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When in doubt, do something new!
Yes, that’s pretty much how I do life. So this morning it occurred to me that I must be riding a wave of doubt because I have started a bunch of new things. I have started so many new things that it’s getting ridiculous and problematic to try to keep up with them, and just yesterday… I started planning and talking about yet another new project.
I wonder if it’s because I am feeling doubtful about my ability to keep up with everything I have going on in the moment! I wonder if it’s intervention time!
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a six page list of all the things I want to do before I die. I don’t know if it was because I was feeling mortal, or because I was depressed and needing a reason to keep on keeping on. But SIX PAGES ? Seriously?
Those six pages are currently pinned to my refrigerator, and I think I’m going to post them. Because why not? Here’s the link to the mega list, in case you are curious about the extremity of my ambition. It is a very ambitious list.
And if I really do want to get all six pages of stuff done, I’m going to have to get started on them right now. No more mindless games on my phone. No more Facebook surfing. No more wasting time on ridiculous bullshit.
I feel like I need a plan of action. An executable plan of action. A practical plan of action… Maybe even a list… I know! A six page list of how to get that six pages of stuff done before I die. So, yes, an intervention is definitely in order.
Maybe I need to wash the dishes. That might be a good idea, since every single dish in the house is dirty. Maybe I need to clean the litter box, put away the clean clothes, vacuum the floors, and do a little bit of housekeeping… ok… let’s be honest here. It’s probably a lot more than a little bit.
I wonder if this endless cycle of stuff I want to do, stuff I am doing, stuff I plan to do, stuff I wish I had done, stuff I should be doing, stuff I probably will never do, stuff I would do if only… I wonder if all the doing and the stuffing is simply me trying to cope with the pervasive loneliness and angst of being a human person, of missing the oneness of the All That Is, trying to get back home to the wholeness from which I was born.
And if that is true, then it follows that at some point I will get back home to the All That Is, and when I do make that trip I wonder if it will all have been worth it. Did I learn what I wanted to learn? Did I experience what I set out to experience? Did I accomplish my goals?
So now we are back to the stuff I could of… should of… would of.. done. Maybe that’s what my dharma is. I wonder. It seems to be in my nature to be a doer of things. Apparently it’s my calling. Maybe it’s my struggle, my impediment, my mountain to climb, my valley to cross. I don’t know.
What I do know is this. It’s time to get a move on. I’ve got things to do and stuff to accomplish.
And so, even though this whole quarantine thing has given me a bunch of days off, I have done absolutely nothing worth barely even talking about. Sigh. This little gif pretty much sums me up… at least until today. Today is a new day and I am feeling inspired to get at least a few things uploaded to the website. To see what’s new, check out Site News.
I have learned a few interesting things about myself. Here they are:
- The “I’d do it if I only just had the time.” is bullshit, and I will never again believe that excuse to not do something.
- I really do love my alone time… really a lot… but then that’s not news to me.
- Most of the things I do, I do because someone else wants it, needs it, asks for it, or is going to be interested in it.
- I very rarely do anything if it’s only for me… this one was a big surprise.
- If nobody cares what I do, chances are I won’t do anything at all… another surprise.
- I can make some bad ass soup! I have made soup to die for… seriously… I am really good at making soup.
- I can make candy with no recipe and no measuring, and it comes out good EVERY time. Next time I make some, if I think of it, I will take a picture of it and post about how I did it.
- Note: I am more likely to do this if I think someone is actually interested.
- I like boiled coffee, maybe even better than perked… although perked is a lot easier and way less messy.
- The scariest thing about being alone and isolated is the dread idea that I might get a tick embedded in my back where I can’t reach it… which I think happened today… so AAARRRGGGHHHH.
- I might actually be a dragon… LOL… if you don’t believe me read this: Are You A Dragon?
So this is how I’ve been feeling lately. There are so many things I want to do RIGHT NOW that I am virtually paralyzed, and end up doing other completely different things. And this morning I thought that maybe it would be helpful… emphasis on MAYBE… to make a list. So here it is!
All the things I want to do right now:
- Re-scan my Middle of the Night Art with a higher resolution so that I can start to put all those cool pictures on nifty stuff at Red Bubble… so that I can buy some of it for myself.
- Get my little Middle of the Night Art website up and running so I can see all the pictures and pick the ones to put on Red Bubble.
- Hook up my other PC, and my scanner, and get it turned on and up and running so that I can do the above stuff.
- Oh… and go buy a new strip so that I can hook up that PC and all the stuff that goes to it.
- Update all the static web pages on the site so that there is a link to the Middle of the Night Art site that people can actually find and click on.
- Do a Medicine Wheel.
- Get all the Medicine Wheel information from a class I gave on Medicine Wheels uploaded to the Feathers and Bones site.
- Make a Medicine Wheel bag that I can take with me wherever I go.
- Create some Medicine Wheel art for my Magick Room.
- Go treasure hunting at some thrift stores and look for cool stuff for the Medicine Wheel bag or whatever else I might find that’s cool and interesting.
- Find all the paperwork for a class on shamanism that I took a long time ago.
- Post all that information on Feathers and Bones.
- Take a Shamanic Journey … or two … or three…
- Go for a walk in the woods and see what happens.
- Redo the preliminary exercises in the shamanism class.
- Repaint the bathroom.
- Replace or recover the bathroom floor.
- Fix the toilet that is wobbly and crooked.
- Make more art for the bathroom.
- Oh… and clean said bathroom really really well.
- Make a cool shelving unit out of legos for the bathroom so I will have a place to put stuff in there.
- Organize all my movies and take the ones I’ll never watch again in and trade them for store credit or other different better movies.
- Do the same thing with all my TV shows that I have on DVD.
- Do a seance with a bunch of fun like minded people, in a cool place with a great ambiance, and lots of love laughter and wine.
- Reupholster and fix the couch.
- Paint the living room a yummy orange.
- Rip out the carpet and fix the floor and put something beautiful on it… maybe paint it and get some cool rugs… or put in new flooring… or just get new carpet… but for crying out loud, get rid of what’s on the floor right now. It’s so ugly.
- Get all the posts that are currently on my Gypsy Magic blogger blog transferred to the various Magick and Mystery sites. Every single one! All of them!
- Finally finish moving the old old old static web pages that are still up but not connected to anything really. There is some stuff on Color Therapy, Transcendental Meditation, and some Quotes… all of which need to be moved somewhere that they can be seen.
- Go camping with just me and my dog and really get quiet and centered.
- Clean the bird cage… well… I don’t really WANT to do this, but it needs to be done.
- Get the grass mowed where I am going to put in the new fence and plan that all out.
- Somehow manage to get all that new fencing here, and get the fence put up so that Opie and I can have a bigger nicer yard and a gate that actually opens in winter.
- Well… I don’t really care if it opens at all in the winter… but a nice good wide gate so I can use the riding lawnmower to do the yard would be a huge bonus.
- Mow a bunch of pathways in through the overgrown dense whatever you want to call it that used to be a corn field, and then became a field of wild flowers when I had sheep to keep it mowed down, but which now is totally thick with underbrush and poison ivy and god knows what else.
- Make a magickal labyrinth like the one I used to have before I had lawnmower issues and then got depressed and then got busy and then got more depressed and then a bunch of shit happened and then suddenly it is totally gone and replaced by bushes and trees and … yes … poison ivy.
- Clean out the closet where the hot water heater is so that I can get someone to come out and put in a new one because not having hot water really sucks ass.
- Go through and totally clean out all the boxes that are piled in what used to be my bedroom but which is now the “cat room” since my dog hates the cats and the cats hate my dog and I don’t want anyone massacred in my house, so I sleep in the living room, and the “cat room” has become a repository for stuff I need to sort and throw away or keep and put away.
- Clean up my art room so I can actually go in there and do art.
- Make some more small paintings with fingernail polish… because that was fun and I have some ideas.
- Finish all my zen tangle pictures that I started and then left hanging.
- Work on my 100 things project.
- Paint that cute little bird house I found and then do a magick spell where I entice all my house demons and bad juju entities to climb in and go for a ride… and take them someplace else where they can live happily ever after NOT in my house.
- Make a place for Saskia outside where there is a chair, and a shade tree, a small table, flowers, wind chimes, a place for candles, and whatever else seems right so that I can feel that her spirit would be comfortable here if she wanted to visit, and so that if I wanted to, I could sit out there and remember how much I love her.
- Charge my brand new shock collar that I spent a bunch of money on.
- Do some serious training with my dog so that I can use that collar to teach him to come when called no matter what, and that it is NOT okay to try to kill the cats. And also it would be nice if he knew how to heel and stay.
- Get a bunch more posts up on the Encyclopedia of Herbology so that I can look herbs up and see what they are good for.
- Upload all the Reiki 2nd Degree information from my class paperwork to Twofeathers Reiki.
- Make a Reiki box.
- Get the Pagan Calendar totally updated… the whole thing… for the whole year.
- Make a cool orange fur bag with Sunny so that her dream can come true and… well… it sounds fun and cool.
- Read the books I ordered.
- Get the Prosperity Project up and running again, and actually do it ahead of time so that I’m not scrambling every day to get it posted.
- Build a bottle wall.
- Make a sweat lodge.
- Actually do a sweat… somewhere, even if it’s not here…. but go to one or something.
- Upload all of my “how to make a sweat lodge” information to Feathers and Bones so that I’ll know how to do it when I have the area mowed and a place for the fire that won’t be a hazard and burn the entire place up.
- Paint the Front Door.
- Build a porch or small deck so that my dog and I will have a place to sit outside and enjoy ourselves.
- Figure out what my password is to my email on my phone so that I can deal with my email on my smart phone instead of having to do it on my laptop which is a huge pain in the ass.
- Make an appointment for a massage for me and Sky.
- Actually comb my hair so that later today I can take a shower at Sydney’s house and get my hair washed without having to do it with a COLD shower which is no fun and actually quite miserable unless it’s a really hot day which it isn’t.
- Take Layla someplace fun and interesting.
- Go to the beach.
- Do the old book idea that I had the other day which requires either my scanner to be hooked up and running, or a good graphics program that will render a bunch of text.
- Back up all the files on my laptop. I haven’t done that in a while… and it’s time. Only thing is, it will take forever because there is so much! Sigh!
- Take Sydney to a bakery because she’s been wanting to go to a bonafide bakery for a really long time and I keep promising but I never quite get it done.
- Go out somewhere on a high hill, where it’s pretty and quiet, a gravel road in an area that no one actually lives in… and do the “Let It Go Bouncing Down The Road” spell that I have in my mind but haven’t actually written or posted.
- Get all the memes in my meme folder uploaded to Meme City.
- Post a bunch of stuff to More Cool Pictures and Way Cool Pictures so that I can sift through my collected images more easily since there will be a lot fewer of them.
- Clean out my “cats” folder by posting everything I have collected so far on It’s A CatAstrophe, because that folder is ridiculously full and I’m tired of looking at it.
- Make a really cool … super uber spectacularly cool gift for anyone who happens to actually read this entire list from start to finish.
Ok… so that about sums it up for right now this minute. I’m sure that after I post this I’ll think of even more things that I want to do.
So, years ago when I was running around doing a lot of dog training, managing a boarding kennel, working full time, and doing all kinds of cool stuff, I spent much of my time feeling hounded by Worry, Guilt, and Fear. It’s like they were stalking me… calling, texting, showing up at my house at odd hours of the night… I’d run into them at the grocery store, they’d show up at family dinners, and I just could not seem to get rid of them.
And then one day, I realized that they were actually helping me quite a lot. Worrying about my car would ensure that I got regular oil changes and maintenance, guilt over possibly not doing what I “should” be doing pushed me to take care of stuff that might otherwise have gone undone, and fear compelled me to pay attention to my worries and my responsibilities. The end result was that I was a highly productive person. A lot got done! And it got done right.
So I made friends with them. I invited them into my home, took them with me wherever I went. Sometimes, I’d even talk to them when I was driving. I’d say, “Hey guys, what’s up? You seem kind of quiet today.” Or, if it they had a lot to say, I might have to tell them to simmer down a bit and talk one at a time. And that’s how it was for quite a while. It brought me peace, and made my life way better.
But somewhere along the way, and I’m not quite sure when, I realized that something in me seemed to be broken. If I didn’t want to do something… nothing short of a dire emergency could compel me to do it. I wasn’t worried about the consequences, nor was I very often afraid. As a matter of fact, even when I knew I “should” feel worried, or guilty, or afraid… I just didn’t.
My old friends had just somehow faded away, like old friends sometimes do. They didn’t call or text, never showed up at family dinners, I didn’t see them at the store or at work. It seemed that they had lost interest in me, and after a while I forgot about them.
Years passed. Stuff happened: bad stuff, happy stuff, annoying stuff, horrible stuff, fun stuff, interesting stuff, tragic stuff… You know, life. And then yesterday, I had this sudden realization. Looks like I have some new friends and I’m not sure how much they are actually helping me. But definitely I have some new buddies hanging around.
Who are they? Well, there’s Rage, Regret, Disappointment, and Despair.
Thanks to Rage, I’m constantly fantasizing about stabbing people in the throat with a pencil or setting their hair on fire. Regret sits on my shoulder and pokes at me constantly… I can’t seem to get him to quit. Disappointment looms over me like a black shadow, and Despair is a black hole which I find myself constantly trying to scramble out of. If it wasn’t for Rage, I’m not sure I would even be functional at all.
So, now I’m not sure quite what to do. I definitely don’t have the energy or the enthusiasm necessary to try to send them packing. And I’m wondering, do I invite them in, fix them a sandwich, and make them comfortable? Obviously Rage is serving a purpose in my life, so he probably deserves a seat at the table. Not sure about the other three though. They are going to require some thought. I probably should have a talk with them, see what they have to say for themselves.
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I think it's time to go shopping... maybe even buy some really cool stuff at my online shops!!
