It’s kind of a weird to be “staying home, sick” when you work from home anyway. It means I do emails from the bedroom rather than the living room, essentially.
I’m looking back at the New Year New You experiment, which started just shy of a year ago, and trying to remind myself what my goals were/are.
Specifically, my goal for NYNY was this:
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.
I’m part-way there. As I said to Miss Sugar: “My life is currently a frazzled, occasionally resentful, sometimes frustrated mash-up of poetry and kink and Making Stuff, and doing various types of modeling. With buckets of joy and beauty thrown in (thanks, in large part, to my most excellent bride-to-be).”
But I also think that I’ve lost sight of that goal – the wider goal – in my hunt for getting my financial goals met. The part where I want to make my living by being a professional dyke or a professional naked girl or a professional crafter or a professional smut-writer (or, more accurately, a mix of all of the above) so that the part of my life that I spend financing the rest of it will also be in line with that overarching goal.
Gordon has this post about (among other things) One Hundred Bad Ideas.
Whenever I try to envision my “ideal day” or “ideal week” as a thought experiment, I tend to get caught up in the “how do I do this based on what I have now” method, rather than saying “Screw it! We’re talking ideals here, right? So why not just say things like Tuesday Morning: Boiling water offering + at-home yoga and vocal warm-ups. Receive $5000 Advance cheque from publisher; continue working on third contracted novel; enjoy Sushi Lunch with BFF, OR Thursday Afternoon: Model at shoot for FootSucker Magazine –> includes receiving a pedicure, a foot massage, and $300 modeling fee; book follow-up shoot for February Edition. Yin Yoga in the evening, after weekly Poetry Festival meeting.”
One Hundred Bad Ideas.
Which aren’t necessarily bad ideas. It’s just that the steps from Current Reality to Ideal Reality may not be immediately obvious. (Immediately Obvious: Continue working on draft of first novel. Not So Immediately Obvious: How I’ll make money while/by doing this so that I don’t feel like a slacker while honing my craft?)
Sometimes I think that I’m doing that thing that Brene Brown talked about in Listening To Shame, that thing where one deliberately works to keep oneself small and under the radar. Like I’m not willing to think big enough because I’m afraid of what actually succeeding to that degree is going to cost me. And I don’t just mean anonymity-wise (though that’s a big one). I mean that the work that goes into (or at least that I’m assuming goes into[1]) succeeding to that degree
Look. I keep reading about things like “shoaling” (many little magics all aiming, in different ways, towards the same over-arching goal), but I’ve come to realize that… I don’t know how to do very many kinds of spells.
I know how to do honey-pots.
I theoretically know how to do a witch’s bottle (but haven’t ever actually made one).
I’ve pretty-much never done candle magic, although I think that’s my next place to start.
I’ve done magically-infused baths, but I have no idea how well they’re actually working.
… I don’t actually know *how* to enchant something. I don’t actually know *how* to push my energy into a different object with the end-goal of making it Do Something on my behalf. So I’m basically winging it every time I try this.
Anyway. That’s kind of where my head is at right now so I think I’ll be spending my “sick day” looking up different ways of doing small, simple magics and, with any luck, beginning to dare greatly.
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
[1] This is where the spell-casting comes in. There’s work I love doing that has the potential to pay really, really well, and that is something that I could do, even with a hectic travel schedule, and (probably) not screw up my social life entirely. The question is: How do I Work It so that I can get my In into that payscale?
Urban Meliad 