Recently I took the train to the country to see my friend perform with her choir.

We got there an hour before the performance, and her choir mate exclaimed - “I can’t believe it’s sold out!”

“Sold out? I don’t think I’ve even bought a ticket yet!”

I went around town, bought a hot dog from a sausage sizzle, sat down for coffee, then walked back to the local church half an hour before the show start time, questioning why I didn’t just follow them straight into choir practice since I did not have a ticket and did I just travel two hours to miss this performance that has been in my calendar for the last five months?

As I walked up the hill towards the front entrance, unsure of my game plan, wondering if I should find a back entrance in, a staff member sees me approaching and asks: “are you here with the choir?”

“Yes I am”

Well. Technically. I am with the choir, I’m just not IN the choir. I was wearing a black top for Saturn’s Day (Saturday), coincidentally also the choir’s uniform that day.

She nodded, then pointed me to go straight and turn right.

I walked through the big church doors, spine straight and what I can only muster as a blank expression on my face as my heart started beating faster walking past three other staff members guarding the entrance.

I walk into the church hall where the choir was already practicing and slink into the corner, hovering around the front row pretending I was almost ready to join them on stage, trying not to look shifty but definitely looking very shifty if anyone was actually paying attention.

~

The thrill of getting away with something, that mischief, that naughty feeling of lying and like oh I got away with this when I am not supposed to?

“How am I getting away with this?”

“This isn’t even a big bad corporation why are you being dishonest with this cute community festival”

I’ve been thinking a lot about what we do not allow ourselves permission to feel, to be, to do.

The voices that read like crowded thoughts in our head on what is permissible, what is allowed, how we should behave, what we should be doing with our time, attention and energy.

Evoking the little one in us afraid of getting in trouble with the ‘authorities’.

To go against the rules, to lie, to be ‘mean’, to grumble like a hater, to talk too much or not enough, to be selfish for once in your life, to be judgmental and get mad and be all the things you were implicitly or explicitly conditioned not to be.

Aries is slipping you a get-out-of-detention note to move beyond the constraints of what is ‘good’ / what is ‘bad’ and how your body should inhabit space and place and react in real time.

Your resistance to being bad and doing the wrong thing feels so familiar it’s almost familial.

If you’ve been feeling that stagnancy of: why am I doing all the ‘right’, ‘good’ things I was told to and yet life still feels on hard mode - this April may bring that exact heat you are seeking to move through the stickiness you are sensing right now.

When Mars enters Aries on Friday and conjoins Neptune on Monday, imagine doing something for the thrill of it - eat that hot cross bun you’re not supposed to, leave the laundry in a chaotic pile for two weeks straight, smoke that ciggie you told yourself you wouldn’t (again), call your ex even though your friends think it’s a bad idea, sneak in to that very fancy estate with a swimming pool, walk up to that cute stranger and say hey wanna go get some hot cross buns?

May you feel more leeway in your bones to do whatever the fuck you want, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

The secret sauce to remember is this: you already have the skills to course correct and respond accordingly after, even if the ‘outcome’ isn’t what you are hoping for.

The thrill of freedom is seeing what happens when you wriggle through all the made up rules and expectations that don’t always make sense to you.

If you’re game, reply to this email with a mini naughty report! I wanna hear about how you did something cheeky lately x

♡ Rachel