My goal for today is to make soup, take the puppy outside as often as necessary, play Warcraft and get as high as I possibly can.
Tonight at midnight will be the turning point. A definite line between before and after, stoner and sober. This blog shall be a journal of this journey, one day, one step at a time.
It’s 10am and I find myself at a loss for work. I could dive into P’s god-awful mess of filing, but I just don’t want to. Not like she cares if it goes one more day. I’ve already made a sizable dent in a pile of work she wasn’t going to get to any time this millenium.
I’m having a rough day. Stayed up too late, couldn’t get to sleep. Spent yesterday evening mostly with Leigh getting the run down on puppy arrangements. I hope they manage to kennel her until I’m off work. I’m worn out and still have so much to do. Tonight I’m taking Leigh to PetSmart to get puppy stuff they’ve been meaning to get forever. We’re puppy-proofing the kitchen so she can be left alone in there when necessary.
I barely made it to work this morning. I wish I would actually get sick. Not life-threateningly so, but just enough that I could stay home and hibernate. Unfortunately “worn the fuck out” doesn’t qualify as a good reason to miss work. Wish it did. What kills me is that I’m at loose ends here anyway. R’s swamped. She could use competant help, but doesn’t have time to train me. So here I am typing away in Word, which looks enough like work to not worry anybody. I don’t know if I’m going to make it through today. The problem is, I have no legitimate reason to leave. My stomach’s all tied up in knots from a fun combo of stress, burn-out and PMS. Unfortunately that doesn’t really qualify as sick. So, since they’re paying me to be here, here I am. Our society is retarded. What happened to eat when you’re hungry and sleep when you’re tired? Oh right, Edison and his damn lightbulb. Changed society completely, and the jury’s still out on whether or not that was actually an improvement.
I’m running out of stuff that even looks like work. Soon I will go get another box of files from P, just to have something to do that’s constructive. Then I will file them, very very slowly. Then I will blow my brains out all over these depressingly sterile white walls.
I want to write a novel. That would require having some idea what I want it to be about, wouldn’t it? These damn things don’t exactly write themselves. Setting? Characters? Plot? Anything? Nope. Just a blank piece of paper staring me in the face. No wonder everybody asks where ideas come from.
What’s with the art school thing? Why is this so important? I am convinced for some reason that there’s something inside of me that’s important, that’s worth the struggle to set down. It’s burried deep though, and I don’t want to have to keep digging like this. There has to be an answer somewhere, but I don’t think I’m going to find it until I quit smoking so much goddamn weed.
Leigh & Brian apparently made peace yesterday, although the exact mechanics of that exchange escape me. I’m just glad they’re not at each other’s throats anymore. Five more days of work til Xmas break. Five more days. Fuck, what am I going to do for five more eight hour stints in this place? Makes me want to claw my own eyes out.
Yay for unrelenting negativity! I’m sure there’s something good here somewhere, but I have no interest in looking for it this morning. I’d rather be here than unemployed, this is true. And we put a good dent in the mastercard bill this week. I don’t feel quite so squeezed and wound up anymore. It’s like exam week. Once the stress is over for another round, my body gives up and I need to rest. Not til this time next week though. I may not go to the Yule ritual/potluck thing. I need to rest.
If I put my head down on my desk and went to sleep, how long do you think it would take them to notice? T might, but he’s the only one who can see into my office from where he’s sitting. I like it so much better when he’s gone. He’s not really there to supervise me and doesn’t actually give a shit, but it still feels like surveillance.
take the money spent on weed, donate to good cause instead. there are so many that need financial help more than just about anything else.
Although sometimes I honestly thing the human race does not deserve to survive. We are brutal and mean and harsh and terrible. We slaughter without thought or remorse, and perpetuate horrific violence upon one another for the sake of money and power. We’ve all but destroyed the earth, our mother. Even now, when all but the most stubbornly near-sighted can see the approaching disasterous end, we insist on maintaining the status quo. What fools we truly are.
“my first act of free will shall be to believe in free will”
-William James
Here I go, just chilling out at work again, attempting to appear busy. Waiting for R to get here and tell me what I ought to be doing. Want to slap our new Edmonton advisor. Emailed her about one of her reports that has no payment info and got back this passive piece of junk about how “we” ought to call the client and have her check her c/c or chequebook. Thanks for trying to push that on to me there girlie. So not my job! It is the responsibility of the advisor to obtain payment, and it is my job to process that payment. It is -not- my job to track down a payment that the advisor lost. That’s why payments get stapled to files, not just slipped into a folder with the notes! The whole tone of the email just pissed me off.
God, I hate having to pretend to be busy. I often really am busy, but I wrapped up what I was doing last night and don’t have anything lying around this morning that I know how to do. This is the downside of R’s attendance being as sporadic as it is. Must be nice.
Actually got a good night’s sleep last night. Went to bed before 11pm, and only woke up once during the night. I need a chance to recharge my batteries, cause after a full eight hours my body just wants more. I’m still a little woozy, not entirely awake. Specially with nothing to do here, I could happily put my head down on my desk and take a nap. I don’t think they’d appreciate paying me for that though.
My boss is trying to fix the booking sheet again. He’s so precisly logical it’s a royal pain in the ass, because what sounds logical (ie organizing booking sheet by advisor number) is way more difficult to work with than the way we had it (organized by what city they’re in). When you’re on the phone trying to make an appointment, you need to be able to see all the calendars for that city very quickly so you can tell the client which slots are available. I don’t need to be sitting there trying to remember which numbers go with which city and then trying to find the tiny little tabs on the bottom of the screen. No use to anybody, I say! Oh well. Since the boss doesn’t actually make appointments he’s conceded that we can set it up however we like, so back she goes to the original.
My stock of patience is running low these days. My boss is an annoying twit and the new receptionist is a drama queen who insists on bring the rest of her life to work. I tried to help her out at first, but the more I help the more she asks, and I’ve gotten to where I have to say no a lot of the time. I’ve barely got my own life on track, I cannot look after her issues too.
The plastic in my room is coming down today. That’s what I’ve been told anyway, and I hope it’s true. I want to be able to clean my damn room! The car’s getting dunged out this weekend too. It’s disgusting to the point that I’m embarrassed to let people see it. That’s my Sunday project. Saturday is the final exam for my accounting class. A couple of hours tomorrow evening will be devoted to studying for it, but I’m not that concerned. If I don’t go to the final I’ll still pass the class, which is a nice comfortable place to be. My circle’s full moon ritual is also on Saturday, so it’ll be a packed weekend. Supposed to be a doozy of a full moon. I’m starting to get the antzy high-energy feeling already, but unfortunately I have nowhere to put it! I hope it’s slow on the phones today though, cause man am I ever not in the frame of mind to deal with idiots.
Those last couple of posts were my assignments for the learning circle I’ve been a part of since late October. I had them on my computer at work cause that’s where I could print them off, but that’s probably not the best place to keep material like that. I don’t think anyone who works here would go snooping through my computer, but you never know. In any case, I wanted to keep them intact, and figured this blog is probably the best place for them.
I don’t know how long I’m going to remain a part of that learning circle. Like I said in my ethics bit, I know I’m not a Wiccan, so it doesn’t make a helluva lot of sense to go through with the dedications and so forth. I definitely believe in and do my best to walk with the goddess, I just don’t quite fit the format they follow. I’d like to continue the training though. I need it rather desperately. I know I have huge amounts of talent, but no idea what to do with it, or how to control much of anything. For now I guess I’ll just wait and see how my teacher reacts to those two assignments. She hasn’t returned them yet, and I’m apprehensive about it.
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We still don’t have Brian’s paycheque. The hotel said it was mailed last Thursday, and still no sign of it. Considering we were expecting that money on Thursday, you can appreciate how phenomenally unhappy we are with this. We are –broke- and spending money we don’t have yet, which is freaking me out. We just got a bit of breathing room on the credit card, I don’t want to have to keep using it for stuff when we ought to have that goddamn money. That’s how we wound up in this mess in the first place.
The plastic wall cutting our bedroom in half should be gone either today or tomorrow. I sure hope the construction guy was telling the truth, because that room is driving me batty. We’re going to have to do ALL of our laundry again. I can’t get into my dresser right now as it’s wedged up against a wall until the plastic’s gone, so right now all of our clothes are just strewn about. It’s just not fair. We were finally getting our lives in order again, and this bloody construction is just prolonging the chaos. Brian can’t sleep during the day because of the noise, and all of us are getting pissy about living under a big orange tarp. No sunlight, no view, no fresh air. We might as well be living in the basement.
Thoughts on Ethics
My personal ethics are a mess. I agree with most commonly accepted pagan principles, insofar as such things exist. The difficulty I’m having is in applying these principles to myself.
There are things I believe for no reason other than that they are the conclusions I have come to in my ponderings. I am certain of the following:
- honour is all we really have in the end, when everything else has been stripped away. No one can take it from us, but it is far too easy to let slide.
- what we put out into the world is returned to us, usually amplified. This is also known as consequence.
- the Earth is our mother, we are a part of her. If we wish to continue as a species, we must learn to honour her.
If we are a part of the Earth, and we must honour her, then it follows that we must also honour ourselves. This is extremely difficult for me. I engage in a lot of self-destructive behaviour. For example:
I smoke way too much pot. Tonight I told Brian (my husband) that I think we have a serious drug problem, and his immediate reaction was that “it’s time to dry out.” We’ve agreed to freeze the rest of our current bag. We haven’t set an amount of time. We intend for this to be permanent. The difficulty is that we’ve made this decision before, but have never held to it.
I also leave everything important to the last minute. I always get it done, but just barely. It’s like I need the pressure to be almost crushing me before anything can happen. This assignment is no exception. It’s Sunday night and I’m finally managing to put on paper some of the thoughts and ideas that have been stewing in my skull for the past two months. I don’t know why I treat myself this way instead of doing things ahead of time and saving myself the agony. There’s so much about myself that I don’t understand.
How did my ethics evolve?
They started out Christian. I believed very seriously in good and evil, God and the Devil, and the need to have faith in Jesus. Gradually though, the church and the people in it, as well as the Bible itself and the bloody, tyrannical history of the religion all combined to shift my perception of Christianity from good and right and the one true faith, to misguided, brutal and harsh. There was no definite point at which I turned my back on Christianity, but by the time I was 16 there wasn’t much of it left in me. Not that I’m conscious of anyways. I know that I have many ingrained habits and responses of which I am unconscious, which I need to learn about.
After leaving Christianity I drifted until 2006, when I became intensely interested in all things pagan & witchy, and started reading everything I could find on the subject. In the course of my studies, I came to the conclusion that while paganism and witchcraft are an excellent fit for my existing beliefs, I am not Wiccan. I simply cannot bind myself to “harm none”. I believe that one should never cause harm intentionally without just cause, but I also believe that rare situations exist where causing harm is necessary.
Witchcraft teaches that before we can start learning anything else, we must be conscious of ourselves and of our surroundings exactly as they are, with no illusions. This is difficult considering that the society in which we live is founded on illusions and glamour. We are not taught to examine ourselves in the plain light of day, or to acknowledge our faults. This is the challenge facing me. I act honourably in my relationships with others, but that makes no difference if I can’t hold to my principles in my own life.
Now is the time to choose new habits to replace the old.
Instead of smoking pot I should do something constructive.
- yoga
- meditate
- draw
- cook
- gym
- listen to music
- sew/knit/crochet
- clean
- etc.
I have been assigned this task, and will be assigned nothing more until it is complete.
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Weed is the point at which the beliefs I hold run into the life I’m living, and it’s like hitting a brick wall. I will not be able to advance until I resolve this.
Assignment: Write how the animal’s message applies to you.
1. Black Panther
Nov 14
When I was a little girl, the black panther kitten came to me. Her mother found me cuddling her once and was furious.
“Do not teach my daughter to crave the human touch,” she growled, low and dangerous. “That way lies only pain.”
A year later the kitten came back to me. I do not know what happened to her mother. She’s been with me ever since.
How could I have forgotten her?
Nov 15
See the leopard?
A black one of those is a
Black panther.
The bond between cat & girl is strong.
The hunter becomes one with its prey
Knowing each of its movements
Tracking its heartbeat
She slinks thru the tall grass
Senses alert, aware of everything,
A deadly shadow.
Our gazes lock and we stare
Bewitched by recognition
Of souls, long forgotten,
But tightly bound
There’s still fear & distrust
But deep joy underneath
We’ve taken our first steps.
Sun, Nov 16
Blacker than the night, she sits
Perched among the frozen wastes
Watching. Waiting. Pondering
What does my panther ponder?
The master.
Turtledove tumbling in mad circles with
Bloodred flame
And bright, shining,
Vulnerable crystal heart.
He has a silver serpent’s tongue
And dark black pools in the deeps
Where hides a distant cousin of Gollum,
Trapped, shivering, scared.
I am slowly coaxing that poor, frightened child
Back out into the light.
Some days are better than others.
Today & yesterday have been good.
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Meaning of black panther:
- introspection
- inner self-knowledge
- to go within
- understanding of death
- ability to know the dark
- reclaiming one’s power
Wind: West ~ The quest within
There’s something incredible inside of me, I know there is. If only I could find it.
Prophet.
The gift to see motives.
Controlled strength and will. I wish.
Heightened awareness.
Shapeshifting – “a Gift that must be given due respect & adherence else this Medicine will be taken from that creature.”
2. Raven
Journal entry Nov 2008, date unknown:
I grew up hearing stories about Raven in elementary school. Welcome to the North.
The Trickster
But not evil
Not entirely good as such either
But he did create the world after all
And remains fascinated with the acts of his creation to this day.
Once I Saw a raven fly directly up to me, pluck out my eyes, fly away, and then return to me with new ones to take the place of the old.
There’s Viking blood in me. And a long line of Irish witch-women. Raven is Odin’s bird, and also the Morrigan’s.
I went to an elementary school where stories about Raven were part of the curriculum. It was in Whitehorse, and named after a very respected First Nation’s elder.
I grew up in Whitehorse, where there are always ravens around. I’ve never been scared of them, but I certainly do respect them. They’re smart and tough, and they survive under conditions that provoke migration in lesser birds.
Wed Nov 19
I asked for a guide.
The first thing I see is a bright shining eye, staring intently, then a beak, cawing wide open, then the rest of a huge black raven perched on a branch, yelling for my attention.
Raven:
- I am a shape shifter.
- my intuition really is usually right
- change in consciousness & transformation are perpetual
- we mate for life
“Raven flies to us with heightened awareness and greater understanding of our consciousness”
I am much closer to the unconscious (mine & collective) than most people. Unfortunately most of the time I’d rather not see into the heart of my fellow man. They are so often black.
“Raven, a master magician, embodies the energy of transformation and shows us how to eliminate our inner demons.”
I’ve got a couple of those locked up & hidden. I’m scared they’ll get loose if I take them out to look at them, even the ones that seem sad & pathetic.
“Ravens are linked to the void, where universal secrets are stored. The darkness is a place where unconscious fears live.”
My path has been dark for a long time. I suspect it will get darker before it gets light.
I see a mask with a skeleton dancing behind it.
The raven flaps around the skeleton’s head, tearing at its mask.
I have never feared Raven.
3. Dragon
The dragon is the transforming one. If that word comes up once more I’m going to scream. Transformation. Change. I’m so tired of change. Why can’t I have stability for once?
Growing up I said repeatedly that if I ever got a tattoo, it would be a little sleeping dragon sleeping on my leg. When I turned 19, I got that tattoo. She’s totally benign unless you mess with her, at which point she’ll be on her feet snarling in .27 of a second. Mostly she’d rather just sleep. When she wakes up, it’s usually because I’m so angry I can’t see straight, and I yell and say terrible mean things. The scary part is that I don’t usually remember it afterwards.
I’m sure there’s another side to her, and some way to wake her without the anger & pain, but I don’t know what it is.
4. Gryphon
Nov 16
Every sentence of the gryphon’s wisdom resounds like a hammer on the inside of my skull, echoing in the emptiness.
Deep connection to red.
Making daring leaps of faith. I got married to a man I’d known for 6 weeks, left everything behind and moved to a new province.
Ability to look deep into one’s soul to find answers. Only place worth looking for the really important questions.
Ability to feel with every bit of the soul.
Ability to soar above the fray. Have I mentioned I would dearly love to be a pilot?
Knows of the balance within nature.
I have wanted a gryphon ever since I found out that such things “exist.”
Connection to fire.
Physical protection.
Severe revenge tactics.
These three remind me of my husband. He talks to fire and it listens. He’d protect me with his life without a second thought. And god help anyone who hurts me and leaves him still alive.
To be completely honest, I have a hard time with swallowing “harm none” whole. Too much Viking warrior in my blood, yelling about family honour. 99% of the time I will go out of my way to facilitate peaceful resolution to any conflict. But you hurt my family (blood kin or not), and I will destroy you.
5. Bat
Bats scare the shit out of me. The summer before this past one I worked in the Wildland Fire Management office in Carmacks, Yukon Territory. I lived by myself in a bunkhouse constructed (poorly) of two ATCO trailers. It was at the end of a rutted dirt road and was right next to the helicopter pad on the bank of the Yukon River. It was surrounded by a dark forest of black spruce & witches’ beard, and was home to a large quantity of tiny bats.
I could hear them in the roof & walls at night. They’d get into the house about twice a week. I couldn’t sleep.
I eventually resorted to sleeping in my car. I used to head out with blankets & pillows & drive until I found somewhere deserted with a nice view. I’d listen to my iPod on random, skipping songs I didn’t want to hear, and watching the sunset. My car is tiny, but it was so beautiful because I could finally relax.
Things associated with bats:
- blood
- rebirth
- navigation
Finding one’s way in the dark.
I was groping blindly that summer. I discovered that I had to let go of many things to which I was desperately clinging.
I will never work as a pilot.
I will probably never even get my private pilot’s license, much as I want to.
Now I’m learning (slowly) to face the things in the shadows that scare me.
I am learning to trust those things I know without “proof.”
I am learning what love really takes.
So it turns out I’m in the middle of a significant uranus transit. It’s at an exact square to my sun right now, so this has been building over the last couple of years. Suddenly the events in that period of time make a lot more sense, what with the dropping out of university, rebelling against established religion, getting married and moving across the contry on the spur of the moment. For all my astro-study, you’d think I would’ve caught this earlier, but no. Go me. 
Oh, and it’s conjunct my natal jupiter in pisces, so it’s activating that lovely t-square I’ve got, and so is also square my natal uranus. It’s trine my natal venus and sextile my natal mars (they’re in opposition), so it’s not a huge shock that all these events are being supported and sometimes instigated by my relationship with my husband. Seriously, how did I miss this?
That means it’s forming a grand cross with Saturn in the empty corner of my T-square too, and has been for a couple of years. *beats head against wall* I really, REALLY should’ve been paying closer attention to that aspect.
