New Year, New You – Prompt #1: Making Way

Responding to “Making Way”:

The prompt asks us to talk about getting organized. Organized time, organized space, and the stumbling blocks we already know we’re going to have to deal with.

So.

Time, Space, and Great Big Rocks (that’s the universe for you, eh?).
Onwards!

Space: Is a mess.
This is (a) typical of me, but (b) currently exacerbated by the piles of home-made gifts strewn across my dining room table and my side table. (Part of me says “Once December is over, I’ll have so much more space!” And part of me suspects that it would just get covered in more crap before very much time went by).

I did manage to get everything done for our visit to The Relatives the other day but, in spite of having got six presents, a gift basket, and a lot of wrapping paper out of the house, my living room still looks a bit like a Ke$ha song exploded in it. (Specifically the part about the dirt and glitter all over the place — we ran out of vacuum cleaner bags a few weeks ago and we’ve been making due with sweeping. It’s… not actually all that effective).

Time:
I feel like I have a back-log of Things To Do – most of which are either related to my currently non-existent Etsy store and the rest of which are related, in one way or another, to writing. Either through my poetry show or through my actual, personal work.

I can look at the things I do and the things I make and, despite being able to see all of it, I often feel like I’m not getting much done or else that all I ever do is look at shoes. I know part of that is just Xmas stuff – I’m doing a lot of knitted presents this year, which means I spend a lot of time sitting in My Chair using my hands for something other than typing. I can also say that I’m juggling between five and seven careers (not all of them paying much at the moment, but still) right now, and the scheduling and running around can be a bit of a Thing.

None the less, being aware of what I’m doing and when I’m doing it are things I tend to struggle with – at least a bit. I get lonely and, before I know it, I’m realizing that I’ve just checked twitter for the 47th time in an hour. Or I get myself into a tail spin about ZOMG Not Enough Time and… waste time freaking when I could be focusing on Getting X Done.

As for the Big Rocks that I (already know I) have to deal with:
Because my schedule is pretty much always in flux[1] – and my income is pretty closely tied to that since I’m doing freelance everything, more or less – I periodically get caught in the ZOMG No Money weasel-pit, which means I end up spending hours hustling for work (of various kinds) rather than actually working on stuff.

Beyond that, my Big Rocks include:
Self sabotage
Discomfort with money[2]
Making Excuses (see above)
and
The “I Can’t”s. (This is related to the self-sabotage, but goes beyond that into Brain Weasel territory).

Areas where I’ve let things slide to the point they they are lying, mangled, at the bottom of a mountain somewhere behind me:

A) Boiling Water offerings: I’m not actually sure why I stopped doing this. Part of me says “Because you went from 100% working-from-home to adding a full-time temp contract into the mix, and are still working the extra job while trying to fit all your bookings and other commitments in around it. That’s why.” But that’s not all of it. The other reason is because, honestly, I resent (and therefore find ways to avoid) doing things when one of the Reasons I’m doing them is in order to avoid feeling guilty about not doing them. And it got to a point where I was playing so much catch-up with what I’d set up as a daily micro-ritual, that I actually didn’t wanna play any more. It’s a petulant little excuse for not doing something, but it’s still there.

B) Yoga. I stopped this one because I started a day-job. Part of why I was able to keep it up (for a couple of months) before that was because, due to my East-facing windows, there were always a couple of hours in the morning where I couldn’t work on the computer (due to glare), so I’d use the time to do yoga, do my water offering, run errands, and so-on. It got my day off to a fairly good start while also allowing me a few hours of “warm-up time” before I really had to get down to brass tacks. When I started the day-job, I lost that time and didn’t (not couldn’t, exactly, but didn’t) make the time in the evenings to keep up the physical end of things.

C) Writing. Which isn’t actually lying mangled at the bottom of a mountain somewhere behind me, but which remains a challenge when it comes to doing more than blithering on in yet another blog post. I’ve got Part One of a three-part porn story up at Good Vibes Magazine, and that’s giving me plenty of motivation to edit the remaining two parts into posting-worthiness; and I’ve got the shadow of a poem or two kicking around building up the steam it takes to come out. And both of those things are a big relief to me. Because, otherwise, I’ve been feeling really, really unwriterly of late. Not fun. Don’t like it. 😦

Things that are Looking Up:

Possible gig as a professional tarot reader (this is very much still in the works, but we’ll see where it goes).

Did a boiling water offering today.

Signed up to take part in a food-security-related Blog Carnival (not so much with the money, but definitely with the funneling my thoughts down the avenues where I want them to be going, so yay).

Temp contract (theoretically) coming to an end in seven weeks, thus freeing up my mornings for more writing, more modeling, and getting back to doing regular yoga!

So that’s where I’m at right now.

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

[1] Which is actually how I like it, by and large. If my schedule has a lot of variety to it, I don’t end up feeling bogged down by monotony.

[2] This is relevant because my Goals are, on the surface, fairly connected with my finances.

New Year, New You – Goals

Okay.

So I’ve signed up to be part of Miss Sugar’s New Year, New You project.

I feel rather like she does, in her post. Like this is jumping the gun and starting things too early.

Lately (and that really is only the last two years, although the last two years have been pretty monumental in terms of relationships, career-building, and general self-actualization, so…) lately, February has been the Time of Big Changes Getting Started for me. It’s when things started Getting Serious between me and Ghost (my life partner).

February is turning into a Big Changes time for me. It was February 2010 when things started Getting Serious with the woman who is now my life-partner (and my property) and, additionally, when I made my first big go at getting self-employed. February 2011 was when Ghost and I started talking collars, and when I actively went from “self-employed while looking desperately for another temp job” to “self-employed, dammit!” As it stands, while I’m still working a temp-job part-time, I’ve also spent most of 2011 self-employed, making my living (my living) by writing, modeling, crafting, running a poetry show, and – as of September – doing health outreach for the local Rainbow Community.
This is a HUGE deal for me.
For the longest time, my worldview basically went “there is no security unless you have a Government Job”. Which, of course, is garbage (although they do have a very nice pension plan, I can acknowledge that one). So the fact that I can, and do, keep myself alive[1] by being a creative queer chick is… pretty magical in and of itself.

So my goal, my goal for this New Year New You project, is actually to affect more of the same. To pull together more (successful/viable) income streams that actually reflect who I am and enrich me in some way, and to build on the ones I already have. Part of me is getting all “Money? Is that really what this is going to be about?” but… Okay, I can say “It’s about money,” sure. But what is money? It’s a means to many ends. Ends like a little bit of stability and security for me and my girl. Ends like the tiny house with the yard full of fruit trees and the really, really, really local eating. But it’s also about all that “follow your bliss” stuff.

There’s this guy you might know, who talks about life down the rabbit hole and how he’s now a fully-immigrated citizen of Palimpsest (no really, you should totally read that book, it’s got myth utterly riddled all through it). And that’s what I want.
And that’s what I want.

I want my LIFE to be this glorious mash-up of art and sex and joy and beauty, I want my LIFE to be built on and fueled by, and in a symbiotic relationship with, pleasure in all its many forms.

And that’s what I want my year of radical, magical transformation to get me to.

So there you go. My goal for the year (and beyond).

Wish me luck! 😀

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

[1] Not much more than that – and gods know, if I didn’t have my Ghost, I’d be in a LOT of trouble if I was still trying to live like this. Having a supportive partner makes a HUGE difference!