#brightgnosis

Have the day you deserve, Anna.

My lemon tree grew its first fruit since it was planted in 2017! And they ripened this week!

Well, APART from sleeping then.... 😆

I'm kind of habitually nocturnal. If given the option, I tend to stay up later at night and get up later in the morning. It's just how my internal clock is set.

I've been known to sit up all night writing, working on projects, chatting with friends, or catching up on my latest binge-watch while working on handicrafts. Pretty much anything where I can make a comfy nest, have some snacks and a productive fidget, and watch something that I want to watch without distractions.

I got to visit someone I love. :>

Ooh, this is a fun one @brightgnosis, thank you!

I fenced for years pre-pandemic. Most clubs have one or two "open" nights a week that are a lot like basketball pickup games -- anyone with equipment who wants to fence is welcome to show up, with a small fee for drop-ins who aren't already members. I really liked being a regular at one or two spots where everyone was pretty low-key and it was nice to get to hang out with a mix of school aged kids, university students on break, and retirees (it's hard to find sports that are forgiving of a broad band of ages).

Like a lot of other things, most clubs shut down at the height of COVID and were slow to re-open. I'd moved by the time things settled, and the clubs near where I am now seem to cultivate membership for folks interested in professional competition. I tried the competition scene out when I was younger and didn't really enjoy it, I'm really just interested in a fun way to exercise and chit-chatting with people who are into the same niche hobby.

I know who that was and I chose not to address then. They were mad at me because I blocked them on Tumblr and discord.

At the time, we hadn't spoken in a couple of weeks.

I blocked them because I was dealing with a lot and my mother had recently been diagnosed with very serious cancer (which she is still battling) and that person's posts at the time were really hard and unsettling for me to read as they often portrayed someone grieving the loss of their own mom to cancer in a way that was difficult for me to see.

I did not confront them because I had no desire to control what they put on their blog but I also didn't think that it was necessarily the safest time for me to confront them directly and thought they would not take it well which they didn't as they doxed me in retaliation to being blocked -- and adding in an edit: which they didn't see for over a week, and it's not like they had been following me either when I had blocked them???.

I blocked them just to protect my peace, but I have not been in contact with them since-- also, I haven't known peace since either. :/

I was doxxed. I was accused of cursing someone (that I did not curse). I was called all sorts of things.

It was disappointing, but I guess unsurprising. And hearing about through anons and from people sending me the post really affirmed my fear of that person not handling me wanting to cease contact well at all.

Earlier, I had quipped that the short answer to both questions was the same: "Solitude." If you will grant me the indulgence of explaining why I answered thus.

It is exhausting working alone for damn near everything. The pandemic made matters worse, but this has been a problem for me from the moment I began stubbing my toe on the rocks along this path. Trial and Error™ is the hallmark of the practitioner, but when you don't have the ability to have your work peer reviewed, then the errors stick around longer and the trials have a heavier cost. I'm always hiding a part of me from other magic users while I wait to see which one of their DNI categories I'm going to fall into, this time.

What I noticed pre-pandemic is that eclectic magic users were very welcome, as long as you were eclectic in the right (read: popular and/or mainstream) way. There is a reason one of my first posts here so long ago was a rejection of sisterhood with other witches who were trying to claim some sort of connection for no other reason that I was considering if I was even a witch in the first place.

Here and now, in the long tail of the pandemic, I haven't tried to attend any in-person events or ceremonies. They all seem to fall on a weekday and are prohibitively far from me such that I'll lose more than just the earnings of the day. Not to mention, that I don't know the people putting these things together, nor the people presenting at the shindig, nor the area that the event is happening in.

Online, it is not much better. The groups I see in the few servers I lurk in are well established and have mutual chains linking within and without the online spaces. It feels like watching a group of kids playing double-jump and they have been playing so long together that they have their own rhythm for jumping in and out of the rope because everything about the game has been shaped into a pattern that suits them best. And here I am, clunky, uncoordinated, not presenting as expected, and the group leader is telling me to jump in anytime but the moment I do, I snag the rope and the game (read: conversation) just stops.

I don't question if that online space was meant for me. If it was, I wouldn't be fucking up the game. I question if I'm meant for online spaces, and have quietly taken my leave from most servers. (waves hand) I am not the content creator you are looking for.

This leaves me with very few people that I can be weird with. That I can ask a "deep question" to. That I have been trying very hard not to abuse with my single-minded focus, because one of the hardest things I have had to realize lately is that I am considerably Not Normal™ when it comes to wooish shit, because I don't think that even the Big Name Practitioners™ think about or try wooish shit as much as I do. Very often, their social media feeds (public and/or quasi-public) are 90% Everyday Life™ that you see for anyone else in that general area or demographic and an occasional Now This Is What I Call Magic!™.

There isn't anyone else like me, which is probably very good for everyone else, but is really fucking shit for me.

But, that same solitude is also very fulfilling for me. Because I do try the Weird Shit, and I do poke at the thing that most folks on my dash are concerned about poking at, and I get to work the ritual that takes advantage of my single-minded focus, and on occasion, I get shit done. It means that I don't have someone annoyed that I'm staying up late to do the thing for the tenth night in a row, or that when I put a jar in the fridge labeled "Not For Human Consumption" that it will remain where I put it no matter how many months days I go back to finish the rite I started.

It means I don't have to ask permission (or forgiveness) for deviating from the plan, because the plan was always going to be uncovered as I went anyway. It means that when I plan the purchases for the rite, that I don't have to add a "pinch" tax for when someone else decided to help themselves to the ingredients before the rite and takes just a "pinch" for themselves.

It means that I progress according to the work I'm putting in, and if something takes me a few years months to understand, then that's okay, and if someone takes me a few hours days to master, then that's also okay, and I'm not trying to force myself to work through my shit on someone else's timing, and that's hella okay.

But then, like the ouroboros, I wind up back where I started. I have this neat trick, this personal understanding, this alternative way of working this jar I picked up, and I want to talk about it with someone because that's one of the better ways for me to truly understand what I'm doing and what I've learned, but because this little thing I have doesn't have an accepted lineage, source, book reference, BNP recommendation, then I'm no different from amulet-chasers.

You'd think that having a personal blog of my own would make this easier. After all, having a space independent of advertisers and/or corporate interference means I can say what I want. But who is reading? Who was reading? With all that has happened (and continues to happen), my posts have dwindled to nigh nothing, and Tumblr remains the only space where I am active.

I don't know how to break the cycle.