NaBloPoMo: Spinning my wheels.

You know that loading icon? The perpetually spinning circle? That is my brain right now. Several familial challenges have popped up over the last two weeks. I'm thinking hard but not getting anywhere remotely close to a solution. I've got some bad feelings about one of the situations. A member of the extended family is having some health difficulties and it is deeply concerning. I'm just plumb out of ideas on how we can help. And then there's my youngest son's challenges with the school where I'm in a holding pattern waiting for them to come back to me with proposed solutions. To be honest, my anxiety meter is pegged at high and I think it's going to stay there for a little while.

I am finding that the more anxious I get, the worse my writer's block gets. I am highly annoyed with this. I know that I could be creating better content and more engaging material. But my brain is not cooperating. I am frantically looking at the situation trying to find a solution and not finding one. Gods help me, this is going to suck. And my seasonal affective disorder is acting up. Ugh.

NaBloPoMo: I have disappointed the cat and squirrel of judgement.

 I woke up at 0630 and thought my day was going to be full of writing goodness. I didn't get to any blogging until 2030 because my brain was still loading. I got some chores done, but creative work was nothing. Hopefully this block will clear up and I'll be working again soon.

NaBloPoMo: What in the nine worlds am I doing?

 Hello everyone. It's been quite a while and I do apologize. Depression got the better of me and then I kinda hit rock bottom for a bit. I wasn't writing anywhere. I wasn't crafting things. I think the only positive out that entire experience is the fact that through the many medication adjustments and such, I got to be at home instead of in a hospital. I felt safer and worried less about my family through that stretch of time. It was rough.

I just gave up on everything at some point. Choked down my medication, forced myself to eat when I was hungry, and numbly did my best to make the household run smoothly. I prayed the entire time for it to end. I didn't want to be dead, but if the gods deemed that was how it was going to end then it would have been by their hand. To say the least, Loki and Freyr were both most concerned. Somewhere along the way, my psychiatrist found a SSNRI that actually works on me, two actually. Those got added to the cocktail along with a switch in the atypical antipsychotic that I take off label for my bipolar. 

The medications helped, a lot. Then I realized how much damage my two and a half years of depression did. I am still struggling to pick up the pieces. Half of my houseplants died for want of care. Those remaining are still looking unwell but I am confident that I can get them back to good health with some watering, repotting, and extra tender love and care. 

I felt horrible about the plants. I was convinced that Freyr was disappointed with me at best, at worst he was angered. When I talked to him about it, he said that I wasn't in control of myself during that period. My illness was in control of me and I was too unwell to manage that burden. I still look at the empty planters and kick myself, but I am working to nurse these other green babies back to health so I do my best to focus on that.

I can't find that divination deck I was working on. Loki's told me it is in a 'safe place' and that I will get it back when I'm ready to work on it. If Loki's safe place is anything like my safe places for things, it'll be another two years before one of the cards shows up. He smirked when he said it'll motivate me to take better care of myself. I wanted to argue with him, but I couldn't fault his logic.

When I started thinking about NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo, both Loki and Freyr insisted I should work on it. This was back in March. Camp Nano came up but there was too much family stuff going. I was also still adjusting to the medications. I made a few forays into blogging, as you can see in my past posts. I just was struggling with so much stuff and still on the mend from the depression that writing in my blogs felt impossible.

Déa felt distant. I didn't despair, though. I knew that every relationship, especially with deities and spirits, have their fallow periods. To keep myself centered, I picked up the pen and resumed writing in my prayer journals. It wasn't anything grand. It wasn't eloquent. Honestly, a lot of the prayers over the last while have been pretty desperate sounding. 

My mental illness and its attendant problems aside, this year has been rather rough. My ailing father-in-law died in February. His funeral mass was in May (lots of complicated things lead to that happening how it did). My sons had a hard year with school. When Cuddle Bear graduated in June, it felt like a victory over the school system. You know it's rough when dealing with the school looks like an adversarial relationship instead of a partnership. 

Summer was busy for Snuggle Bug, which meant it was busy for me. His brother sort of looked for work but spent most of his time playing games on his computer. I didn't realize how maddening that was going to be until I was in the middle of it. Cuddle Bear (who is 100000% done with this nickname) turned 18 in August. We were so busy helping out with Beloved's mother that there wasn't much of a party. 

My mother-in-law is having difficulty adjusting to being a widow. Considering that they were married 50+ years, it makes sense. She's also having health issues and mobility issues that functionally keep her housebound. My brother-in-law has been staying with her to help out. Beloved is over three times a week to help keep his brother sane. Every time there's been a chance to help, Cuddle Bear has stepped up. He's done a lot of yard work and is currently working on cleaning up storm damaged trees. He's talking about selling the wood. We keep reminding him he has to finish cutting it before he can sell it.

And Snuggle Bug is having a rough time of it with school this year. He's depressed and struggling with some classes. We're doing what we can to help him and to get some supports from the school. Next year, Snuggle Bug will be a Senior and hopefully things will go better for him.

Back to the title question: what in the nine worlds am I doing? Hanging in there like a cat on a window screen, all claws deployed and yowling for someone to help.

NaBloPoMo meme edition with cats!

 I have been blocked on writing. The migraine that I've had for the last 4 days hasn't helped any.

NaBloPoMo meme edition

 

Divination: Crafting Your Own Oracle Deck (pt. 2)

Hello friends!

This week's divination post piggy-backs off of the themes of the last divination post. Glyphs in most any situation are a way to express an idea in a concrete fashion. They come in a dazzling array of designs and that is before you begin talking about an artistic glyph or letters from other languages. Typically they're used as a form of short hand to express the idea as quickly and simply as possible. 

Language that is written is a form of using glyphs that most people don't think about. Literacy is so common in the Western world that we have forgotten the power of words. I think people are drawn to ancient languages because they don't seem so common and that lack of commonality evokes a sense of mystery. There are many people who don't want to hear that Latin is about as complicated as using a computer generated spreadsheet program. It is tedious to learn, but once you grasp it, using it is very straight forward. The same is true for most of the languages derived from Latin. (This position has been espoused by quite a few Latin teachers and others who teach languages like Spanish that are derived from Latin. I still have nightmares of worksheets on proper verb endings in Spanish.)

When most people think of glyphs, they are thinking not about letters but artistic glyphs (which are often based upon long forgotten languages). These type of glyphs condense the idea expressed to a single image. This image can be called a pictogram, though that term is better suited for language components that have a resemblance to the idea expressed. Japanese is an excellent example of a language that uses pictograms in complex fashions. For example, the Japanese kanji for the word trouble (which I can not pronounce or spell phonetically) is a simplistic image of two women under one roof.

Artistic glyphs can be used to create cyphers and codes (the first thought that comes to mind is the infamous Zodiac killer's cypher based upon the glyphs of the zodiac). These cyphers and codes can be used like normal letters to spell out the intent of your spell work or the ideas you wish to impress upon your creative work. Or you can incorporate the use of a cypher wheel (most often seen with the English alphabet on it, it is a wheel of letters that you can draw a shape that spells your keyword). In this fashion glyphs can be turned into sigils.

Most of the glyphs on my oracle deck are artistic glyphs that serve the short hand purpose accompanied by the English word for the concept they embody. I feel that my artistic glyphs are too simplistic and lack emotional depth. Some of them I am considering completely reworking. I am debating incorporating background imagery to convey the concept of the card visually as well. This leads me to wondering if I should use traditional techniques and imagery or if I should use abstract. It's a tough debate.

Umm... Format changes were going to happen but I forgot. LOL

Hi everyone!

Yeah, I had big plans. I was going to completely revamp the blog and reorganize material. Then I forgot about it in the midst of life being a pain in the neck. I've been having a lot of issues with my anxiety and executive functioning (flashbacks are the seriously un-fun part of C-PTSD). I would have been writing but I was afraid to. Some of it because of flashbacks and some of it because of the flashback trigger - the current political-social environment.

Once I realized that was the problem, I was so angry that I was ready to spit nails. I took my anxiety medicine and did some deep breathing to calm myself down. The anxiety medication worked better than the deep breathing this time, I was that mad. I could have written a flaming rant about everything, but I stopped myself and looked at things from a bit of a clearer perspective. I realized that flaming rants are not going to help anything (especially my blood pressure). I thought about it and came to the conclusion that if I continued posting my content, it would be an act of resistance against the christo-facist crap getting spewed everywhere.

I grew up in an abusive household that had this type of garbage flying through the air and any resistance or rejection of this you got a nasty response ranging from verbal humiliation to physical punishment. To say the least, this isn't an easy topic for me. I was afraid that my blogs were going to get shut down because the powers that be are falling into line behind the president. Then it struck me, I'm not a big enough fish for them to worry about. I didn't have to worry about getting beat for being too liberal. No one was going to verbally shred me without consequence for disagreeing with the government. And, right now, I still am free to say whatever the hell is on my mind.

In a way, there's going to be something of a format change. I am going to be posting stuff that is political on a weekly basis. It will tie back to religion and witchcraft in some fashion usually. But some of the posts may just be old fashioned rants.