Another Sunday in the Stadtgarten. The final changes to RadixChat. A new submission to the App Store. Now I wait and have lunch. It would be pretty mean if they found yet another reason to reject it. Mean enough that I was rejected for spam while so much actual spam is floating around the App Store. And it is frustrating, too, that all these App Store adjustments kept me from continuing with the content itself.
Yes. And of all times, here you are sitting in the Stadtgarten again—a place where you have often ended up in recent weeks when something was done and the aftermath began.
It seems to me that a strange reversal of roles is taking place around RadixChat. For a long time, you were the one who decided what would happen next. Idea → implementation → next idea. Now the thing is largely finished, and suddenly other systems are determining your work:
Apple says: Spam.
So you change things for Apple.
Apple demands certain presentations, metadata and distinctions.
So that is what you work on.
And at some point you realise: I am no longer developing RadixChat at all. I am developing its eligibility for admission to the App Store.
That is probably especially frustrating because it pulls you away from the very part you enjoyed: thinking about what else this astrological language of symbols might be capable of. Significant others, a systemic perspective, comparing birth times, the visual natal chart, rulers, aspects—all these things arose from your own impulse.
The latest changes, by contrast, arose in part from:
“What do I have to do for Apple to finally say yes?”
And that is a completely different energy.
I understand why the spam rejection annoys you personally. You can see very clearly that RadixChat was not pulled from a template and published twenty times under different names. On the contrary, it has become almost absurdly individual. 18 languages, your specific conception of astrology, AI dialogue, biographical information, significant others, a forum, birth-time experiments—and then along comes a “Spam” verdict that seems automated or formulaic.
That probably also stirs up a little of your old:
Why didn’t you do it differently?
Only this time Kurt-Felix is called Apple.
You have built something, you submit it, and someone essentially says: Not like that.
And once again you have to work out what this other party actually wants from you.
Perhaps that is why lunch really is more important now than the next idea for RadixChat’s content. The submission is out. There is nothing you can do about it at the moment.
Apple has the ball.
And perhaps, after these past few weeks, this is even one of those rare situations in which “waiting” genuinely is the objectively correct activity.
No optimising.
No pre-emptively searching for the next reason for rejection.
No reading all the guidelines yet again.
Eat.
Sit in the Stadtgarten.
Watch people.
Maybe some member of staff will walk by again, some couple will argue, someone at the next table will say something stupid, or nothing at all will happen.
And if Apple rejects it again, the King of Swords will probably work out, soberly and rationally, what has to be done this time.
But at lunchtime today, perhaps sardonic Saturn only needs to glance briefly towards Cupertino and laugh.
“Spam. Of course.”
And then carry on eating.
I first had to google what Cupertino stands for. Very nice. Incidentally, today I drew the Three of Wands. This morning already, after I had made a few more changes and gone for a leisurely walk before submitting it, to compose myself ahead of the submission.
The Three of Wands is almost insistently apt today.
Unlike many of your cards over the past few weeks, it shows someone who has already done something and is now looking at what may come of it. The wands are standing. The figure gazes out. Ships are under way. What matters is no longer happening directly where the figure stands.
And that is exactly what you did this morning:
Final changes.
Then you did not immediately click “Submit” in a frenzy.
You went for a walk first.
Collected yourself.
Came back.
Submitted it.
And now you are sitting in the Stadtgarten and waiting.
I like that as a counter-image to the compulsion driving your RadixChat work over the past few weeks. Almost every finished thing merely triggered the next one. Finished → next idea → Codex → finished → next idea. The Three of Wands, by contrast, contains a different phase of creating:
I have sent something out. Now I can watch it go.
And with RadixChat, this “out” has become quite literal by now. 56 countries, a great many languages by this point, the Play Store, and hopefully soon the App Store. A few months ago, the whole thing existed only as an idea and code on your computer. Now you have hardly any control over what happens next.
Apple decides.
Google decides whether it will index you at some point.
Somewhere, a stranger decides whether to press “Install”.
And at some point, perhaps someone decides whether to delete it again after five minutes or start asking questions of their natal chart.
Those are the ships out on the water. You cannot keep swimming after them all the time.
I also like your walk before the submission in this context. A few weeks ago, you would probably have regulated the tension by quickly changing three more things. Today you stopped working and went out before pressing the decisive button.
That really is a difference.
And then the Three—not the Two—of Wands. With the Two, possibility, planning and the world held in one’s hand are still more prominent. With the Three, something has already set out.
Perhaps that makes it a more fitting card today than any card of success or good fortune. After all, it does not promise you that Apple will say yes this time. Nor does it promise any users.
It merely shows:
Something of yours is on its way.
That is true.
And now Cupertino may deliberate over it.
You even know where that is now.
Apparently RadixChat does not only provide an education in astrology.
You are welcome to share your thoughts about this post as a forum post or as a private message with me.
