Okay, let’s get into this 8 of Pentacles thing. It’s a card that kept popping up for me a while back, like, constantly. At first, I kinda rolled my eyes, thinking, “Great, more work.” It seemed pretty straightforward, you know? Just buckle down and hammer away at something.
My First Steps with the Card
So, I decided, alright, let’s actually do something with this instead of just nodding and shuffling the deck again. I picked a thing I was pretty bad at but wanted to improve – seriously, it was just making decent coffee with my Aeropress. Sounds silly, right? But I was always messing it up. Too weak, too bitter, just… bad.
I pulled out the 8 of Pentacles and stuck it on my kitchen counter. Every morning, that was my reminder. Okay, focus. Pay attention to the details.
Here’s what I actually did:
- Watched a bunch of videos, not just one, but loads, seeing how different people did it.
- Measured the beans precisely. Like, with a scale. Every single time.
- Timed the brewing process. Again, every single time.
- Tried slightly different grinds, water temps, stir times. Small changes.
- Kept a little notebook. Yeah, a coffee notebook. Wrote down what I did and how it tasted. Felt a bit daft doing it.
The Grind (Pun Intended)
Honestly? It was tedious sometimes. Felt like I was making a science project out of a simple cup of coffee. Some days I just wanted to dump grounds and water together and be done with it. But I’d look at that card, the little guy just chipping away at his pentacles, totally absorbed. And I’d think, okay, just focus on this cup. Make this one a tiny bit better, or at least understand why it’s good or bad.
It wasn’t about some huge breakthrough. It was about the repetition. Doing the same small steps over and over. Noticing the tiny differences. It was boring sometimes, yeah. But slowly, very slowly, I started getting it right more often. I learned what my perfect cup felt like to make, not just following someone else’s recipe blindly.
What Happened in the End
Well, I make consistently decent coffee now. Not world-class barista level, but good enough for me, pretty much every time. But the real takeaway wasn’t just the coffee. It was understanding what the 8 of Pentacles felt like in practice.
It taught me patience, for real. Not just saying “be patient,” but actually living it through a repetitive task. It showed me the value of focusing on the process, not just dreaming about the end result. It’s about showing up, doing the reps, even when it’s not exciting. Getting your hands dirty and learning through doing, making mistakes, tweaking, and doing it again.
So now, when that card shows up, I don’t just see “work hard.” I remember that feeling of tuning everything else out and just focusing on the small details of the task right in front of me, chipping away until it feels right. It’s less daunting and more like a quiet reminder: just keep practicing, keep refining. The mastery comes from the reps.
