Sometimes I wonder what will happen to influencers and social media stars in the coming years. It really isn’t a career that you can grow with. Sure, there may be sponsors and advertisers, but I’m just wondering how any of these people plan to have their brand evolve. Most of them are just people without PR, lawyers, or others to help keep them from doing the exact things they kind of have to do in order to keep getting attention. I can’t see the eighteen-year-olds doing this now growing with the job, and not just because of cancel culture, but because I’m trying to imagine these people as 28-year-olds doing the same schtick for an older, more mature, far busier audience who doesn’t have time to sit around watching videos all day or the same disposable income they once had.

I don’t have a lot of hope that Gen Z is going to escape the economic trap laid out for Millennials, and I think that they too are going to leave college and enter an endless cycle of debt and low wages unless we do have a revolution which will then make influencers irrelevant. The facial cleanser subscriptions you can afford as a teenager become prohibitively expensive when you’re paying off school loans with a full-time job and a side gig, especially if your side gig is also attempting to be an influencer.

As interesting as makeup tutorials are, I’m much more “French” about my makeup and beauty routines these days, and frankly, if you don’t have the right eye shape, then you really can’t do most of the stuff you see in makeup tutorials anyway, so I’m pretty much alienated from just about every video except the ones Bobbi Brown has done.

But I think it’s more than that. Influencers who are successful seem to have to be in the here and now and forget about the future, and these videos are not like a good joke or a good novel: a video full of quick takes of you burping and farting between attempting to learn to bake a cake by yourself doesn’t age well. So the question is: what do you do after you have to stop doing this career?

But I look at former vegan influencers who tearfully confess that they began to eat meat to cure the illnesses that their vegan diets brought on, and then the world refusing to let them change their minds, even if they did it to save their own lives.

The idea that you should suffer and die so that some other species does not die only makes sense if you’re not stuck in a mortal coil on this planet, but I think it’s less about the logic and more about the feeling of betrayal when a vegan influencer evolves and changes into someone who makes a tough choice between life and philosophy, and that kind of pressure only works on someone who shares the philosophy.

Get mad at me for killing cows? Dude, you don’t even know what weirdness I get up to in my spare time. There’s things going on that would probably scare you more than the steak I had for dinner.

And I’m particularly interested in influencers and Youtube personalities because there are just certain jobs that the general public can’t understand that you’ve walked away from. For example, traditional actors and models who become lawyers operate in a world in which we know that the actor or the model are playing a role and taking instruction to do their job. On the other hand, the influencer and the Youtube star appears to simply be themselves, and it would be hard for me to sit in the office next to someone who spent their teen years making videos of themselves pranking their parents, getting drunk on camera and finding out the hard way that they can’t get away using saying racial slurs, or trying and failing to do the simplest of tasks or eating like a fucking pig and calling it mukbang, because it would be very difficult for me to *not* think this person is the person in those videos.

I hope someone else is handling their money for them so they don’t ever have to get regular jobs, and I don’t mean when they’re 40, I mean when they’re like 24, 25.

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As a person who represents many teen clients, I understand better than they do how important it is to not be judged based on the decisions you made as a teenager when you don’t really have a concept of the future or that you will not be as an adult the way you are as a kid. Not that they listen to me. No matter how many times I tell them that the BuT WeEd Is A pLaNt NoT a DrUg argument doesn’t mean shit when the law is that you’re supposed to have none of it in your possession and none of it in your bloodstream unless you have a medical card and there’s a parent or legal guardian who has a medical card to purchase and administer it to you, and only non-smokeable forms, they still think it’s brilliant…as if they came up with that stupid shit all by themselves. Whatever you think about marijuana philosophically, and whatever the state’s attorney and the judge think about marijuana philosophically doesn’t make a difference.

But they don’t listen to me, and why should they? I’m only the lawyer, and I’m saying things they don’t want to hear. Then, they ask me if I partake myself, as if that is some sort of justification. I obviously don’t answer the question, because it’s irrelevant. I’m 40, it’s legal for me to use it in Illinois, and I’m a fully functional adult with no legal or psychological problems who can obtain it at a dispensary. Is that hypocritical? No more hypocritical than drinking alcohol but still thinking my 16-year-old clients shouldn’t be getting drunk because that is also illegal. Would they care? Definitely not.

And it’s not true that all marijuana-related crimes will automatically be expunged. If it’s still illegal to do it now and if it’s not a one-off conviction and/or there’s no reason to think you’re not going to do it again, then it won’t be expunged. I’ve had more than a few kids tell me that even if they get in trouble for marijuana that it will just be expunged automatically.

But you can see how much I never want to be a criminal defense attorney, dealing with clients who think arguments that don’t even address the elements of the crime are somehow clever and become more clever the louder you deliver them, and that a judge is just going to magically violate the rules of the judiciary and let them off despite essentially admitting to the crime?

Thinking something shouldn’t be a crime isn’t an actual defense to a crime. Philosophically it is, but in practice, it is not. This is why you don’t see people bringing up appeals based solely on philosophy. The law has to be a violation of a right. This is why we need to teach civics in high school. You may not use calculus ever, but you will have to make a logical argument at some point in your life, if only to save it one day.

But I still have a feeling I will get at least one comment or one email by someone wandering onto my blog and trying to argue otherwise, peppering their sentences with legal jargon used incorrectly, because god love the Internet.

So that’s how my week’s been going. How about you?

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I’ve had a career I started as a youngster disappear entirely.

I had a career in publishing that crumble and fade away, but it wasn’t because I burped and farted my way through the jobs but rather because people don’t buy print magazines anymore, and independent publishers rarely if ever mass produce and distribute print magazines. No one saw what I did, so moving on was relatively easy. No part of my identity was wrapped up in periodical circulation. But we do live in a culture where you’re not relevant if you’re not being seen, which troubles me, because I write, and writing isn’t necessarily a look-at-me-go vocation.

Actually, most of them aren’t, and the pressure to somehow pound your particular vocation into a one-size-fits-all hole is real.

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And I’m really just talking about the successful influencers and the successful social media personalities all together, but all together, we don’t let people grow up if they put something on the Internet: even if it’s from seven, ten, fifteen years ago, if it can be found, it’s treated as if it was just posted, and frankly, for the children finding this stuff, it may as well be just posted today. Even if it’s not controversial, it would be kind of difficult to switch to a career in say, corporate law, if there’s a bunch of videos of you on the Internet sitting on pizzas or crying over something some other moron said in another video.

I have to ask myself: are they really owning this behavior for all time, even when they can’t do this anymore? And how do you evolve from there?

Because that is integral to legacy: destroy or evolve.

No matter what you do with your life, you will have to change and grow or stagnant and die. Reasonable people will not expect you to be at 41 the way you were at 21 if they know you and care about you as a real person, but if your livelihood depends on a persona, how do you manage that? I genuinely want to know how someone in the spotlight who creates a persona that will live for all time so long as there is media allows themselves to be true themselves and grow as a person, knowing full well that success was built on embodying something you’re not anymore, or perhaps never were and are sick of pretending to be?

Because in the end, when you’re dead and there’s no one left to remember who you really were, what are you leaving behind? Do you care? Because deep down, most of us do, because we really cannot comprehend our own deaths as a irreversible event when our bodies, our minds, and especially our influence disappears from the Earth. That’s why we make wills and trusts. That’s why we donate money to get our names put on things.

It’s the reason we have children and give them our surnames.

But really: your legacy starts when you’re alive. It’s of no real use to donate all your money after death to get a hospital named after you when no one else knows who the fuck you are and why they should care about you. What you will be known for is what you do or what you have done.

Look at your 8th house to find your legacy.

So this is also not my favorite topic, because doing the astrology, you take the ruler of the 8th house and see where it is by sign and placement and go around the horoscope. My 8th cusp is Scorpio, which has a traditional ruler and a modern ruler. The modern ruler is Pluto, which is intercepted in the 7th house, the only planet in an air sign, and it makes no major aspect to any other planet. It’s ruling planet, Venus, is at 00 Capricorn conjunct the Midheaven in Sagittarius.

This means that my legacy (8th house) will be wrapped up (intercepted) in my spouse’s (7th) legacy, who the public will take notice of (Venus in the 10th) because of his career (Capricorn), even if my career is also notable (conjunct the MC) for my many experiences (Sagittarius),

If I use the traditional ruler Mars, Mars is in the 6th house exactly conjunct the North Node in Virgo, and the cusp of the 6th house is Leo, and the Sun is in 9th house Sagittarius, squaring said Mars. The ruler of Mars, Mercury, is in the 8th house.

This means that my legacy (8th house) is in all my hard work (Mars) to help others (Virgo) which is my destiny (North Node) that I identify with (Sun) as it may help teach others (9th house) my philosophy or ideas (Sagittarius). However, it is my words and thoughts (Mercury) that is what will carry on (8th house). I don’t believe there will be any monuments or a star on a sidewalk for me, and that’s just fine because those things are useless bird-shit collectors anyhow.

By the way, when you have a traditional ruler and a modern ruler, instead of picking and choosing randomly, here’s a method to reconcile them:

The traditional ruler is personal and the modern ruler is impersonal. In the above scenario, both of these may occur, it’s just that I create one of these myself (Mars) and the other is dependent on what the world thinks (Pluto). I’m still going to have my own legacy even if most people don’t know about it or know about it right away. And that’s fine; I tend to pair off with ambitious men because I feel very uncomfortable dating or feeling out a guy who doesn’t really have any passion outside of a relationship because then I feel responsible for both of us (Saturn in the 7th conjunct the DC) to fix that (7th house Virgo), and men who want nothing out of life surprisingly also don’t want to be motivated.

There is also the possibility that I never marry or partner off again (but I really hope not), and that it turns out that my legacy just disappears into the legacies of the people I help.

Oh well. I’m still paying the rent right now.

But enough about me for once, right? What, you like it? Awesome. Me too.

Here’s the basics:

Find the 8th house. Look at the sign on the 8th house cusp. If there is an intercepted sign, then follow the next instruction. Find the planet ruling the sign on the cusp and first, determine the house. That is the area of life you will make your legacy. Then, look at the planets or points in the house. These are the way you will do the things to make your legacy. You can keep doing this until you understand the story.

Do not under estimate dispositors. They will tell you more of the story than planetary aspects.

But what about planetary aspects?

Planetary aspects will inform you of the things helping or challenging the way you do your legacy. They augment, but they don’t apply their own energy directly. For example, if your 8th house ruler is Jupiter and Jupiter is trine Venus, you will find that women will be helpful to you and generous when it comes to your legacy, and that you may find that art and beauty is naturally a part of your legacy or that people see what you leave behind as beautiful. Or you may find that people will contribute monetarily to your legacy. This doesn’t mean that your legacy will be art or beauty as if Venus is ruling the 8th house or is in the 8th house.

What about planets in the 8th house?

Yes. Planets in the 8th house will inform you as to what you do/what people/what energy becomes your legacy. For example, I have Mercury retrograde conjunct Uranus in the 8th house. Even if I do a lot of nice things for people, the fact that I say strange, disturbing, occult-related, and unfeeling things will inevitably also be a part of my legacy. In fact, it could be that the occult or writing weird stuff is the thing I end up doing to help people.

Or, my legacy may suddenly change and it’s out of my control, like being murdered and then having a law named after me.

But you can still have a legacy without planets in the 8th house so long as there are people left on Earth to remember you.

Now, I do wonder about that: what legacy does a hermit have who dies alone with no one else knowing or caring, and no one ever stumbles upon their bones, or their shack, or the giant stack of journals containing their crazy ass occult manifesto that no one will ever read?

I guess you’ll have to find out when I’m dead.

What about signs intercepted in the 8th house?

Treat the intercepted signs the way you would treat signs intercepted in any house. There’s two signs there – one that is obvious and on the cusp, and one that operates entirely within the sign that is not readily apparent to people. Do the same math around the zodiac to determine the story for both but consider them the same story. The intercepted sign just sort of comes out of you, almost as if you have no control over it.

In the 8th house concerning legacies, if you an intercepted sign, and especially if there’s planets intercepted in that house, you will a legacy that you can’t control. For example, let’s say you have Cancer on the cusp of the 8th house but Leo is intercepted in the 8th house, too. The legacy you’re trying to make is Cancerian in some way, but inevitably, a Leonian legacy also comes out of you even though that’s not what you’re trying to do.

What about family legacies?

This involves the 4th house as well, but it’s not out of your control. The Hitlers are ending their bloodline, for example, but Donald Trump, Jr. is going to live and die doing everything he possible can to get his father’s and will likely die never getting it. Each life you live gives you an opportunity to decide if you’ll have a family legacy or an individual legacy.

Do you have to die in order to have a legacy?

Kinda. I mean, if you fake your own death, then it’s possible to have a legacy.

But I don’t wanna die, Miriam.

Sorry. No one actually does, not even the suicidal. And that’s a normal feeling, to want to rage against the dying of the light, because life is programmed to avoid death.

You do have some control over how you die, and I’ll probably be blogging about that at some point, if I can allow myself to write about the astrology of death.

Rick’s birthday is coming in five days. Maybe I’ll be thinking about it then.