I made this blog, excitedly, some months ago now. I have another blog (one of the ones in my short list), and I haven't posted there for a while. I've been irregular there for some years now. I thought I needed a new, more specific place to explore my thoughts about magick, mental health, history, life, psychology - a good ramble about many things, but away from my regular readership who would perceive this side of me as both boringly navel-gazing and massively woo. If I announce this place as those 2 things straight away, we get you readers who don't mind me being inward-looking and woo-ish. Indeed, we might not call it woo, and just call it how we think about things.
And yet. Here it sits, and I haven't felt anything was good enough to write down. I need to just start, right?
I started my other blog back when my youngest was still pre-school. When he eventually went, I had to go back to work. My troubles with writing were pre-existing, but seem to have gotten a lot worse from that point. I didn't feel ready to go back to work, but I had to, for the sake of money and bills (and a lot of debt). Every single job I have taken since then has hugely impacted my self-esteem and sense of competency with the outside world, with the work place. As of now, I am unemployed, very gently looking for a job -- I should be at it night and day as the debt problem is much worse for the succession of low-paid jobs I've had to take, the pandemic and then being made redundant, etc...But I'm not. I'm terrified of getting another job and being catapaulted back into the degree of anxiety, tearfulness and general awful feeling of worthlessness and uselessness I ended up feeling by the end of the last one.
And that last job, despite it's low pay, ridiculous deadlines in which not enough time was given to do a task well, should have been the best. It had writing in it. But it became one of the worst. Someone criticising me very often, frequently calling me 'unprofessional' when I tried to be true to myself and speak as person to person. Possibly unintentional misdirection when I kept trying to raise issues - a bit of gaslighting. Micromanaging to the point of Big Brother overlooking of the smallest things I did. Anyway. It left me feeling why would anyone want to even employ me, I'm clearly useless?
So that job didn't help with my sense of who I am as regards to writing - especially writing. I was hired (I thought), after the boss had seen bits of my previous blog, where I wrote long rambly articles about many things. I was excited to able to do some writing for that organisation. But almost from the first, everything I wrote was picked apart and a completely different style - very bland, corporate and shoppingy blah - was needed. It was never explained that maybe it was assumed that if I could write one way, I could adapt and do a completely different style. I had thought my actual natural style was liked and could be worked with and improved; not completely obliterated. I mean, why hire me, then? Hire someone closer to what was needed. Or have the conversation explaining something totally different was required, show examples of the sort of thing and see what happened from there. By the end of my tenure there, nothing was accepted; 3 articles just ignored with no feedback and 1 massively re-written (twice), that wasn't published with no explanation for that. So I was left feeling crap and useless again. I don't entirely blame the organisation I worked for for this. Corporate persona is something I have always had trouble trying to be or work with: I'm me, its hard to be an anthusiastic drone.
I'm telling you this because it really affected my sense of who I am as a person who can write. And if I have trouble beleiving in myself as someone who can convince or entertain or persuade or soothe with words - then who am I, inside, anyway? As a person, at all? If I can't tell my own story, let alone others?
I've had depressive and anxiety issues as long as I can remember. The end of furlough and the pandemic seemed to have increased them tenfold. I'm hoping this blog can be a beginning of me writing myself back, stitching myself back into a sense of who I am. And more importantly, what I can do in the world that might be of use to me and others. At this stage, nothing as big as making a mark. Just being...not useless. Not purposeless.
Magickally, the New Moon is a time of new beginnings. The part of the cycle where you can start something new. So I thought maybe to commit to being here and trying to think through what to do to bring myself back. To remember what I love, celebrate those things and people. To be For, not just Against. To get stuff done (there's a residual protestant work ethic lurking under there!). I'll try to post once a week, short or long. More if there's a flurry of anything vaguely useful.
I hope you don't mind my thinking aloud, sometimes at length. If it bores the living hell out of you, please just move along - a world of other posts by other people are out there. I have no intention of being snappy and commercial to get more readers. I'm here to be real and honest about good and bad life events, and work them through. To refind joy and get more from the sense of wonder I already have. If any of you feel sad, anxious, purposeless and ...just a bad fit for the world, whilst still loving its amazing beauty and still feeling hope for humanity despite all we have done (as I write, COP26 is over in Glasgow) - then please come back on and off. I'll be trying to work it all out, trying to not be scared and avoidant. Trying to to reclaim a sense of self and contentment.
I'm happy to be writing, even this small thing. It's good to speak in my own voice. Thanks for reading it.
Isn't this beautiful? Close to where I live. I'm craving summer (my favourite season) and this is what it was like in July. Mmmmmm.....
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