I am embarrassingly grateful for Deb’s permission to take the week off. There are problems with making use of it, of course: I’m already behind on some of my goals, and there’s a lot of work to do this year in many, many senses of the word. But it’s the last week of my winter break, and there are things here in the mortal Now which need to be tended to.
Too much of my break already consumed by work. I spent my New Year only a little better off than good master Jow: my food poisoning struck Thursday, but I was still too weak to do much of anything on Saturday. Far too little of my break has been spent with my family and closest friends. Schedules just haven’t lined up. Things have come up which have prevented me from spending more than a cursory amount of time with several people who really deserve my undivided attention. Yesterday was spent trying to correct that: breakfast with my mother, a free haircut from my stylist sister, a long lunch catching up with D after way too long, meeting my old boss (the man who taught me jewelry in the first place) for coffee, dinner with another friend, and finally catching up up with my tattoo artist/writing buddy to get a piercing redone and for a long overdue game of “so what have you been doing”? Today and tomorrow are shopping and packing and trying to catch up with people in a last-minute fashion.
That said, I have gotten a lot done. Aradia and I made the safe travel talismans which I still need to blog about. I have come up with a new name for my “BoS”: Book of the Labyrinth (βιβλιου ὀ λαβύρινθος). I have made good progress on Sannafrid’s natal chart, though not as much as I want; in my defense, she’s got a lot going on. I did write up my Dark Moon rites (most of them), and I have been keeping up with the New Year, New You prompts.
And catching up with all my people has been an adventure, too. Aradia has started a blog of her own, largely (but not exclusively) talking about Tarot. Two friends of mine (that I don’t often talk about here because we haven’t practiced magic together in years) have started a daily Tarot practice, engineered themselves into a better apartment, and one of them has managed to put herself back in school. Pasiphae has escalated her magical practice since I left, is talking to gods, and has started selling incenses and blends. D, who has been in business for herself for a while, has found two brick-and-mortar outlets for her teas. Whytar has gone from Forever Alone to engaged to a woman from his (relative) youth in a matter of months. My sister has (wisely, finally) given up on Texas and moved back closer to the family.