Man, I gotta tell you, for the longest time, I completely butchered how I read the Ten of Wands. Like, totally wrong. I always saw it in a reading and thought, “Okay, heavy workload. Too much to do. Gotta push through.” It was always about the thing I had to finish.
But recently, I realized that seeing the Ten of Wands as just a work card is missing the whole damn point. When this card shows up as a feeling, that’s when the real work starts. It’s not about the wands themselves; it’s about the fact that you’re the one carrying them, and nobody asked you to carry them all in that specific, back-breaking way.
My Practice Began with a Collapse
The whole thing started about two months ago. I wasn’t just tired; I was completely fried. Like, my brain was running on the fumes of three too many coffees and the faint promise of a weekend that never seemed to arrive. I was snapping at my kids over nothing. I was skipping gym days because I “didn’t have time.” I was technically “successful” by society’s ridiculous standards, but I was miserable.
I pulled a daily card, and guess what? There he was, that poor, bent-over idiot with the sticks. The 10 of Wands. Again. I usually just scribble “work load” and move on, but this time, something stopped me. I just stared at the card and then looked at my own shadow on the wall. We looked identical—heavy, hunched, heading toward an endpoint that I was too exhausted to even picture.
I figured out that the card wasn’t describing my job; it was describing my body and my soul. It was the feeling. The sheer, thick feeling of burden.
This wasn’t about obligation; it was about self-martyrdom.
Tracing the Source of the Pain
So, the practice began. I decided I wasn’t going to let this card beat me again. I literally treated the Ten of Wands not as a prediction, but as a diagnosis. I had to figure out where the ten sticks had actually come from. I cracked open a fresh notebook—not for client notes, just for my own crap.
I started with the question: What am I carrying right now that I could literally drop?
I didn’t focus on the major stuff—the mortgage, the day job—those were non-negotiable. I focused on the stuff that felt like a secret tax on my energy. I used a red pen and I just started listing every single thing that gave me that ‘Ugh, I gotta do that’ feeling.
Here’s a snapshot of the ridiculous things that were my ‘wands’:
- Stick 1: Running the neighborhood softball league because “someone has to.” (I hate softball.)
- Stick 2: Taking on my old college roommate’s website for free because he was “going through a tough time.” (That tough time has been three years.)
- Stick 3: Being the only guy who knows how to fix the office coffee machine, so everyone calls me when it breaks. (I’m a coder, not a barista mechanic.)
- Stick 4: Keeping up with three different financial newsletters I never read just in case I miss the “next big thing.”
- Stick 5 & 6: Agreeing to two social events I secretly dreaded because of a misplaced sense of loyalty.
- Stick 7, 8, 9, 10: The internal monologue that constantly told me I should be more productive, more successful, and more available. (The heaviest sticks of all.)
The Execution: Dropping the Damn Sticks
The realization was simple: I was a volunteer martyr. I was the Ten of Wands guy because I loved the small, brief hit of validation I got from saying ‘Yes, I’ll do it’ and the subsequent complaints I could make about how busy I was.
It was time to drop the wands. I didn’t ease into it. I needed shock therapy.
The next day, I started firing off emails and texts. I sent a message to the softball league saying I was stepping down, effective immediately. I told the college roommate I loved him, but he needed a professional web guy now. I put a note on the coffee machine that said, “Watch a YouTube video, people,” and I walked away.
It was messy. The softball guy was mad. The roommate acted hurt. The office staff looked confused. For a whole week, I felt a massive wave of guilt, which is just the 10 of Wands feeling trying to sneak back in.
But then, something huge happened. The guilt faded. It was replaced by a strange, quiet emptiness. I had all this time. What the hell was I supposed to do with it? I realized that the feeling of the Ten of Wands was a cover. It was a comfortable distraction from the actual, scary business of dealing with my real, core problems.
Now, when the card shows up, I don’t look at the sticks. I look at the man. I ask myself: Why did you say yes? The card’s feeling isn’t “overwork.” It’s “self-imposed misery dressed up as importance.”
If you feel like the Ten of Wands, you are not a victim of circumstance. You’re just a guy who needs to put down two or three of those heavy, pointless things. Try it. It’s scary, it’s messy, but man, the feeling of that pressure finally lifting off your shoulders? Worth every awkward phone call.
