Last week

Another busy week this week, due to not only the things I was actually doing, but cleaning and cooking prep.

Thursday: Launched my latest fiction book, which is always a lot of fiddly process stuff. (Some of which happens to make the book available, and then there is more once the sales links are live.)

Friday: Hosted witches for a planning meeting for an ongoing project (we’re moving forward usefully, with plans for actual events in spring 2020.)

There’s always something so vulnerable about having new people to your home, and it’s both helped and complicated by the witchy parts, in my experience.

Part of it is just the prep – having food and space for people to sit. (And my home is optimised for coven work, which is not quite the same as a small group meeting…) But part of it is also having new people in your space, and we’re all in the stage where we’re still getting to know each other, and three of my four shrines are in the living room, and.

(Speaking of, I updated the page about my shrines, if you haven’t seen that.)

In this case, I got several compliments about the feeling of my home, which always delights me, because it’s something I think about a lot, and do a lot to encourage. I am not the world’s best housekeeper (though I’m vastly better than I used to be…) but I am really good about keeping the energy in my home the way I want most of the time.

This is on my list to write about in the not too distant future, since I think it’d be helpful. (I also have all the thoughts about setting up sustainable coven and Pagan-relevant hosting, and am working on what will turn into an ebook about that.)

Saturday: Dedicant class, with two of my three students (we’ll have to sort out a makeup for the third sometime.) It went really well, with some great discussion about how do you evaluate people and their materials in specific situations, and then a great discussion about deities.

Sunday: I spent most of Sunday working on website and publishing related updates, but also did some work with Benebell Wen’s Metaphysician’s Planner guidebook (I am only a little way in! It’s glorious dense material.)

Coming week

Much quieter!

Tuesday: Something for the New Moon, but probably a pretty small something.

Wednesday to Sunday: Five days off! Thanksgiving is not a big holiday in my life – my parents are British, and I grew up without almost any extended family. I usually go to an amiable friend’s house for whatever they do, but I don’t have strong opinions about it.

In this case, it’s been a busy summer and autumn, and I’m really looking forward to having chunks of time to work on larger projects without having to stop. So there will be a bunch of witchy stuff, but I’m not sure what bits will be when yet.

This past week

Very quiet – which frankly I needed. (And I am so looking forward to having an extended long weekend at home to catch up on stuff over US Thanksgiving.)

Reading: I’ve been reading some of the newer intro-to-witchcraft books with an eye to what’s out there these days, and thinking about what and how I want to post about them as a resource, and I got through another one this week.

(More on this to come, but I want to read several and do notes to figure out what’s sustainable for me.)

Writing: It is NaNoWriMo month, which is going very well for me at the moment, but is not particularly witchy (except to the extent that my geekiness about magical theory is informing some of the parts of the plot…)

Ongoing work: I’m continuing to contemplate things in the Strategic Sorcery Deep Dive classes – it’s definitely engaging my brain. I’m going at it not from a ‘try all the things’ (body and focus will not permit) but rather a good chance to learn about new techniques, file some stuff away for future exploration, and dip into those that are most relevant or interesting to me.

Body: I started a new medication on Friday, which if you read the online commentary is either wonderful or really awful, so I started it on Friday when I had no plans for the weekend.

The side effects have been pretty minimal so far (it’ll take longer than a few days to see if it’s actually effective for me), but I wasn’t up for as much exertion (mental or physical) as my norm, so I’m glad I planned on the easy schedule.

Friends: I’ve been helping wrangle things for a dear friend, for whom I am sometimes her external brain, which ate a fair bit of my available brain space from about Thursday on. (Absolutely no regrets, though!)

Shrines: I got a new cloth for the shrine in my bedroom (which is roughly a ‘Venus and abundance’ shrine), and I got one last piece for the reset shrines in the living room (currently in ‘writing and connection’, ‘offerings’, and ‘prosperity’ configuration, plus ancestors and beloved dead.). I’m still contemplating whether any of them need anything else, but photos should be coming soon.

This coming week

Friday: Meeting for the ongoing project we’re working on for some more options in the local area for Pagans. It’s our third meeting, I’m hosting, and so there’s a moderate amount of cleaning and cooking something to do. (I’m going to do the cooking on Thursday, and then set up the slow cooker to keep it warm when I get home from work on Friday.)

However, this means I have to do some of the routine cleaning I’d normally aim to do right before Dedicant class a day or two early. (Changing the cat box, sweeping and at least wet-swiffering the floors, clearing off the kitchen counter and other things, making sure all the chairs are available for sitting on…)

One of the things people do not adequately talk about when they talk about running a coven is managing the housekeeping. (I am actually working on some writing about that in the background.)

Saturday: Sensibly for my cleaning plans, I have Dedicant class on Saturday, which is about deities and other beings, and generally a great topic. Because of Thanksgiving and some other scheduling, this is our last meeting until December 14th, and then we won’t have another until early January.

(I love my coven work, but we’ve been meeting more than usual the last couple of months, and I could definitely use some time to catch up on other things. I don’t usually get brain-requiring projects done after teaching and ritual.)

Soon: As I was writing this, I got the shipping order for my recent order from Sphere and Sundry, and am very excited to get it. I want to set some time aside (probably Sunday, at this rate) to do some work with it.

A quieter week, which frankly, I needed! (And this coming week is a bit quieter too, with nothing scheduled for the weekend, even.)

Last week

Medical appointment on Thursday, which did not resolve anything usefully, but at least everyone agrees it is not dire. (It’s an ongoing low-grade tooth thing.)

It did eat up a lot of brain, though.

Saturday, we had Dedicant class, this time talking more about energy theory and a bit more about psychicsm, as well as talking about their experiences with Samhain. Our next class is a week from Saturday, then mid-December, then nothing until January, due to various scheduling things.

Sunday, I spent doing my usual Sunday offerings, then spending some quality time (about 2 hours this week) on various religious projects, including doing some sketch note style summaries for the first two Strategic Sorcery lessons. I like the way they came out, especially the meditation one, but I’m mostly using it as a way to make myself focus in on the key points.

(I type up longer notes in my online notetaking files, and then distill down to the things I am doing or want to focus on.)

This week

I have been steadily managing some amount of meditation daily for the past few weeks, but I am trying this week to see if doing it in the morning helps/feels different.

(This is a little tricky, because chronic health stuff makes several aspects of my morning unreliable in terms of how long they take, and because I have a fairly inflexible deadline for when I leave the house if I don’t want horrific traffic.)

I have an eye appointment this afternoon, I’m hoping to make it to a NaNo writein on Wednesday evening, and I’m starting a new medication on Friday.

(My pharmacist and doctor say the side effects shouldn’t be bad, but it’s one of those ones where online commentary sounds dire, so starting it when I don’t need to do anything on a timetable for a few days sounds like a smart call just in case.)

I’m planning on doing something for the Full Moon tonight (not full-blown ritual, though) but I’m still deciding what it will be.

Also known as: The Samhain Edition.

Last week

So, last week included Samhain, and was therefore very busy. Our actual group ritual was on Saturday night.

Beginning of the week: First appointment with new primary care doctor, which is a thing that takes up brain space, and is necessary for my long-term wellbeing. (That went well, but produced several rounds of sorting out referrals and I have one more round of them to do this afternoon.)

Thursday: The traditional folk date for Samhain. I had sensibly taken Friday off (more on that in a second), which not only meant I had more time on Friday, but meant I could do ritual things on Thursday, and used that to do the self-dedication rite for the Strategic Sorcery class, and to do the Hekate global rite.

Hekate has been one of the deities I work with regularly but not often for a number of years (particularly in my tradition work), and for me there is always a feeling of picking up the connection again that feels wonderful, if in a ‘and this is going to challenge me to step up my game’ sort of way.

Both went well, though I think I would not have timed the rituals that way if I had to get up for work in the morning.

Friday: I slept in, and then spent the day prepping for Samhain ritual. Taking the day off was brilliant, remember this next year, self. (Samhain is the ritual that has the most complex prep, usually, given the cooking and some of the ritual elements.)

The morning involved three grocery stops, namely Wilson Farms (my good local farm store, because I wanted local meat and produce where I could get it), Trader Joe’s, and Penzey’s.

I then alternated between making food for Samhain and cleaning the apartment. The cleaning included taking down my working altars, partly because we needed somewhere for the ancestor altar space, and partly because I’d been planning to reset them sometime, and now was a good time.

Our tradition is that you bring food that is either a favourite food of someone you are remembering or an ancestral food of some kind. I have traditionally done medieval meat pies because they hold well during ritual.

(I use this recipe with two pounds of meat with some alterations. I don’t do the chicken, I do four full eggs instead of the yolks, and I scale up 3.5 cups of other filling ingredients, and add a glug or so of local honey. This produces two meat pies and provides both Samhain food and lunch for the next week. This year’s version had currants, apple, and sharp Cheddar cheese.)

Saturday: Mopping the floors in the morning, walking down to the library for a NaNoWriMo event from 2-4 (great, except that the technology lost the chapter I wrote and I had to rewrite it), and then back in time to shower and get ready for ritual.

I took a break in the morning to do a divinatory reading for the year (based on Briana Saussy’s ancestor-informed Tarot reading)

We had four people, and ritual went very well. (Samhain is one of our rituals that is oathbound for a variety of reasons, so this is all the detail you’re getting.)

My Dedicants were all rather startled by how intense and meaningful it was, which is probably how it should be. I’d added a piece in from my own training group work, and that was a good decision.

Bonus: I have figured out a lighting solution for evening rituals that is not annoying to deal with (my overhead lights are rather bright). Namely that you can now buy USB rechargeable LED lamps. (These are the ones I got on Amazon, but there are plenty of others. You can turn them on and off by touching the top, too.) Being able to position them where I wanted them was great.

Sunday: Recovery day! I did a little more post-ritual tidying, and reset my altars in a somewhat different configuration. I’m still poking at them (and waiting for something to come for the bedroom one), but photos will happen eventually.

Sunday was also the anniversary of my father’s death (29 years ago, wow, how has it been that long), which meant doing my traditional reading of a letter he wrote me not long before he died, and also pulling a few Tarot cards for “What should I be thinking about.”

I went out at sunset to leave an offering from the Hekate rite, and spent a little bit sitting on the bench overlooking the pond near me, which was gorgeous and necessary. If a tad chilly.

The coming week:

Largely simpler! We have Dedicant class on Saturday, for which I need to do a modicum of preparation, but that’s it for scheduled things. I plan to spend some time on Sunday working on the ongoing witchy and magical coursework and reading.

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.

This week was busy with mostly mundane necessities. That involved a dentist visit on Tuesday, and went on from there.

Wednesday: I had jury duty, and had to drive thirty minutes away (I live in a really big county). The whole process was as amiable and efficient as possible, and I read a book and a half while waiting to get dismissed, then had lunch with a friend and talked a mix of magic and writing. As we are wont to do.

One of the books I read was Honoring Your Ancestors: A Guide to Ancestral Veneration by Mallorie Vaudoise, which turned out to be a very thoughtful overview of some possible approaches, with a variety of things to consider. (It also tackles ancestor work if there are difficult circumstances in your family right up front in the second chapter.) My copy is currently on loan to said friend, but I’d recommend it if you think it is a thing you’d like a book on.

Thursday, I had dinner with my oldest friend (in the sense that I’ve known her since I was in 2nd grade and she was in 3rd grade.)

Saturday, I did a presentation for alumni at the school I work at (about a particular bit of history), and got some interesting stories out of them.

Beyond that, I got a bit more information out to my Dedicants about Samhain plans (specifically the things they need to know in advance, in more detail than I’d previously told them.)

Still to be done: pre-ritual cleaning and finishing the prep on the actual ritual (which mostly means deciding if we have enough people to do a piece of it meaningfully this year.)

Strategic Sorcery course started on Friday, and I am making a serious effort at re-establishing a meditation practice. We’ll see how that goes. (I am treating it as “I will do this thing as close to daily as I can manage for three months, and see how I feel about it then.” right now.)

More on that at some future point. Right now, though, I a) have a headache and b) other words that need writing, so I will go do that.

Welcome to the fourth instalment! This week was busy. (So is this coming week, in other ways.)

This week

Thursday, I had the first online call for this year’s round of Spinning Gold, which had a new ritual-focused format. It’s the first time I’ve done an online ritual thing other than purely meditation in quite a while, and the Zoom format worked quite well. (I took the course in 2017-2018, and I’m working through it more deliberately again this year.)

Saturday, we had our third Dedicant class, and what was going to be a full moon ritual, but which I ended up doing with a minimal circle set up, because I got to about 10 am (including going to the laundromat and a couple of other errands) and hit ‘wow, do I not feel great’ in a manner that I am used to these days (autoimmune stuff does this, and it’s been an on-again-off-again couple of months for that.)

However, things went well in the modified ritual, and we had a great discussion in class, so that’s always good. We’ve also worked out our calendar through the end of December, which helps me a lot in planning the rest of my life.

Sunday, I took notes from the Sola Busca book (this time, a discussion of the Mithras cult and what was generally known about the classical mystery cults in the Renaissance). And then I did a bunch of writing in my 1920s romance series, adding a chapter to the book in editing that involves them pulling Tarot cards to represent people.

(This is why I had to come up with a new Tarot deck, because I hit the point where the worldbuilding demanded it: I wanted to de-centre Christian imagery, gender roles are a little different, the court cards need names that support the worldbuilding. I have very clear images of some of the cards now. It’s delightful fun, but also demanding and the kind work I can only tackle on a day with nothing else scheduled.)

The other chapter in the book in progress involves the hero (a Classicist) coming across the heroine (he doesn’t know it’s her) doing a ritual in the woods, and having many complex emotions about it. Apparently it was a day for mystery cult thoughts, because more of that turned up in the chapter than I was expecting. (My book series, it so very much requires having something like my brain to write.)

Speaking of mystery cults – or at least secret societies – I was then up absurdly late not quite finishing Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House. I don’t normally talk much about my reading (I have a ‘if you know what’s in my head, you can steal my soul’ instinctive reaction to talking about what I read in detail). I finished it this morning, of course.

If the description sounds like it might be your thing, let me tell you that she does some fascinating things with different approaches to magic, how certain magical abilities are a lot less fun to have than you might think, and the ways that magical power can corrupt and what the alternatives might look like. Desperately hoping there’s a sequel.

(I should add that there are sexual traumatic events, body horror, and violence, though mostly of the ‘paragraph of detailed description, much more discussion of other things, another paragraph of graphic’ ratio. So if those are not things you’re up for, the warning is there.)

This coming week

This coming week, I have today (Monday) off, dental work on Tuesday (and thankfully got permission to work from home), possibly jury duty on Wednesday (and my county is very large, so I have to be a 45 minute drive away by 8am, fortunately going against traffic), dinner with a friend on Thursday, and a presentation to alumni at the school I work for on Saturday morning plus meeting up with someone from an online thing I’ve been doing.

That last is probably worth mentioning here: for the past 9.5 months (it runs for a calendar year), I’ve been working on the Art of Money program from Bari Tessler, about getting in a better relationship with your finances. I’ve found I had a good grip on a lot of the structural ‘how does this thing supposedly work’, but the program has been really good for looking at things in new ways. There are definitely people in the program (and Facebook group) more on the Pagan or New Age side of things.

The actual state of my budget and bank account is… well, they’re not where I want them to be, but I continue to get better at figuring out what to do about that. An unexpected move in January and a root canal have not, shall we say, helped anything on the finance side (though they were both helpful in other ways!)

If you’re curious about it, she’s about to start running what she calls Money Mochas with snippets of the content. I’m also glad to chat (use the contact form!) if you have questions. (Not an affiliate, not getting anything from this other than pleasure at helping people find tools that help them.)

Friday is the beginning of Jason Miller’s Strategic Sorcery deep dive, so there will be new things to do then too. Whee!

Other stuff on my to-do list involves figuring out a bunch of housekeeping stuff to better do some things and facilitate some things in my magical and spiritual life (including finally setting up a hearth shrine: I have bits coming in the mail which I think will be lovely.) I may not manage that this weekend, but at least it’ll be closer to happening.

Still working on the ‘remembering to post this on Sunday night’ portion of the project (there is now a reminder in my Todoist).

No witchy scheduled events last week

(Medical appointment, yes, and I am still in the annoying and brain-consuming interregum of having some stuff that needs dealing with but it’s not entirely clear what the best route is, plus changing primary care doctors.

My last awesome one left the practice to go back to school in an additional speciality, and I am seeing the person she recommended at the end of the month. This would have been easier if my body hadn’t picked the last couple of months to have some mild but ongoing stuff that is not resolving easily with the first stuff we try.)

In other news

For other projects (namely my sideline writing 1920s romances with magic), the current book in editing is riffing on Tarot cards in multiple ways, and my most excellent editor (also witchy, and a long time good friend, Kiya) made really great solutions that then required me beating on the worldbuilding question “so what kind of Tarot deck imagery are they using then?”

In the process of figuring that out, I discovered that there’s a book about the Sola Busca tarot, the earliest complete surviving deck we have (it was made in Ferrara for someone in Venice and was finished around 1491), but it is a weird deck.

When I poked around for copies, I discovered that there are only about 6 copies in Worldcat (a massive shared catalog many larger libraries contribute to. 6 copies is really small.) I went off and asked my local library if I could get it through interlibrary loan. I got back a cheerful note saying they’d put the request in, it might take anywhere from a week and a half to a month to show up, they’d let me know when it did.

It showed up on Friday. And, on checking it out, I discovered I have it until mid-January (which is an absurdly long time for an interlibrary loan – often the total loan period including transit time is a month or six week.) So I can take my time with it and take lots of notes.

I spent a couple of hours with it between Saturday and Sunday (I have now read the preface, the introduction, and chapters one and two).

It did not directly solve my writing problem (it won’t fit what I need itself) but it did start to give me a model for stuff that would, and I am now rather “I accidentally an entire Tarot” about reframing some symbolism to fit other parts of the worldbuilding and back history, and our history, and I am really rather pleased with it so far. Even if it did require another solid two hours with Holistic Tarot (Benebell Wen) and Tarot Wisdom (Rachel Pollack) last night.

Also yesterday, I figured out what we’re doing for our group full moon ritual on Saturday (complicated by the fact things are still very early in Dedicant training, I’m getting over a cold, and my next week’s schedule involves a dental appointment, possible jury duty, and a much busier than usual Saturday including a work-related presentation.)

I still need to double check teaching notes, but that’s fairly straightforward this time. And I answered a question from one of my Dedicants in email.

In the next week

Thursday: Call for another current class I’m taking (and I need to remember to do my writing earlier.)

Saturday: Full moon ritual and Dedicant class.

Coming up

I have signed up for the 10th anniversary Strategic Sorcery Deep Dive class, from Jason Miller. (Signups open until the 18th)

I’ve been thinking about doing it for a couple of years – not just for the content itself, but the way it’s been percolating through the work of a bunch of other people whose stuff I read and ponder, and the chance to discuss that in community. The Deep Dive has even more of that, so there I go! It’ll keep me cheerfully busy.

Slightly later than last week, Sunday got away from me timewise.

This past week

I kept up with my daily offering and morning practice (which I swear I will talk about more shortly, honest. Still not this week.)

On Friday, I had the second meeting for a project in the Boston area – good conversation, though we’re definitely still in that stage of a new project where we’re trying to figure out what we’re doing. (I’m at “This is our second meeting, this is normal.)

Like sensible witches with busy Octobers, we are not attempting to meet in October, and I’m hosting our next meeting at the end of November.

Friday, I made the first of what I intend to be monthly offerings to my local food pantry in honour of Hekate (I forget where I heard this first, as an alternate approach to leaving food out – I can leave a tiny token amount outside my apartment, but don’t want to leave more than that.)

Saturday, I taught the second Dedicant class, which I call either “How the Craft is not like other learning” or “Better Pagan Research”, and covered a lot of things to think about. My dedicants have an ongoing set of deity research projects, so we talked about that specifically, as well as issues like people talking about their personal experiences of magic, ritual, and deity when looking for information.

Sunday, I did the longer offering I do once a week (generally on Sundays, when I’m reliably home and not extra busy) which involves some sort of food or drink (locally made mead, in this case), a candle, and incense.

I did a particular offering to the Archangel Michael, who has turned up in multiple readings for me in the past couple of years as a “hey, you might want to aim some attention this way” (the offering was very much a ‘this is your feast day, hi, here is a thing, let’s see how this goes’ mode.)

I also did a new moon Tarot reading, experimenting with a new spread, and I’ll see how that plays out this month (and talk about it if it seems promising, though it’s definitely one other people would need to adapt to their needs.) And a little meditative dancing, because I just could not muster the energy to leave the house, even though it was a gorgeous day.

(And then I did a bunch of writing and editing and sending notes out to people, and was up a tad too late, and overslept this morning, so that’s the kind of day it is today.)

 Welcome! One of the things I’ve been thinking about is that there are lots of books and resources out there that talk about all the things we might be doing – and not so many talking about what we’re actually doing.

Today is my birthday (and the first of my personal new year’s days), and also Mabon, so I think it’s a grand time to see if I can do a post once a week talking about what I’ve been up to. I’m not necessarily going to talk about details (some of those are private, some of them involve other people, some take a chunk of explanation) but I will talk about the shape of things I do.

This past week:

It’s been a fairly quiet week magically speaking. I’ve done my basic morning offering devotional every day, and my morning practice. (I’ll talk about both of these in more detail soon, but I’m crunched on time tonight.)

This weekend:

My basic goal for my birthday weekend is to have some good conversation and good food – it fits well with the seasonal celebration.

No group ritual this year – my coven has brand new Dedicants, and their Dedication earlier this month took precedence for our ritual time. (We meet twice a month, on average, with ritual at one of those, and not at the other, because timing and scheduling are complex things.)

Instead, I went out to dinner with a friend last night (this is the friend with whom I go out to interesting restaurants, and we mostly manage to go to somewhere that does farm to table or otherwise seasonal foods a couple of times a year.) We had a lovely meal out, some interesting food, and I came home and settled in to writing. 

I didn’t set my alarm this morning (and thus slept tons, and quite late.) My plans for the day involved a brief walk along my usual route, some ritual work, and then cooking. All of that took me longer than I’d planned on, but it all went well. 

The personal ritual work including a Tarot reading for the year ahead. (I used this one from Ethony) and I’m thinking about the results. I spent a little time journalling about what my ideal day looks like, and thinking in general about what I want my coming year to look like. 

Reflection: 

I also spent time thinking about my past year. It’s been a busy and complex year in some ways. Here’s a few highlights:

On the witchy front, I have a brand new initiate (as of August) in my tradition, the first person where I have been their primary teacher and initiator.

This feels amazing and wonderful and also awe-inspiring in the best ways (by which I mean there’s been a fair bit of self-examination and “Wait, am I doing this right” along the way.) I also have three new Dedicants, studying for our year and a day cycle, and they ask great questions and bring such fantastic experiences and thoughts to discussions and ritual already. 

I’m also working on a local project that’s in the very early stages, but really promising. (We’ve got our second meeting about it on Friday.) 

I’ve self-published four historical romances with magic (set in a magical Great Britain of the 1920s), and they are steadily finding people who love them. This delights me! And there are more books coming (I’m working on editing book 5, and writing book 7 in that series, and I have a lot more planned.) Basically, if I’m not doing witchy stuff, work stuff, or dealing with daily life stuff, I’m probably doing something related to these books.

My day job has also been going well. I’ve been making progress on a couple of long-term projects that are showing great results, and I’m now partly contracted to a federal project in our field, which means I get to be helpful in different ways and learn new things (without it being too stressful.)

My day job is now at a “I could do this until I retire” sort of place. I love my job, I like the people I work with, there are new things to enjoy figuring out, and older patterns that can be improved, but it’s not the rapid learning demand it was my first couple of years I was there. That’s just fine with me – it’s leaving me with brain and mental space for the other stuff in this section and my life! 

My health is doing a lot better. I spent the summer of 2018 doing a lot of time consuming things that helped (including starting allergy shots and doing sleep testing.) The CPAP machine helped a lot, moving to a new apartment helped even more. For the first time in a decade, I’m able to walk a mile (with a short pause somewhere in the middle, ideally) and not feel overwhelmingly tired at the end. (It used to be my stamina would give out suddenly and without warning, which was really annoying and awkward.)

This is really exciting, both because I’m enjoying walking along the bike path by my current apartment most mornings, and it opens up things like “walk downtown to the library” as options for my day. I have more health-related stuff I’m working on, but I’m really pleased with the progress so far.

I’m single (and have been for 14 years, so, y’know, pretty used to that now.) But I have regular time with local friends, a lot of online connections I value deeply, and if I were up to going out more often, I’d have even more social stuff I could be doing. Pretty satisfied here. I have a couple of plans for this year that should help with ‘meet people I don’t already know’ on a more regular basis. 

My finances are not great, however. I took on debt doing that apartment move on short notice, because health issues made it pretty essential. (However, my current apartment is awesome, has a lovely kitchen, and great space for hosting ritual.)

I’m hoping to make a big dent in that debt this year, both through some side work I’ve been doing for a friend, through writing income, and through being a lot more mindful about where and how I’m spending money. 

Coming up:

I’m working my way through a couple of magical courses and materials (Briana Saussy‘s Spinning Gold, which I took two years ago, and am focusing on again as an alumna this year and Alexis J. Cunningfolk’s Lunar Apothecary, which has been on the backburner for a bit), and I’m thinking of adding one more. 

Big goals for the year are still in a formative stage.

Basically, my birthday is when I start thinking about what I’ve liked about the past year and want more of (and what things I can set aside and stop doing….) Samhain is the end of my ritual year, and there’s a fallow time until the first light of Yule. Between Yule and January 1st, I put a lot of data (astrological and otherwise) into my calendars and to-do app, and figure out the big goals for the year in terms of what I want to actually accomplish in concrete terms. 

Next week in specific has a meeting about that project, our second Dedicant class, and hopefully me making some progress on various other witchy projects. I’ll check in here next Sunday night and tell you what I’ve been up to.