How are we already on week 6 of this?
Last week was a lot less full of unusual scheduling, which makes me feel slightly better about the world, but I am about to head into a) Samhain, b) NaNoWriMo, and I am currently still behind on writing project I was hoping to finish before NaNo. So, um.
This past week
I know I’m not alone in this – for about 2 weeks before Samhain and a week or so after, I have a lot more disconnected sense of time than usual. I’ll do something and look up and it’s 3 hours later than I thought. (Sometimes it goes the other way.) I normally have a good sense of time flow, so this is always a bit weird for me, but after umpty years of it being a thing at this time of year, I have at least learned how to go with it, and set extra reminders for fixed-time events.
Strategic Sorcery: I did in fact manage to meditate every day but one so far, for at least a few minutes. I’m still having a hard time figuring out when in my day to put it.
Before work would be logical, but I really do get better quality sleep if I get up around 6:30am (regardless of when I actually go to bed), and I leave for work at 7 (and can’t really push that back, or I start to hit horrible traffic.)
After work does somewhat better, but I haven’t yet figured out the cascade of things that works best (I get home from work, I may need to do some household stuff, and I need to have a shower, make dinner, and meditate, in some order, and some of these sequences fit together better than others.)
Goal for this week: try ‘quick household chores’ or exercise (usually a walk), followed by shower, meditation, and then dinner.
Saturday: Dedicant class 4, which was about ritual theory, so talking through steps of circle casting, and how they build up to a cohesive process. (Something we revisit regularly through the year, this was round 1.) Discovered I need to redo some diagrams when I was sending out the class notes.
Sunday: New moon tarot reading for the month, some thinking about things I’m particularly chewing on (habits around money, specifically) and what I can do magically to support and enhance that.
The coming week
Of course, the big one here is Samhain! We are doing ours (due to a variety of schedules) on Saturday the 2nd, but I took the 1st off from work so I can clean and do some other prep, which means I can also do personal work on the 31st without having to worry about getting up in the morning at my usual early.
I view Samhain as the end of the old year, but not yet the beginning of the new year (that’s Yule), where instead there’s a fallow period. I spend that time figuring out what my goals for my new ritual year are going to be (and right around Yule, I pick a word for the year. I’ll talk more about that when we get there.)
My plans for Friday involve Samhain prep, including rearranging my ancestor altar, clearing my current working altars off (both so we have space for a group ancestor altar, and also because now is a good time to clear all the things.) And also the necessary cooking: our group tradition includes sharing dishes that either were things our beloved dead liked, or that have a connection to our ancestors.
(This meant that when I was in Minnesota, lutefisk was a regular offering on the table… I actually rather like it in small amounts.)
I usually do a ground pork pie with apples, for Reasons. (It’s sort of a stand in for steak and kidney pie, which would not hold up well during ritual.) It’s not hard to make, but it does take a couple of hours on and off, and in this case it’s going to mean three different grocery stops.
(Penzeys for some spices I need, the local farm store for local apples and a few other things, and Trader Joe’s for the usual groceries. Plus I should probably acquire wine and beer for cooking purposes in general and some should probably go in the cooking. See also why I took the day off.)
You can see where my brain and focus is, I suspect.
Sunday will be recovering from all of that, but it’s also the anniversary of my father’s death (not long after midnight, early on the 3rd). So I usually either stay up and do a little personal thing for him, or do something in the morning of the 3rd, depending.
