shifted since then, and it seems those who are anti-science that have taken over. So, when I announced that my mother had died and how, I lost a ton of followers, and got messages from people insisting it was all a lie.

That hurt! But it was also like, well good riddance, you’re clearly ignorant and mean.

Mean is also something that’s really been a major problem in astro world. The mean girls reign supreme. Makes sense - mean girls, racists, anti-science wackos, oh yeah and I forgot the TERF’s and the crazy Christian Nationalists . . . birds of a feather!

Put it all together, and I essentially realized I had disconnected from astro world without knowing it. And THAT is likely why Saturn and Neptune are making me start over.

Doing It Differently This Time

There is SO MUCH that I have learned, and all of that will be reflected in how I do things differently this time. I’m using a pseudonym instead of my actual name (but those of you who know me are free to still call me my actual name).

I’m going to focus on a blog instead of a big clunky website. It’ll be easier for me to maintain, and I am doing this all by myself (people have always been surprised to hear that, but my Saturn’s in the 1st house and Venus conjuncts Mars in the 10th house!).

By focusing on a blog, I’ll also be able to post content more often. I’m going to do 3 per week for at least the first few months with this venture to bulk up (minus the ‘roids).

I’m rewriting some of the most popular content from the old website to repost here (rewriting should hopefully bypass the algorithm hit). But, most content won’t get migrated over.

I’m rebranding the Youtube channel to this new venture, and will take down most of the videos to focus on Shorts. I was struggling with long-form videos because of my voice (which took a beating after having COVID), so I can bypass that with Shorts (and don’t need to speak at all for most of them!).

If you’re already subscribed on Youtube, you should remain a subscriber since I’m not deleting the channel. But the rest of the platforms? Those accounts will all eventually be deleted since they’re all banned and I can’t create new ones.

You really should only focus on one social media platform at a time anymore (another lesson learned) so it’ll be Youtube for me. I will open another Pinterest account since it appears I can do that for a new site and it works for traffic.

I have to start a whole new email list. I’m not going to do a ton of freebies this time - I was doing WAY too much work for free! That is over! So for now, the email list is gated for only buyers of certain offers.

With Saturn and Neptune making me start over, I’m hoping this time to attract my flock - go away racists, homophobes, transphobes, classists, sexists, ableists, anti-science nuts, entitled mean girls, and lovers of the nameless president! You’re not welcome here!

There might only be 5 of us left LOLOLOL but hey, we’ll at least be sane!

In a nutshell: