Random Chaos

Another movie that it took me forever to see was Kiki’s Delivery Service, and I have to tell you, as a burnt out witch, this  movie hits differently.

It’s made me come to the conclusion that I do not need to be actively trying to end this burnout. It all comes back (or doesn’t) in its own time

I also realized that I hadn’t been enjoying the writing, or the process, for a while.

And the only thing you can do for that is to back off for a bit. Do something else. Try new things.

I’ve been reconnecting with my love of food, outside of its earlier context as an aggravator of my eating disorders. Actually, I got called out on that one by my partner, who noticed that I hadn’t really been eating. I’ve rediscovered tea.

And spiritually, I no longer feel like I’m sitting in a pit. Do I have a label less complicated than I did before? Hell to the naw. But that’s not going to stop me again. I started reading some Taoist stuff, am going to start reading Thich Nhat Hanh. I’ve actually been active in my tarot practice again.

If writing happens again, something tells me it’s going to be different.

I'm baked and I wanna talk witch shit for a second.

(For those of y'all who have missed the memo—I'm a witch.) There are a lot of misconceptions about all things witch out there, and I am by no means the ultimate authority on all things witch, but I think that I have a little bit of pull in this area at least. I mean, I've officially been a witch for an entire two-thirds of my life. I've officially been a witch longer than I have NOT been a witch.

...I'm going to warn you now, at some point, much like it has to me while I'm writing this, the word 'witch' might start sounding/looking like a fake word because we've said it so many times. OK. Let's tackle a few things.

"But Rai, don't you have to have been born a witch to be a witch?"

Ehh, nah. There are people who were literally born into witch...hood? Witchness? Witchdom? ANYWAY—this doesn't make them any more or less valid than those of us who came to the path later on. Blood isn't everything. I will grant you, some of us have a few useful innate skills, but the majority of the little skills that you associate with being a witch? You can train those, to the point where you catch up with the 'naturals' or even exceed them. So yeah, you can pick this up whenever the path feels right to you.

"OK, so you don't have to be born a witch. Isn't there a ton of training that you have to do then?"

YUP. The narrative of 'I picked up a witch book and now I am a witch" is all wrong. You have to do the work to be a witch. What that work is differs depending on the skill you're trying to pick up at the time. It's perfectly doable, though: I learned a lot during the chaos that is high school—

"Wait, it isn't a high school fad?"

Listen: people have been calling witchcraft a high school fad since I was in middle school. Though a lot of us indeed get into it in high school, calling it a 'high school fad' is dismissive of those of us who got into it in high school and stuck with it. It also dismisses high schoolers as flighty teens who can't make a decision about their spirituality on their own. That leads me to two points: 1) give teenagers more credit, and 2) people can find their path at any time. Any time.

"Do you hex/curse?"

Ehh. I do. Not all witches do. Ask two witches, get three answers.

"Does that magick business work? Also, why the k?"

First of all, it works! We wouldn't bother if it didn't. But it's equally important to note that not all witches do magick. As for the 'k', it started with Aleister Crowley if memory serves me. Due to this source, there's a split between people who use it and people who are against it. I use it because it puts my mind in a different headspace when I see the spelling: a 'not stage magic' cue to my brain that it's time to get to work.

"So you're Wiccan then?"

Not all witches are Wiccan. Wicca is a specific religion with many different branches. Some witches are as far from Wiccan as the sun is from Neptune. Basically, unless you know the specifics, don't just label a witch a Wiccan. They might not be!

"Ok. But...why?"

Here's a place where I'm confident my answer will mesh with a lot of other witches: it just feels right. My entire life before I became a witch I was told that I needed someone else to connect to the divine. It was supremely empowering to find that I could do this myself, without fear of being called a sinner or something.

"Does that mean you've got church trauma?"

A lot of us, yes. Me? YES. Fuckin hell yes. But not all of us do. This is another one of those cases where it's important not to just make an assumption.

Well, that's it for now. If you have questions...well, you know where to find me.

I have done a load of dishes and cleaned the sinks. A podcast about deep work is playing on my bluetooth speaker.

I have been trying to get my writing mojo back. Being without my work computer means that I am without my WIPs, and that is...well, it's a little discouraging when it comes to writing. I mean, the thing that I want to work on is literally not here to work on. And it hasn't been synced with my cloud accounts in a while so I can't just magic my way in and work on it from here. I need to get my stuff here so that I can work again.

Working depletes my introvert battery fast--I'm the window person in the drive through at work at lunch shift, and actually the little person in the box (as my grandma once called drive through order takers once) on the morning. By the end of the day, I simply do not want to human.

To add to the chaos, my body kind of taps out after those shifts. It's eight hours of work, three days a week. Less than I used to work, but I'm also making more there (because this state's minimum wage is not only higher, but places are so desperate to get new people on the staff of places that they're paying mad well).

I've been exhausted. My social life has been knocked to the side because I simply do not have the energy at the end of the workday. I'm working on getting better at that, but it's...well, it's hard work. I just want to rest lately. Now, I know a lot of this is the progression of my fibro. But to add another factor, my brain insists on saying "Well, maybe it's not the fibro/maybe it's not fibro at all/come on weakling you can do this shit."

Have I mentioned my brain is an asshole?

What I need is a vacation. From everything.

It proved impossible to get me from this city all the way to St. Louis, and as a result, my tenure as a factory worker is officially over.

What surprises me is that I'm taking this better than I did losing my job at the hotel. But then again, that was an even bigger case of BS than this case: this was the year that they discovered that my slum apartment complex was full of ...ahem, pestilence, and they laid me off supposedly until I could get it taken care of. Well, while I was out there, they canned me before I could get it done.

In a way, this feels similar. I lost this job through circumstances that I couldn't do anything about myself.

More than the last job, though, this was killing my body. My back is wonky, my knees complain more, and through something completely unrelated, my shoulder is just plain fucky, for lack of a better word.

But, when I stop to think about it, I don't regret any of this, either. Everything led me here, to a place where I am doing better than I have in a long time.

BUT the fact remains that this means that I'm out of money coming in.

We're cutting back to essentials until we can get this situation put back together, but man, it's kind of scary. I've never been in this position before: New city, new neighbors, learning to live with a significant other--it's all foreign to me. And while I search for a job, I am basicallly a house spouse until further notice. I mean, I want to be a two-check house, but apparently that ain't just yet.

And yet, I have never felt quite this serene.

I'm not going to ask questions. That'll jinx everything that we have going on right now.

I'm just going to use this downtime to refresh and recover from the last few months.

Now, back to my podcast.

Explosions.

Lights,

Barbeque.

I'm doing none of it.

It's too hot and too...mosquito-y.

We holed up in the house to get away from the noise.

I went so far as to get back sto FFXIV. Best decision ever.

In fact, I'm headed back to Eorzea until it cools off enough to actually sleep.

It's like 80F in the house with the AC on... At leasts I have my pretty boys back.


Yup. I'm going fishing.

At one point, while I was waiting for my apartment to be ready, I lived with my dad and my stepmother. We...didn't get along well for the longest time, me and her. The reason I first left that place was the day I woke up and, for my birthday, received several lashes with an extension cord for not confessing to the theft of some of...MY earmarked groceries.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Don't think about it too hard.

After a few years, we reconnected. And we got along really well for a whlie. ...then it got weird.

One day, when we--that is, me, my dad, and her--were having a serious little smoke sesh, Dad gets up to get something from the downstairs, probably a beer, can't really remember. That left us two in the room prepping the next blunt.

Then she turns to me and goes "I know what you're up to."

Right then I wasn't up to anything but getting that next blunt started, I wanted to be FLYING, ok? So all I could do was look at her blankly holding the blunt wrapper, confused as fuck.

"I know what you're up to. You can't have him. HE IS MINE."

I blink once, hard. Did she just imply...

"I give him what you can't, even if you're trying."

OKAY YEAH SHE'S IMPLYING WHAT I THOUGHT SHE WAS AND I WASN'T JUST HIGH AS A KITE.

Fun fact, we--that is, me and her--haven't spoken since. Because, you know, the SERIOUSLY GROSS acccusations of me having and acting on an Electra complex

I mean, I survived it with two patellar dislocations, both of the same knee, one of which I wasn't even awake for the start of...

I just have to keep going. Things are getting better. Things are getting better. Things are--

-Pfff noise-

You know, after a while this starts to feel almost delusional. I mean, a few things have gotten better in the last couple of weeks--there is a big thing going on that I can't discuss right off because I KNOW when I do that, I end up jinxing it. So I'm not going to voice too much of it right off. If I don't jinx it, things will be a lot, lot, lot better.

The boss is still an asshole, but...whoo boy. I didn't mention earlier this week that I told him the fuck off. He changed a protocol and acted like things had always been that way when he decided to screech (yes, screech...he has...a voice) at me about it when I told him I was just following orders. I'm fuckin' done with that dude, man...just done.