Purposeful work

Purposeful Work - Finding a clue for a rewarding career, using Astrology.

I have shared my love and keen interest into Astrology (not the newspaper horoscope kind, mind) and my love of organic food growing, marrying the two together to grasp Bio-dynamics is another layer to spend time with, and the deepening into Astrology continues to amaze me with Medical Astrology and Herbalism. All of the self-guided study and research leads me to weaving Astrology in many areas of my life. I love it to know myself, I love it to support my parenting and now to grow food, understand health challenges as prevention and the energetics of collective transits we all experience together - a vast topic of understanding that will likely take a lifetime to build a decent understanding of, but it is just so layered and dynamic.

For the past several months I have been entering a whole new line of work as a support partner for NDIS private clients. The first one I found through seek, the second role through a friend of a friend. Now I have two clients that I work with, each one day per week but one has picked up another day to learn how to budget, meal plan and cook.

Utilizing Astrology to understand this new direction in my life, the clue resides in my IC, or Imum Coeli.

 
I have been sitting with mine for the past year since learning about my IC. Mine is in Cancer. I am meant to be home, I am most comfortable, in my flow and recharged when I am home. It took me a few pivots since 2017 when I started teaching art, to ensure I stay home, mostly.

Teaching art kept me home, but it pulled me away from “home”. Teaching art had me working evenings and weekends, taking me away from my family time and home time. It was an essential pivot to remove me from full-time work away from home, but it was still full-time work in some capacity.

Working with NDIS clients, I have the flexibility to create my own hours and still have time to be at home. And, now that I am working with clients in their home, it is slowly developing into supporting them with meal planning and cooking nourishing food, something I really love to do for my family and I get a lot of purposeful pleasure making nourishing food for those who may not have access to this themselves.

Home is in the hearth, the nourishment. To me, that is cooking and providing care. Like I said, my IC in in Cancer. Your IC could be in Capricorn and you will have a very different idea of what “home” feels like for you. Let’s chat more about that, and if you are curious, send me an email.

LET’S DIVE INTO MY PERSONAL HISTORY A BIT….and find out how I ended up cooking for NDIS clients.

Cooking is one of my absolute loves, I haven’t always been this way.

My relationship with food when I was a teenager to young adult was that it was an inconvenient necessity. I didn’t know how to cook and didn’t have a passion to learn. That is until a past relationship guided me there. I remember him saying once “My past girlfriend couldn’t cook either, there is no way I’m dating someone again who doesn’t know how to cook”. Feeling rather foolish, I turned on the Cooking Network (a great channel on Canadian TV!) and browsed some cookbooks and I was immediately entranced!

Chef at home life became my life. TV show chefs taught me how to cook. I loved watching Bobby Flay, Iron Chef, Giada De Laurentiis, Paula Deen (entertaining to watch but I never made any of her food! it was way too rich for my liking), Tyler Florence, Anna Olsen (worked with her once at a winery event gig), Rachel Ray, Anthony Sedlak (may he rest in peace), Michael Smith (lovve his recipes and shows!)

This was around 2006ish, and I was about 22 years old. Celebrity chefs of the early 2000’s were life to me and I grazed elbows with a few of them along the way.

Life became exciting because around that time I was working my way up through the wine industry and getting great job opportunities and interesting roles that were so much fun for a 20-something! Good Wine, Good Food and the challenge of cooking a tricky recipe became life. I had so many good days in that relationship cooking, drinking and eating our way through cookbooks.

I have always been a part of the fine dining scene; events, fine restaurants, boutique wineries with their own chef - I loved the food, the glamour and the taste testing! I was always in front of house, but having to have a sound knowledge of food terminology, how its cooked, and the ingredients and even where they are sourced and how they are prepared.

When I became a Wine Sommelier, that was a whole new layer of food pairing, menu suggestions and harmony on the palate. I was the go to person for the couple who wanted the perfect dinner experience, or the corporate guy who wanted to impress his portfolio of sales execs.

When I moved to Brisbane I worked for 2 well-known chefs in the industry and while I loved the food, I was, at that time, now a 30-something who was growing tired of working weekends and evenings.

Since then, it has been an absolute pleasure to become a wife and mother and cooking my family nourishing meals - to some, cooking is a chore (if that is you, I get it, I was there once and I still sometimes get into ruts where I’m not inspired to cook). But I truly find it therapeutic and so rewarding, and when my family sits down together at the round dinner table each day to share our highs and lows, I love when one of their highs is the dinner. Win!

So, fast forward almost 20 years and my love of cooking is now supporting NDIS young adults with problem solving, budgeting, pantry organizing and with meal planning and cooking, it is a dream come true.

I definitely consider myself an artist, not just with painting, or textiles, but with food. Art is everywhere. The beauty I can capture in not just on a paint palette, but in a taste, palate is a skill I admire within myself.

To me, that feels like purposeful work which is really what life is about, finding that purpose.

In between work shifts and cooking at home, I am still in the garden, and I am averaging 2 paintings per week (to be revealed what the series is soon - I have been quiet with my art stuff lately, but the share is coming soon - I have quite the collection building up for my upcoming market!)

Thanks for going back through time with me, some of my fondest memories is over a good meal.

x

Ashley