Ex-Pros: why did you give it up?

Why stop?

I financed a good part of my college education by reading. I culled my client list and kept a few regular customers after I graduated, and I enjoyed it for the most part.

As I focused more on my career, reading the cards for others just sort of... fell away. I have to say though, it was at times exhausting. Dealing with other people's stuff gets old. I even stopped reading for myself for quite a while. I needed a break from everyone else's drama.

olivia1 said:

I quit because I want tarot to be fun and these people were stressing me out to the fact that something I once enjoyed turned into a job that I dreaded

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This is actually the main reason why I quit doing free readings. I was doing 30 a week, no problem - I actually ended up setting a limit of 30 a week as it was taking over my life. I work all day, so would get home and do readings for people until I went to bed. In the weekends, at least one full day was spent reading tarot.

Most people were understanding that they may have to wait a few days for me to get to them, but I got a number of very angry messages demanding that I do their reading first. I made the mistake of giving away very complex readings too, each reading taking me over an hour to do - I would throw absolutely everything into it, because thats just who I am. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of readings I did I maybe got four or five 'thank you' messages - this made me think I was giving terrible readings, and made me really depressed. A bit of research and I found out people loved my readings, it just didn't occur to them to thank me.

On the flip side, I now have rather a large database of people interested in readings. I recently started a free newsletter, and sent it out to everyone on the list, with advice that if they didn't want to receive it they simply had to tell me. Nobody said they didn't want to receive the newsletter, so out of a very long period of self-doubt and depression something positive has arisen.

I think it depends on why you read in the first place. If it's to get thank you's, you really chose the wrong thing to be doing.

As far as I'm concerned I'm just fine with folks whose world revolves around things I don't find important. They're paying me to read the cards, not to pass judgment on what should be important to them. Most people do find that their little worlds center around certain things, and they're not always ones I find interesting or important or appropriate. That doesn't make them less than me, though. I'm an old lady and I've left ideas and desires for love and romance far behind, but I still remember how important they were to me before I moved on to this stage of my life.

My personal life got too intense and busy when I brought my old mother home.. Nothing was left over for much of anything else. It's intense. When she passes, I expect to going back to reading pro again...right now, I just don't have either the emotional energy or the drive for it. I still do phone readings for a few long time clients, but that's it.
And yeah, I do miss it.

The only paid readings I did was for several years at a couple small Renaissance fairs run by SCA groups along with their local Lions' Clubs in another state, and they were fun, but for several reasons we stopped going to them, and now I'm so out of practice reading for others it's not funny; and meanwhile my stage-fright has increased. I thought I'd like to get involved with something closer to home, but the only one I know of wants a commitment of every weekend for a month, something which I'm not willing to do. But the longer the gap goes on, the less interested I am.

There is "The Wonderland Tarot Deck" (U S Games) but I always found it kind of disappointing, and the Oysters as Pentacles and Flamingoes as Swords a bit confusing.

I used to read for parties and events - but no longer; I was not trying to make a living by reading Tarot to begin with, and the 'push' of maybe having to read 10-12 people in a night in someone's playroom with the food, music, and noise gets tiring very quickly. At this point if someone was to ask me to do a small group reading I would not turn them down, but to try to find a New Age shop and set up hours and hope to get clients - that only seems to work if you are both the reader and the shop owner. Tarot is not an assembly-line process; you reach a burn-out point very quickly.

morwenna: But the longer the gap goes on, the less interested I am.

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I feel pretty much the same way - maybe we can get together and double-team somewhere! LOL!

It was mentally and emotionally exhausting on my part. The hours were whatever I wanted and the money was good with steady customers; however, even though some readings were positive, I saw, more often than not, a lot of things I didn't feel good about and it bothered me too much for too long.

This year l gave up reading for a telephone company, it was getting too mentally exhausting and although the majority of callers were genuine and lovely some were just downright rude and silly. It was too little pay for too much work.

l have not given up entirely though as l still read for my private clients which l enjoy enormously, the face to face interaction is so much more rewarding. l love reading far too much to give up entirely and probably will be reading as long as l have breath

I used to read for people over the phone. After two or three readings my energy would be drained, literally.That was something I had experienced regardless to whether the clients/readings were negative or positive. I don't know how it happened but it was weird. I can talk on the phone to other people, several other people, in the same amount of time regarding business, leisure, etc. and never encounter the energy drain.

It was also sad to speak with people who would have made up relationships with people who simply said 'hi' to them or don't even know that person (the client) exists. When one of my callers slipped and let me know that she didn't really know the guy (after six or seven calls) I was like what the hell?!? People with minimum wage salaries spending hundreds of dollars each month asking about the same person or situation was really sad. I knew that a couple of them really just needed someone to talk to.

I think I may actually start reading over the pone again as I think I may need the extra cash.

When i started out i wanted to help people. But eventually i realised lot of the people were from shady backgrounds and good decent people werent coming up to me. Like one guy who came saying his wife committed suicide later on i found out from neighbours that he had killed his wife under influence of alcohol.
Another lady came up asking me about her financial things but later i came to know from some people that she is a prostitute and con artist.

Apart from this reason also divination, occult is looked down upon profession. Many of my relatives were making caustic comments about me when they came to know i was into tarot.

People started looking at me with suspicion. I did not like all this negativity and also i believe tarot is information from akashic records and they are sacred records so dont read it for others because so much emotional energy is channelised to connect with spirit guides and access the akashic records.

Its important to do a exchange or serious issue reading rather than randomly playing around with something.

I wont ever read professionally i would prefer using for my own readings