I have a legal esthetics room in my home. In 2024, I cut back greatly on clients because my reading business was taking off. This year, it just died. I haven't done enough readings this year to consider it any sort of income stream. I do a handful each weekend at The Alchemist, and apart from one or two every couple of months online, that is about it. I kept a small clutch of clients who get Brazilians. They're ladies who have been with me for five years. They don't want to go anywhere else, and I want to keep my foot in my industry, so I don't let them go. But I need to bring more money into this house. I can't be relying on my wife and her pension. So when a client asked if she could refer a male client to me, I said that was fine. I do take male clients; I have no problem with that. Over the last few years, my room has shifted. It became a reading office. I have a lovely 1940s bookshelf that my wife found me on Facebook Marketplace with pull-down glass doors for each shelf. I have put my art supplies and books in it: astrology, Tarot, numerology, witchcraft, and holistic healing books about women's herbalism, Reiki, aromatherapy, crystal work, etc. None of my clients have ever had a problem with my books or things. They know exactly what I do, and for the most part, they are fascinated and full of questions. So why did I do this? Why did I take the personality out of my room? Because I am a little blue dot in a sea of red here in this area. Scratch that; I can't truly be a little blue dot because I can't vote in this country. I am a married lesbian and legal resident (that means immigrant), and a working witch in a sea of people who think that you-know-who is a literal Messiah (I'm not even kidding, and I wish I was) and put the most violent-sounding banners on their homes: FUCK BIDEN I VOTED, Illegals Go HOME, banners of AR-15s pointed at rainbow flags, Bible verses above crossed guns, WE SUPPORT ICE, all sorts of fun things. I'm in NY - the last place anyone from Canada expects to see this stuff, but it's everywhere. My new client is male, Republican; if his Facebook page is any measure of accuracy, he also worships you-know-who as Messiah but is also born-again, and when my wife looked at him, "Oh yeah, he is so far back in the closet he closed the door and slid the key out under it." Closeted members of the treehouse who throw themselves at the church and worship a dictator because it'll keep them from "choosing" incorrectly are dangerous people, just so you know. Part of me wishes I hadn't said yes to taking a new client, but the part of me that needs the money and sees this person as a potential source of free advertising for more clients has tied up that other part of me and stuffed her in my sock drawer for now. After a night of tossing and turning and no sleep til nearly 4am, I had my morning coffee at 8:30 and commenced with rage-cleaning this room and stripping it of most of my personality. In a last-minute fit of rebellion, I took the astrology, Tarot, and numerology books I use the most as references when I write, and put them on the very bottom shelf where they are nearly invisible. The rest are stacked neatly in shopping bags... in the closet. The irony is not lost on me. What's front and centre are the holistic healing books (these folks have fallen right in LUUUURVE with the "safe" parts of the New Age and witch communities), my knitting and crochet books, and my art supplies (I still do the occasional pet portrait). Sigh I have to remind myself that this isn't the torture that it feels like; when you own a salon, you can't fill it with your personality - you're in business, you have to keep beige for the clients. That's just how it is. Personal and professional have to be apart. The part of me that got stuffed in the sock drawer this morning pokes her head out long enough to chant: Hide the things, go back in the closet, be safe. I already don't like being the "OK" gay person that the ultra-conservative people here know. "We know you're OK, it's just those other ones....you know, the ones that want to trans the children - that's who we don't like." "You're OK, you came here legally, we like you." I'm patently aware that I am whining more than a little bit. Ack! I was really doing what I loved for a couple of years, too, and being able to have my cards and books out where I could see them, not stashed away in the basement in boxes because there was nowhere to put them, that felt wonderful. It felt like I was home. This makes it feel like a Band-Aid being torn off. Going back to the business of building up a clientele to wax arses feels like such a huge failure. I'm not going to lie, I enjoyed two years of not having to spend every day listening to clients in this room talking out of their arses about world issues they know not a fucking thing about. I need to pry myself away from this laptop and get back to the business of finding my customer service voice again. Aaah, universe, why can't you send me clients that are kind and good and open-minded? /end complaining.