[New Year, New You] Weekly Writing Prompt: Making Way

What?  Like it's hard or something?

The New Year, New You Project is an experiment in Magical Radical Transformation.  Please see here for how to participate! 

She (kicks the bed hard): Get up.

Me: Ugh.  No.  I feel like booboo.

She: What did I say?  Didn't I say this was going to be hard?  Stop whining and crying about your widdle sniffles and your pwerious auto-immune system problems and get to work.

Me:  I don't wanna do this anymore.

She: Bitch, you haven't even started yet.  You do not want to mess with me about this, especially this early in the game.  Get.  To.  Work.

***

I started a spreadsheet to keep track of everyone's entries.  The writing prompts will be happening on a weekly basis.  To keep getting entries in the contest and also to show everyone what you're working on, respond to each prompt with your response (and a link to it) or a link to your status update on your own personal projects. 


So, whenever I see the opportunity for success, I do what every sensible person does, I try to actively ignore it as best as I can and when that doesn't work, I do things to actively self sabotage it.  Getting back up from failure for me is easy, succeeding makes my blood run cold.  So, seeing all you lovely Charmers wanting to take place in this experiment that was completely initiated by me my muse, predictably made me want to hide under my bed with my new blankie and a bottle of St. Germain until it passes.  My body was more than happy to comply, my godson/nephew was spreading all his High Octane Baby Germ Farm cooties to Jow and me and today I feel like crap for the first time in a long time.  I tried to go back to sleep, but my Muse was not having any of it.  Tired of waiting for me to get my ass in gear I suppose.

Making Way

Let's start at the very beginning/ it's a very good place to start . . . 


Suggested Deities for this Working: Ganesha, Janus, Kali, Eostre, Bridget

Moon Phase: Waning (and She's waning right now)

Day of the Week: It can definitely be argued that Wednesdays are a good day to make changes as it's a Mercury day.  So don't be a slacker.  Saturday would also be a good day if you need a little time to get your shit together.

Suggested Inspirational Music: A Little Bit of Arson Never Hurt Anyone, Matson Jones
(And I've got people to see/ And places that I need to burn down/ And secrets that I need to burn out of my head)





You can't start putting all this awesome new crap into your life and body until you get rid of the old crap. Old crap here is defined as many things such as relationships that are no longer working, old crutches, clutter of the mind and of the house.

Let's start with the easy part.  Time to clean your house.  I know people get irritated when I say that but as a magic user, the way energy flows in a dirty cluttered house verses a clean organized house is very, very different.  If you do your work outside then you can disregard this part.  If you're an indoor dwelling creature like me, you can't.  Sorry.  If you are feeling really resistant to this part, take some time to journal and figure out why it aggravates you and then consider doing it anyway to see what it feels like to be in a different environment. If you don't like it, I assure you that it will go back to its natural habitat easily enough. You can totes hire someone do do the actual cleaning part.  Groupon often offers a first time cleaning service at a reduced rate so you can pay someone to do all the super tedious tub cleaning parts. If you would like to learn how to clean your house all by yourself, FlyLady is a good start because she has pretty realistic expectations of working full time/what you can do in a day and how to organize it/what reasonably clean is vs Miss Martha clean if you can put up with all the purple puddles and whatnot (you'll see).

Before you really start scrubbing things clean however, you need to start getting rid of junk.  If you are feeling clingy to your items, watch three episodes in a row of Hoarders and you won't be feeling so tight fisted anymore.  Are there books you have that you haven't looked at in over a year?  They've got to go.  Clothes that just need a small repair you'll never make/will fit if/you haven't worn in a year?  Bye.  Is your kitchen full of expired dry goods/refrigerated stuff?  Toss.  Do you have small appliances, pots and pans, electronics and other assorted space consuming items that you can't remember the last time you used?  Got to go.  Anything that is gently worn can be donated and this is a particularly nice time of year to be making donations.  There are organizations that benefit things like disease research instead of a religious agenda if that bothers you.  I personally like donating to Lupus because they take books and my grandma died due to Lupus complications.

Okay, so you decluttered and did whatever you had to do to get your residence clean.  Awesome.  Time to magically cleanse too.  All of this can be done as a sacrifice to the god/dess/es of your choice because it is a sacrifice for most of us to do all of that.

Is your time being well spent?  How are you supposed to really work on all these projects of yours if your time is getting siphoned off on unproductive things?  Only you can really determine what is a productive use of your time, but if it feels more like an obligation than something you really want to be doing and you are able to gently and quickly cut ties with that activity/acquaintance/whatever, do so.  Now's a good time to get rid of things that are dead weight.

It's also a good time to look at your schedule and make sure you're spending your time well.  Sometimes, spending your time well does indeed mean watching five hours of Toddlers and Tiaras and drinking port.   Everyone needs down time, but figure out how much down time you need per day so you're not a snarling beast and give it to yourself strings free.  If you don't, you won't be able to accomplish anything.  If you're just being lazy and screwing around (which is also in our nature), shut off the television, stop checking your smartphone every two minutes and get LeechBlock and do whatever it is you're supposed to be doing - spending quality time with your family, working on your business, making alchemy happen, going to the gym, etc.  In an ideal world, I think you should be able to find an hour a day to work on whatever project you want to work on.  I don't think that's crazy - eight hours to work, eight hours to sleep, seven hours for down time and whatever other unavoidable things you have to get done (like commute, errands, those kids of yours, etc) and then an hour for your special projects.  You can rotate your projects.  Maybe you can't go to the gym every day or meditate every day.  That's okay.  Dedicating at least an hour a week to it is probably more than you're doing now.  You should probably not have any more than seven projects going at a time anyway for your own sanity.

Just because someone hands you a big rock doesn't mean you have to carry it.   We all have baggage to deal with (such as forgiveness issues and toxicity).  What's weighing you down?  Light a candle to your deity(ies) of choice and really do some journaling about it.  Explore the issue(s) with a very close friend.  Do your best to let go of it, even if you do need to sometimes need to occasionally revisit it.

What I've done:


* As regular readers know, Jow and I have been having an on going discussion about what to do with our Spare Oom and we've made a lot of progress with figuring out how we want it to look and what we want to do there.  To do this, we destashed something like 200 something books, both to sell and donate.  I've also donated a sizable chunk of my wardrobe.

* I recently did a big house cleaning, so our house is in pretty good shape.

* In terms of time, I've done a lot of hard work to really give myself the freedom to do the things I want to do.  My work schedule is set up so that I have Mondays with Jow and my evenings and weekends were devoted to my crafting business as well as socializing.  Come Jan my schedule will be even more stable and I won't have an excuse not to write or go to the gym.

* In terms of big rocks, I realized it's a big stumbling block for me that I am afraid of success because it's had some really negative repercussions in my romantic life and subconsciously in addition to my usual fear of success, it's gone a step further because I was afraid that if I was too successful, I could lose Jow.  Naturally, we've talked a lot about this and the underlying issues there and anyone who knows Jow knows what a supportive pony he is but my fear is that I've thought previous relationships were supportive and hindsight has shown not so much.  I've also been contemplating relationships that became toxic as well as dealing with the holidays, my relationship with food and contemplating my future.  Lots of big thinking.