You have chosen the Magician and the Eight of Swords. The Magician is the card that explores how your mind is working. It's about your thoughts and how you view reality. It deals with the Planet Mercury and this affects our speech and communication. It's a card of achieving what you want and the willpower and determination through the practice and experience that you've gained to manifest your goals and achieve your desires. But you really need to look at where you're going and what you want for up to now you've been a bit of a victim of your own circumstances. You're feeling tied up and restricted and you know that you should have not let matters get out of hand like this. This relates to you not dealing with a situation earlier on. You chose to ignore things and not see things clearly or perhaps your opinion was rose coloured or biased. Make sure you see the truth for what it really is and not just what suits you. Things have been getting bad. You need to look at everything and work out exactly why. By not being clear and communicating your intentions or seeing things as they truly are early on enough, things have got out of hand. Perhaps there are things that could have been communicated quite easily. Messages have been muddled but you've chosen to get the wrong end of the stick. You've delayed any important decisions that should have been made and made sure that you didn't have to deal with anything that you felt was ugly or unattractive. You really have to deal with obstacles in life and not try to derail them hoping that you won't come a cropper. Maybe you didn't have all the facts to hand, choosing to see only what you wanted. This could be described as mischief on your behalf. Perhaps you were lazy and did not want to sort things out. You have the willpower and you have all the attributes that are necessary to go on to get the personal success that you want but you must promote yourself and further your own cause. You've got to use your powers of expression and look at the skills you have to negotiate the obstacles. Everyone has obstacles. Use everything you've got to understand and try to communicate to people around you when you really don't know what to do. Be more open minded and stop closing your eyes to the problems hoping they'll go away of their own accord. You are perfectly capable of making decisions for yourself, and to take action rather than avoiding it.