I actually really like the equinoxes though I know many people who struggle with them. I like the fall because, well, it’s my birthday (specifically, the 22nd), and I can’t think of a better way to spend it than ritual and feasting afterwards.
The spring, I enjoy because I love that moment of balance and quiet before the spring starts bouncing out in all due force. Minnesota is weird: some months, spring comes quickly, and if we’re lucky, it falls on a weekend. Some years, winter drags its feet about leaving (like this one, apparently: it was 35 and clear and melted snow on Thursday. Friday? 3+ inches of snow.)
Anyway, Thursday, before a busy SF con filled weekend, we did our first Sabbat ritual. Have a photo of the altar after we dyed eggs. You can see the altar here - it’s had a little photo editing done, as I am apparently incapable of pouring red wine into a cup on a white cloth without spilling some.
You can see the eggs on the left: we each wrote words or designs in wax pencil on the egg, and then dyed them whatever color seemed appropriate (using a ‘dowsing’ sort of method: hold the egg over the dye cups briefly and see which way they feel pulled.) We then used them as a divinatory/oracular source; what did the color + design suggest to us?
Some of them were fascinating: the red one, for example, says “Remember this color”, and it’s a gorgeous bright red. (Or was.)
This is the picture of our feast afterwards. One of our group goals/desires is good food and drink. This is what happens when you clear off the altar desk and use it for a dinner table. You see here, left to right:
- green beans, tomatoes (from my covenmate’s garden last summer) and garlic
- challah bread (same loaf as on the altar, obviously. It did try to take over the world, but was delicious. Recipe in Reichart’s Breadbaker’s Apprentice)
- The glass bowl has chicken salad - it had parsley and other green herbs in it, and tasted absolutely like spring. (We made sandwiches using the challah bread.)
- devilled eggs (in this case, made with mayo, mustard, and dill, with more dill as a garnish. I like dill. So does L.) Made, of course, using the eggs from ritual.
And liquid - wine from the same bottle as for ritual for L, who wasn’t driving shortly, and water (in the horse mug on the side of the table) for me.
We are currently alternating hosting rituals: this is my tiny little house: the curtains behind the altar lead into my bedroom alcove (big enough for my bed, a bookcase, a freestanding closet, and the desk when it’s not being an altar. Which altar tools we use depend a bit who’s hosting; whoever hosts mostly provides things like the water/salt/incense holders from our own tools right now.
Burnout can be a huge issue for many of us: I joke, at times, with other people doing things, about the problem of Witches Who Do Too Much, but there’s definitely a group of us out there. A recent discussion on an email list about this got me thinking about some things I do.
Now, anyone who’s read some of my ‘day in the life’ posts has the idea that I’m insanely busy. It’s gotten better this year. This year, I’m working full time, actively job hunting, starting a new coven, and trying to have a social life. This time last year, I was working full time, taking two graduate classes, actively involved in my Pagan group’s leadership (rituals, some teaching, and meetings/initiate work one night a week.) Oh, yes. And trying to have a social life/some down time. Both years, I’ve been part of our Pagan Pride Day board, which has some variable time commitments (for most of the year, monthly meetings and in-between work I can do at home.)
So. How to do that?
1) Be aware.
What is burnout? What does it look like for me? Am I doing too much? Am I too frustrated with what I’m doing? Do I feel like what I’m doing isn’t making any difference?
What has helped before at those times? What helps short-term? When do I need to look at long-term changes? If I’m feeling burned out, is the problem what I’m doing, who I’m doing it with, or how it’s getting done?
I try to take time informally every month or two (and definitely when there’s any significant change in my time/energy/focus) to think through these things. Tools that have helped:
- Regular journaling: if I read through my journal and notice a month or two of frustration, misery, or just discontentment, that’s important (especially if there’s no other obvious cause.)
- Friends who notice when I am repeatedly unhappy and stressed (as opposed to really busy, but happy with that, and coping well).
- Awareness of different ways of doing things, and which ones seem to be a better fit for me (both roles and things like meeting and organisational methods, productivity techniques, etc.) This way, if something is frustrating me, I stand a chance of making changes that might help.
The last point has to do with which tasks I take on in the first place. I look for things that use my skills and talents, and that play to them or my interests. For example, if I have no interest in fundraising, and dislike phone calls, there are some community roles that so aren’t a good fit. If (as happens to be true), I like lists, and organising people, and sorting out details, and doing most of my communication by email, something like my current Programming role for Pagan Pride is ideal.
The other part of this is challenge - most of us don’t like doing the same thing we know how to do already for extended periods. Having new goals or challenges can really help in keeping you from burning out (if you’ve otherwise picked a general role that’s a good fit.)
2) Keep an eye on the basics:
I’m so not the poster child for this one: I try to cram at least 36 hours of activity into many days. But in general, I work hard to schedule a night or two of down time each week, I get enough sleep, and my home is a place I enjoy being in (chores done, etc.)
If those things go wonky, burnout is pretty likely to occur.
Basics also matter when we’re talking about both what I’m doing and what skills it calls on. For example, I dislike talking on the phone to people I don’t know well, and I’m not good at fundraising. Taking a role that involves these things is more likely to burn me out than a role that involves organisation (something I love) and can mostly be handled through email or face to face meetings.
3) Why am I doing X task?
Am I afraid the task will disappear if I stop doing it? Some kinds of roles have a natural life cycle. When we tie up our identity with the task, it can feel immensely painful to drop it - because we get scared that if it disappears, we weren’t really important in the first place.
Thing is, though, as a witch, as a priestess - never mind as a mature human being - I should be able to see that for what it is. My identity, my sense of self come from far more than if I do or don’t do one specific task in the community - or even five or ten tasks!
There’s also another, more logical part. If I do a task for 5 years, and then stop (and the group in question stops having someone do that task after me), that doesn’t mean that the task was unimportant while I was doing it.
If you spend a year building a house, and then stop (because the house is done), your work was still meaningful, and you (and others) benefit from it. Treating our community interactions in the same way, recognising that sometimes a task is needed, and then isn’t, helps with a healthier perspective. Maybe I did such good work with something that it’s no longer needed as a specific task, or can be split up in new ways. Or maybe the community or need has changed or shifted. These are good things, not bad.
All of these things help…
But they’re not always enough. A future post will talk about what I do when I hit that point, and how to handle it.
Sylvan, whose writing I adore, posted earlier today about ten things she loves about her body - and encouraged those reading to do the same. Here’s mine.
1 ) I adore my hair. It is long (waist-length) and fine. I adore it. It is dark brown, with silver coming in, shot through, but with a silvering strip running back lightly from each temple. I love the silver in the midst of the brown, and I love the two strips that are forming.
I almost always wear my hair up - it’s impractical down, and especially in the winter, it tends to be all static, all the time. But I wear it down for ritual, and for special occasions. I love the feel of it down my back, and twining my fingers in it behind my back. I do hack the end off with scissors every few months to get rid of dead ends, but I haven’t been to a hairdresser in almost a decade.
2 ) I love my eyes. My driver’s license says they are hazel, because they don’t have an option for ‘pale green with a copper-brown ring around the pupil’. But really, that’s what they are: a gorgeous pale green with a rich brown inside. An ex of mine called them topaz, which is near enough to get the idea.
I also love that my eyes work: I wear glasses infrequently for computer use, and they have quirks, but my eyes are what lets me read and learn and experience so much cool stuff in the world. (I read far faster than people talk, so books on audio, while a useful thing when I’m doing stuff where I can’t read, like driving, don’t make up for it.)
3 ) I love my ears. They have a tiny little angled point at the top which amuses me greatly. (I also love how my ears work, because the other thing that really gets me going is music.)
4 ) I love my height. Which sounds a little weird, when I add that I’m 5 foot and a half inch. But really? I love my height, except in crowds. I almost never have to duck my head under anything, and it means I’m often really comfortable in smaller, enclosed spaces. And my feet never hang off the end of the bed, and they’re almost never up against the back seat in an airplane or car.
5 ) I love my feet: they are relatively small, and I have quite high arches, which means I can play with leaving amusing bare foot prints if I’m careful. More than that, the feet work, and they do what I tell them, and it’s all good.
My toenails are almost always painted some shade of blue, too - it’s part of a deity devotion I’ve done for years, as a small personal reminder during my day. (I have a extensive collection of blue nail polish. You can never have too much.)
6 ) I love my hands - they are not conventionally beautiful, being short-fingered, stubby, and small. But they’re mine, and I’m continually amazed by all the stuff they do, and do well. They play harp, and sew, and knead bread, and spin yarn, and type, and draw, and doodle and pet the cat, and braid my hair, and feel all sorts of things.
7 ) I love my curves. My favorite description of myself to people who haven’t met me in person yet is that I come from a long line of European peasants who were good at surviving famines. This is very true. But I love the curves that gives me, especially the one from the waist to the hip.
8 ) My lungs. It’s hard to say, entirely, that I love them, because I have a very complicated relationship with them. Besides the obvious staying-alive part, it’s my lungs that let me sing, and talk, and teach, and hang out with friends, and play music, and so on.
But it’s also my lungs that are my most overt medical issue (asthma) and the one that scares me most. The past year has been a lot better, though: work with a herbalist has helped keep the asthma far more manageable, and they’ve had a chance to heal. (And how cool is it that lungs heal in the first place?)
9 ) My calves. Anyone who knows me knows I almost never wear short skirts - my legs are fairly bow-legged, still. But my calves are very strong, and very much about the muscle, something that started with horseback riding when I was young (and skiing, swimming, and biking didn’t hurt) and that I’ve come back to with walking regularly. I’m amazed by them, honestly, especially when you think about all the different ways a leg has to move.
10 ) My shoulders. My father was required to play rugby when he was growing up (he was over 6 foot, and built for it.) I got his shoulders and build, and Mom’s height, which is not the ideal combination. (I also got his teeth size, and Mom’s jaw size, and some excavator 200 years from now is going to write down that I am 8 teeth short as a result. I digress.)
But I like my shoulders. They carry things well. They match my hips proportionately. And when I was growing up, one of my cats would sit across them. There is nothing more satisfying than a cat draped warmly across your shoulders in the winter keeping the back of your neck warm. (Current feline resident is very much a ’sit next to’ cat, not a ’sit on you’ cat, or she could too.)