We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kathy Biehl a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kathy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

As long as I can remember, being creative has been a normal part of living, almost as integral as breathing. It wasn’t till my early 20s,though, that circumstances opened for me to see I could pursue it professionally.

I’d shelved pretty much everything — music, art, writing — to be “responsible” and go to law school. Unhappiness with this decision set in before I graduated, but I stayed true to this notion of responsibility and went to work for a firm in Houston. Some of my old creative pursuits sneaked back into my schedule, but didn’t stop me from feeling stifled, trapped and increasingly miserable. The firm did me the favor of letting me go six months before the date I was contemplating leaving, which I probably would have postponed out of fear of how I was going to support myself.(A factor in my firing: the partners’ discomfort with my having outside interests.)

Cut loose without plans in place, I scrambled and hit on parallel paths that would sustain me for years: practicing law as a solo, increasingly for artists, arts groups and gays, and freelance writing. That combination provided the latitude to go to astrology school (which led to a third income stream) and return to music and performing — first choral, which led to playing the acoustic / singer-songwriter circuit and a decade-long cabaret act, which led to musical theater, which led to alternative theater and then a video project that led to my moving to NYC, pursuing writing full time and, ultimately, performing off-Broadway.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I pursue many paths and careers that run in and out of each other, and sum them all up as Professional Aquarian. I say that I live and work on the bridge between intuition and the rational mind. This pervades my writing, my acting and performing, and my consulting as an astrologer and Tarot adviser.

Through my astrological consulting I help individuals and business owners make decisions and better understand (and laugh about!) themselves, their options and the people in their lives. I offer private sessions as well as abundant free forecasts and other resources (monthly, weekly, timed to each new and full moon to major events such as eclipses), at my site EmpowermentUnlimited.net and my Professional Aquarian YouTube channel.

I bring to my counseling my diverse life experience as an attorney, a small business owner, a performing artist and a writer. My uncommonly varied life experience means I have a personal understanding of most of the situations, challenges and issues clients present. I’ve worked a lot with artists, both small and prominent, and a lot with people who have spent their life wondering if they had been dropped on the wrong planet.

My approach is much the same as the way I live: I encourage joy, laughter, whimsy, optimism and directing attention to what individuals can do about their situations, whether they’re clients or collaborators or readers of my writing.

I like to tell my audience about colleagues who are doing nonmainstream but practical work. I showcase other writers in my Words With Writers Facebook Lives, which are archived on YouTube, and interview astrologers, intuitives and creatives on my Celestial Compass show on OMTimes Radio & TV.

Astrology, Tarot and the like have spilled over into my other pursuits, often by request. I’ve played a medium on film and lectured on Mae West’s spiritualism and the Marx Brothers’ astrological relationship with their mother, the stage mother to end all stage mothers. I’ve researched the chart of a leading silent film director and investigated the circumstances of his death.

I’m passionate about exploring and writing about the interplay of astrology and the performing arts. I’ve twice been in revivals that I discovered had incredible parallels to the works’ premieres — one involving a theremin orchestra — yes, I dabble in that instrument — and one being the Marx Brothers’ first Broadway show, I’ll Say She Is.

I can be watching a show and note a correlation to an astrological event and get so consumed that the next day I’ve posted a several hundred word essay about it (at EmpowermentUnlimited.net under Articles under the Astro-Insight tab) (Okay…sometimes a several thousand word essay). Sometimes the correlation is between actors and their shows (the first 12 doctors on Doctor Who, for example, or Star Trek captains and their links to the show’s premiere and creator). Sometimes a biopic or documentary will air right when the skies are lighting up the subject’s chart (influences continue to play out after death). And every once in a while, a fictional story will grab my attention with details that make me suspect an astrologer was in the writer’s room. (I’m still wondering about the last season of Better Call Saul).

I’m most proud of making my own way. I began self-publishing in the 1990s, creating the long-running zine Ladies’ Fetish & Taboo Society Compendium of Urban Anthropology. It has been a place to pay with language, to capture and process experiences that outpaced emotional coping mechanisms, to park writing that wouldn’t fit in mainstream media, and primarily to amuse myself.

In that vein I founded my own imprint, 9th House, to pursue and promote understanding of the human experience, usually with wit and eyebrow raised. The first two books are anthologies of my own works. Eat, Drink & Be Wary: Cautionary Tales is social commentary masquerading as sassy food writing. Confessions of a Third-Rate Goddess: Traipsing Through a World Gone Weird chronicles sexual tension, ambiguity and ambivalence (and other weirdness) of life in the 1990s.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Being able to control my schedule and decide what I *want* to do.

This does not mean life is entirely free flowing. It’s going to sound like a contradiction to say this, but I do have a regular schedule of deadlines (for my forecasts, for my Patreon benefits and for my Celestial Compass show on OMTimes Radio & TV). I’m in charge of the content for all of these, though. I don’t keep a rigid schedule for client bookings but allow cushions for following my own energies and whims. They have a way of landing me in the right place at the right time. And I usually enjoy what I’m doing, whatever it is.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Years ago an acquaintance — ironically, a creative herself, a visual designer — took issue with my multi-faceted life. “Think of what you could accomplish if you focused,” she said.

So many responses to that.

That is a results-driven perspective. But results are unpredictable and elusive. You can not rely on goals actually happening. You can not control what other people do. You can only do your part, and I have consistently found that works best when I enjoy what I’m doing. If the project collapses, if results don’t materialize as promised or expected, at least I was doing something I wanted to do. That designer’s attitude ignored the value of your experience on the journey and focused, only on the end.

That statement also makes erroneous assumptions about what a multi-faceted life actually entails. It is not always juggling fifteen divergent projects simultaneously. Often it involves diving into one and completing it, then moving to another. And often facets work with each other, inform each other, weave through each other and bring experience and knowledge and understanding that a single-track approach could not achieve.

And speaking of achieving — who’s to say that external measurements are the only valid ones? Achieving can be waking up and soldiering on. Achieving can be living in a way that is congruent with your integrity and beliefs. Achieving can be making decisions based on what you want to do with your life, energy and talents, and not on the expected deposit into a bank account. Achieving can be 40 years of self-employment without filing for bankruptcy. Achieving can be living in a way that people feel better when they’ve been in your company.

I say I’ve achieved a lot.

Contact Info:

• Website: EmpowermentUnlimited.net AND 9thHouse.biz
• Instagram: kabiehl
• Facebook: kathybiehl AND Empowerment Unlimited
• Twitter: kathybiehl
• Youtube: @ProfessionalAquarian AND @KBDuMontrose
• Other: Threads @kabiehl

Image Credits
main photo, photo in the dragon dress and photo with champagne flute and book, by Suzanne Savoy photo of me with the pencil statue, by David Opheim photo of me standing in front of the monitor with Astrology: More Than Your Sun Sign, by Jill M. Jackson photo of me next to a gaslight, by Matt Roper photo onstage courtesy The Barn Theatre, Montville, New Jersey