Standing on the ledge of a new day, and I’m feeling a little bit better today.

My morning started out hilariously: I got woken up by a phone call, it rolled to voicemail, and I followed up later. And yep, it was tied to my previous work. It wasn’t “ha-ha” funny so much as “you can’t make this up” funny.

Here’s the thing I tried to say before my contract got terminated (and couldn’t seem to get anyone to sit down long enough to actually listen): when you walk into a new situation with known issues, you don’t start by swinging the axe. You start by looking around and building a working map of what’s actually happening.¹

The framework comes first

Call it due diligence, call it basic common sense, call it “don’t make yourself the main character in someone else’s mess.” But organizations are messy for reasons, and half the time the reason is invisible until you do the slow work of paying attention.

In plain terms: people inside a workplace are constantly doing “sensemaking” — building a shared story of what the situation is and how to act inside it.¹ If you ignore that and make unilateral decisions with major impact, you might get your quick win… but you also might detonate the very knowledge you needed to fix the problem.

Unilateral decisions have a hidden price tag

The hidden cost is usually organizational memory: the “how we actually do this” knowledge that doesn’t live in manuals, but in habits, people, relationships, routines, and workarounds that exist because reality doesn’t behave.³

And once you lose it, you don’t just lose a person. You lose the shortcuts, the warning signs, the lived experience, the institutional “don’t do that, it breaks everything.”³

This is where knowledge-management people start talking about tacit knowledge — the stuff you learn by doing, not by reading.⁴ You can’t spreadsheet your way out of losing it. You either respect it and transfer it, or you pay for it later.

So if your decisions cause a loss of corporate knowledge because you didn’t bother to understand the environment first? Honestly? Too bad, so sad. That bill is yours. The system didn’t “mysteriously” fail. You pulled the supports out and then acted surprised when the roof sagged.

What “listening” looks like in the real world

Here’s what I mean when I say “build a framework” — not theory for theory’s sake, but practical steps that prevent self-inflicted chaos:

• Run a short “discovery lap” before changing anything: observe the workflow end-to-end, at the hours it actually runs, not the hours people pretend it runs.
• Interview the people doing the work: ask what breaks, what slows them down, and what they’ve already tried.
• Create psychological safety for bad news: if people get punished for speaking up, you’ll only hear what’s safe to say, not what’s true.²
• Capture tacit knowledge on purpose: shadowing, checklists, “if-this-then-that” notes, and a real handoff process (not “good luck”).⁴
• Track reciprocity, not just output: workplaces run on exchange. When one side only takes, trust erodes and effort collapses.⁵⁶

That last one matters: respect isn’t a motivational poster. It’s a currency. And when leadership burns that currency, people stop spending effort.

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Tarot (not as prophecy, but as a focusing tool)

Now, the next part of this post: I’m getting back into tarot readings.

Some folks treat tarot like a GPS for the future. That’s not how I use it. For me, tarot is a tool to focus thought — a structured way to lay out what I already know, what I’m avoiding, and what I’m ready to admit. In psychology terms, you can think of it as an expressive or projective method: images and symbols act like prompts that pull meaning up and out of you.¹²¹³

So: not divination. Not doom. Not a verdict. More like a mirror with a flashlight taped to it.

The spread

• Past: The High Priestess
• Present: Four of Wands
• Future: The Hermit
• Me (Querent): Queen of Cups, reversed

Reading it as “what’s moving underneath”

Past – The High Priestess: This reads like a season of watching, sensing, and knowing things without being able to get anyone to acknowledge them. The Priestess is the “behind the curtain” card — intuition, withheld information, subtext, and the quiet awareness that not everything is being said out loud.⁹¹⁰

In other words: I saw patterns. I tried to have the conversation. The room didn’t want the conversation.

Present – Four of Wands: This one is a breath of stability. It’s a “base camp” card — the idea that you need a solid platform before you build the next thing. It’s also about community and small wins that remind you you’re not just grinding for nothing.⁹

For me, that reads like: rebuild the foundation first. Celebrate the parts that are working. Reclaim a sense of home in your own life, even if the bigger structure is still under renovation.

Future – The Hermit: The Hermit isn’t loneliness as punishment — it’s solitude with purpose. It’s stepping back to find the signal under the noise, and then moving forward with a lantern instead of a torch.⁹¹⁰

Translation: there’s a “quiet season” ahead that’s actually useful. Less proving. More clarity. Less reacting. More choosing.

Me – Queen of Cups (reversed): This one hits the nerve. Upright, she’s emotional intelligence, compassion, and deep attunement. Reversed, she’s what happens when the cup overflows — compassion fatigue, absorbing everyone else’s weather, and losing your own center.¹¹⁹

So the question I pull from this isn’t “what will happen to me,” but: where am I pouring myself out with no refill? Where am I trying to emotionally carry things that should be shared, delegated, or simply not mine to hold?

What I’m taking from this (today)

If I stitch the whole spread together, this is what it says in my language:

• I wasn’t wrong to want the framework first (High Priestess). I was reading the room accurately.
• I need a stable base again (Four of Wands) — practical support, small wins, and a real sense of “home base.”
• I’m heading into a clarifying phase (Hermit) where I stop chasing noise and start choosing signal.
• And I need boundaries that protect my emotional fuel (Queen of Cups reversed), because burnout isn’t always anger — sometimes it’s numbness wearing a trench coat.

Godspeed.

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Footnotes (APA)

1. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. SAGE Publications. ↩
2. Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999 ↩
3. Walsh, J. P., & Ungson, G. R. (1991). Organizational memory. Academy of Management Review, 16(1), 57–91. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1991.4278992 ↩
4. Nonaka, I., & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. Oxford University Press. ↩
5. Cropanzano, R., & Mitchell, M. S. (2005). Social exchange theory: An interdisciplinary review. Journal of Management, 31(6), 874–900. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206305279602 ↩
6. Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25(2), 161–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/2092623 ↩
7. Pollack, R. (2019). Seventy-eight degrees of wisdom: A tarot journey to self-awareness (New ed.). Weiser Books. ↩
8. Waite, A. E. (1910). The pictorial key to the tarot: Being fragments of a secret tradition under the veil of divination. William Rider & Son. ↩
9. Greer, M. K. (1984). Tarot for your self: A workbook for personal transformation. Red Wheel/Weiser. ↩
10. Semetsky, I. (2006). Tarot as a projective technique. Spirituality and Health International, 7(3), 187–197. https://doi.org/10.1002/shi.252 ↩
11. Clinton, E. (2024). Divining the self: Applying tarot as a projective technique in counseling (Educational Specialist thesis). James Madison University. https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/edspec202029/97/ ↩