Your Natal Moon and Your Creative Rhythm
I just spent the last two weeks talking to creators about their struggles and needs. When asked what they thought they needed to do in order to be a successful creator, the answer by far was to create consistently. Almost every person expressed discontent with their creative rhythm, as if it wasn’t good enough, or smooth enough, or just…enough.
This fascinated me, as at least in my experience, the creative process isn’t linear or consistent. Why would we demand it be otherwise? So, this led me down a consistency rabbit hole, exploring what it really means and if it’s even necessary. Spoiler alert: I think consistency is overrated.
There’s so much pressure, especially in the content creation and entrepreneurship world, that consistency is king, and that it’s the key to growing your audience and business. And I agree to an extent. You need to build trust with your people, and showing up regularly helps people not only get to know and trust you but remember that you offer products and services that can help them. But if it’s so important, what’s so hard about being consistent?
Defining Consistency
The first problem? We don’t know what it means. When asked what consistent meant to them, most people I talked to were unable to answer the question. It seems that, for many of us, consistency is this nebulous, undefined concept that just makes us feel bad about ourselves. How can we meet a goal that we’ve never defined?
Take a moment and check in with yourself. What does creating consistently really mean to you? What does it look like practically? What’s the output? For example, is it posting one new blog per week? Is it sending a newsletter once per month? Is it posting social media content three times per week? What’s the actual channel and frequency?
Poking Holes in Consistency
The second problem? Consistency only works for a little while. Most of us are just not wired for it. Consistency isn’t the answer. Sustainability is. Forcing yourself onto a rigid content creation calendar when you have fluctuating energy (newsflash: that’s most, if not all of us) is unkind and gasp unproductive.
Be honest. Remember when you said you were going to do that new habit every day? You kept up the charade for a few weeks, maybe even a month. And then…crash and burn. You didn’t do that thing for many months, or maybe ever again. That’s what chasing unrealistic consistency will do.
My creative rhythm is choppy. I work best in bursts of high activity followed by lulls of low to no activity. There’s nothing wrong with this. And it’s in my best interest if I leverage this rhythm and learn to work within it instead of villainize it. Again, I can fight against it for a while, but then it all comes crashing down, and I don’t create anything for a whole quarter while I recover. This has to stop.
Creating the Illusion of Consistency
How can we succeed in a market that demands (and rewards) consistency when we are gloriously and consistently inconsistent? (Said with love.)
Something that’s working for me is creating the illusion of consistency externally while actually working within my choppy and unique creative rhythm behind the scenes. Just because you want to publish one blog post per week doesn’t mean you have to write one per week. You can publish consistently and produce inconsistently. Try separating publishing from producing. Let me explain.
If you have a creative choppy flow like I do, try batch creating. When you have a surge of inspiration, don’t limit yourself. Allow it to crest. Allow the wave to get as big as it wants and ride it. Draft five blog posts. Record five podcast episodes. Record three videos. Don’t try to ration your creativity and save some for later or try to be “balanced.” Creativity is not balanced, and that’s okay. Then, when the wave recedes, recede with it and just rest 100% guilt free.
The key to making batch creating work is that you aren’t batch publishing. I see you. I know you’re excited and want to post all of those shiny new Instagram reels at once. Don’t do it! Creating the illusion of consistency requires you to hold your horses and drip out your creations on a weekly, monthly or bi-weekly cadence—whatever your definition of consistent is.
Trusting Your Flow
The biggest objection I hear to just resting when you feel depleted is: What if my creative flow never returns? This fear is real. We’re terrified that inspiration will never strike again. But it always does.
To build trust in your own creative flow, I encourage you to become its student. Begin studying those moments of peak inspiration and energy and note the details surrounding it.
What phase and zodiac sign was the Moon in?
If you have a menstrual cycle, what day were you on?
How did other personal variables like sleep, food, movement and mood play a part?
After studying flow for a while, step back and find the patterns. Eventually, you’ll be able to predict creative flow, which will allow you to sink even deeper into rest when you’re in an ebb. Predicting flow is another blog post altogether, but I just wanted to pique your interest and let you know what’s possible.
Your Creative Rhythm and Your Natal Moon
It’s official. It’s time to decondition from the pressure of consistency. It’s time to embrace the fact that you have fluctuating energy, and it’s time to create systems that work within these fluctuations instead of work against them. Not only is the creative process nonlinear, it’s unique to each person. My process is different from your process, and your rhythm is different from my rhythm.
One way to begin exploring your creative rhythm is to use your astrology chart for clues. There are lots of places in the chart we could look to for information on energetic capacity and creative flow, but I think the most vital one is the natal Moon. In astrology, the Moon represents the body, its fluctuations and innate rhythms. This includes motivation, energy and the desire to create.
Understanding your natal Moon’s phase and zodiac sign can help you not only logically understand the way your energy is designed to move, but develop compassion…and then get strategic. Now that you know this, what systems can you design around this natural flow?
Moon Phase and Creative Capacity
Your natal Moon’s phase is like a light dimmer. It turns energetic capacity up and down. If your natal Moon was big and bright at birth, the theory is you may naturally have greater bandwidth (there’s always exceptions). If your natal Moon was dark at birth, you may need more rest and buffer time in your schedule. Of course, this is an oversimplification, but a good place to begin.
The darker Moon phases are the last quarter, balsamic, new and waxing crescent.
The brighter Moon phases are the first quarter, gibbous, full and disseminating.
If you have a darker Moon, it’s imperative that you don’t try to keep up with conventional definitions of consistency. Your “assignment” is to fully embrace your energetic ebbs and don’t reject yourself when you’re in one. Building trust in your flow should be your number one priority.
But I don’t want you thinking that bright Moon people have it easy. Oh no, my friend. They’re equally likely to burn out. Because their light is bright, they tend to think they don’t need rest and overdo it. They also tend to over publish and give all their goodies away at once instead of holding them back and publishing consistently. They have trouble knowing when enough is enough.
Moon Sign and Creative Capacity
You natal Moon’s zodiac sign helps describe its unique mode of operation. It’s either cardinal, fixed or mutable. Cardinal Moons excel at getting things started. Fixed Moons excel at keeping things going. And mutable Moons excel at ending or transforming things.
Now, each of these have potential problems too. Cardinal Moons may struggle to finish their projects or even work on them once they get out of the shiny-object stage. Fixed Moons might tinker on their project forever and never let it see the light of day. And mutable Moons might destroy or drop their projects prematurely when they have a new idea pop in.
Cardinal Moons (Aries, Libra, Cancer, Capricorn)
Cardinal Moons create in quick bursts. Don’t force your cardinal Moon to sit for marathon writing sessions. And don’t feel guilty that you “only” wrote for twenty minutes. When a cardinal Moon is focused, they can get an enormous amount of work done in a short amount of time. Just like a cardinal Aries Moon might be attracted to high intensity interval training, play with the idea of high intensity creativity training. “Consistency” for a cardinal Moon looks like working in sprints and retreats.
A great strategy for cardinal Moons is to batch quick drafts. When you feel the surge, and you’re in the flow, pick a handful of topics you want to develop. Set a timer and sprint write on one topics for twenty minutes (or shorter), and get as much as you can on the page. Take a short break, open a fresh document, and do it again on the next topic. Leverage your Moon’s super power of initiation and get started on as many blogs or podcast outlines as possible in one sitting.
When it’s time to finish an article or a project, use the same quick-burst strategy. Pick one outcome or task that you want to focus on (no multi-tasking here) and set a timer for twenty minutes (or less—twenty is an arbitrary number I chose). Rapid-fire work on the task until the timer goes off and then take a break. Taking a break is the most important part. Don’t force yourself to be a completionist and finish the thing in one sitting. It’s okay to break the project up into pieces!
Fixed Moons (Taurus, Scorpio, Leo, Aquarius)
Fixed Moons have a hard time getting started, but once they do, they have a hard time stopping. These Moons are so very stubborn and will demand long stretches of work from themselves, beyond their stopping point. It’s true that fixed Moons are able to work for longer stretches than say cardinal Moons for example, but that doesn’t mean it’s beneficial. These are the Moons that fit most cleanly into the classic productivity models, but just because they can play the part, doesn’t mean it will support them long-term. A fixed Moon knows it’s been overworking itself is when it doesn’t want to create for days or weeks (or months!) on end. An ideal fixed Moon rhythm is either a little bit every day, or on for a few days and off for a few days. It really depends on the rest of the chart.
“Consistency” for a fixed moon also looks like embracing their desire to obsess over one thing at a time. Fixed Moons are typically the type of people who want to finish a project all in one sitting. And depending on the project or the business model, this might be something to embrace. For example, instead of multi-tasking many projects at once or handling many clients at once, maybe you go deep and intense with one client at a time, or with one project at a time. Instead of forcing yourself to work with a handful of web design clients over several months, maybe you just work with one over two weeks. Or in my case, instead of forcing myself to finish my book and see clients simultaneously, I shut down my calendar for the last month so I could focus on writing. Fixed Moons are kind of intense in this way. They like to dig deep and just get the thing finished.
Mutable Moons (Gemini, Sagittarius, Virgo, Pisces)
Mutable Moons may have the most variable energy of the bunch. They have bumblebee energy and tend to flutter from flower to flower or idea to idea. Mutable Moons are natural multitaskers, and instead of villainizing the multitask, I encourage you to explore how you can juggle multiple projects and still stay on track. A mutable Moon will feel uninspired working on one thing, while a fixed Moon may feel like that’s a breath of fresh air. At least allow yourself to juggle two project simultaneously as a mutable Moon. Give yourself options, just not too many or you’ll freeze and not do anything at all.
Let’s pretend you’re a writer. What typically happens with a mutable Moon is that when the article begins to feel hard, they abandon it and start a new one. Instead, just expect this and have a backup article to work on. When one article begins to feel crunchy and isn’t flowing, hop to article number two. Trust that flow is somewhere, you just have to find it. Allow yourself to task switch, but limit the number of tasks you have to switch to so that you don’t dilute your effort. It’s a fine balance of accepting your natural mutable energy but not letting it run the show.
“Consistency” for a mutable Moon might look like doing a little bit of everything every day, but intentionally and with purpose. That definitely goes against conventional productivity advice. But it’s not working for you, so why not try something different? Again, the key here is to cap your options so that you don’t go into what I lovingly call the mutable infinity swirl.
Moon Aspects and Creative Nuance
And finally, there’s aspects that your natal Moon makes to other planets. These aspects augment and add nuance to the way your creative and physical energy flows. For example, even a bright moon in a tough aspect with Saturn will experience a feeling of limited energy. Or maybe a dark Moon in aspect with Jupiter actually has way more capacity than you’d expect. Again, there’s so many possible combinations. It’s best to get your chart read by a professional.
Here's a brief rundown of lunar aspects and how they may change your creative rhythm.
Moon-Sun
This is your natal Moon phase which we’ve already discussed a few paragraphs up.
Moon-Mercury
This combination needs more variety in their routine. Their creative rhythm pivots and changes quickly and is similar to a mutable moon.
Moon-Venus
This aspect’s creative pace tends to be more relaxed. Using conventional productivity techniques, especially timed techniques, will make a Moon-Venus feel stifled.
Moon-Mars
This combination is like a revving engine. These Moons tend to work most efficiently in short bursts. It’s not built for marathons
Moon-Jupiter
These Moons typically want to say yes to everything! In most cases, Moon-Jupiter is really enthusiastic and tends to bite off more than it can chew.
Moon-Saturn
This combination really thrives on structure, even if they resist the idea of it. Without a structure (read: a flexible, mindful structure) a Moon-Saturn will report feeling “blocked.”
Moon-Uranus
This is a classically choppy and unpredictable creative rhythm. It strikes like lightning and then goes days without a storm.
Moon-Neptune
If I were to draw a Moon-Neptune creative rhythm it would be a swirl. This is one of the harder ones to pin down. Creativity tends to come like a mist and then disappear gradually.
Moon-Pluto
This creative flow tends to come in intense chunks. A Moon-Pluto grabs onto a project like a dog with a bone and doesn’t want to let go.