New Moon – Harvest Moon Begins

Part of me finds the name of this moon cycle hilarious, because it’s literally the lead-up to Unholy Harvest (the last day of-which is simultaneously the first day of Ancestor/Shadow moon, but bear with me…) Harvest moon will take us across the Autumn Equinox and into October, possibly to our first frost (which will be the end of the tomatoes – though given that I’ve gone a few dozen cherry tomatoes on the vines outside, and a big BOX of miniature romas and similar in my fridge, courtesy, of a couple of friends of ours… I won’t be entirley sorry to see them go… Somewhat sorry, sure. But not entirely).
 
Harvest Moon is a time to reflect and ask yourself “Did I reap what I sowed this year?”
 
I can’t even remember what I was thinking about six months ago, around about the Spring Equinox – though, with The Power Of The Internet, I was able to check. What did I sow in the spring time?
 
I was looking for casual-hours work that would help keep our bills paid as my wife moved forward with setting up her business and working full-time as her own boss. I was trying to balance things like getting enough sleep and being a bit of an introvert with equally important things like staying connected with people I care about and having some semblance of a social life. (I feel like Social Life is a bit like a muscle, in that you have to exercise it and practice and stuff in order to keep it from wasting away – and yet here I sit, spending Friday night alone in my house again… something out of step). I was quietly planning my garden-to-be and wondering how to kick-start my sex life on various fronts.
 
Where am I at on those fronts now?
Well… I did find a casual-hours job (that I can do remotely, no less!), and my wife’s business is taking off just beautifully, so there’s that. I’m doing (slightly) better at this whole “social life” business, making a point of keeping in contact with people who I want in my life, and trying to get myself out of the house and onto a dance floor every now and then before the cold weather sets in and I can’t go out in “above-freezing footwear” anymore. My sexlife is… A mixed bag, to be honest. My wife recently gave me some news which, overall, is possitive and Explains A Lot, but which also kind of threw me for a loop when she first brought it up and the upshot is that need to unlearn three years of badly planned “trying to be helpful” behaviour which has, really, not been helping at all. My other partner and I are figuring each other out, and it’s a really pleasant thing to do (obs), but we live far away from each other and so don’t get to experiment often. I took the summer (two months) off from Project X (which is a tangentially-sex-related project, thense bringing it up now) and have just started dipping my toes back in those particular waters with some added research to work with in the process. I self-published a chapbook (finally), and continue to work on my full-length manuscript, although that’s going more slowly than I’d like. I’m very aware that I can churn out poetry – and have it be good poetry, somewhat reliably – when I need to. And do it on a theme. But I’m finding that trying to do so on two themes at once is proving a tad more difficult, especially when you’re trying to include a couple of different (and not-so-matching) time-lines in there.
 
I think I have managed to stretch a little, to grow a little, even though most of the past six months have felt like I’ve been predominantly shuffling in place. Sometimes it’s good to take a look back and see what you’ve accomplished, since it’s harder to see the progress when everything’s so immediate.
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.