How do you know if the puzzle is broken from the inside?

[nimitzbrood]

February 2, 2009 11:16 AM 2/2/09

Everything is breaking down at work today and on top of that a good number of things in my back pack got covered with drips of orange cold medicine since the cap wasn’t screwed down all the way on the bottle.

What a wonderful way to start off the week...



I keep trying to be up-beat about things lately but I seem to be sinking a bit. I do know that I’m pretty tired and have been since I’ve gotten sick. I’d love to rest some more but I can’t afford to stay off work any longer nor use any of my vacation time.

Forgot to take my vitamins while I was sick so I’m dealing with that mess on top of everything else. And when I forget things like the 5-htp my world kind of comes crashing in all at once. Which is what’s happening right now...

I hate when this sort of stuff comes unraveled because it sets me back far enough that I have to actually work hard to get back up to where I was before.

I don’t plan on sliding back into the bucket but it would be nice not to get a mallet to the face on a regular basis.

Still it’s my own fault - I’ve been lazy of late and I know I can’t do that but damn I so just want to rest for a while.

I honestly don’t know what else to do about the situation. I never used to have to take time, I never used to dread going to work every day. Yes there were times I wanted to stay home but never complete dread of going to work.

And I can’t even rant about the things happening there in this venue because I know there are people that I work with that read this stuff. And if it’s one thing I can’t do right now is lose my job.


In less than 30 days we’ll have had the house a whole year. We never had a house warming party so maybe we’ll have some sort of off-kilter one this summer. That sounds good.

Got my mother back on the Internet at least so I accomplished something recently. Now I just have to finish all the _other_ things on my to-do lists.

Being sick hasn’t helped me one bit either. I’m still sniffling and a little clogged but this should be the tail end of it. Hopefully some of my energy will return after this crap passes out of my system.

(...)

I need some quiet. True quiet that has no noise in it.

I need a Zero Room.

I’m not joking. I need some place that has clean light, clean air, a comfortable place to sit and meditate. A place with no signals, no noise, nothing but silence. A place that I can quietly breathe and listen to my heartbeat. A place where I can just...be.

One thing’s for certain though...I’m not going to get that unless I make it myself.

I don’t know if I have the strength for that right now.

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Do you know how to ground and center (http://www.monmouth.com/~acelightning/gr_cntr.txt)?

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

I was never formally taught how to do that. Thanks for the link.

*sigh* In some ways I'm a truly lazy witch.

I suppose I'll try tonight if I have time after fixing the broken closet pole mount among other things.

Part of the problem is time. When I get home I just want to kind of flop somewhere and rest but I know that if I do then things won't get done. By the time I'm done doing things there are other people in the house. (This sentence sounds like more whining to my own ears.)

Huh. Funny. I used to do that stuff all the time but not any time recently. I wonder what caused me to stop doing things like meditating and grounding...

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

"Chores expand to fill available time". The simplest way to get past that is to formally schedule a time for meditation (or whatever) - every day for ten minutes before dinner, say. You don't have to do it for very long for it to have an effect, and once you get into a pattern of setting aside a specific time for it, it becomes a habit, like brushing your teeth.

And perhaps, in the course of the rearranging and improvements and reconstruction, you could create a small private space in the garage, or anywhere else that makes sense. (I used to occasionally have to lock myself in one of the bathrooms, especially when my son was a child...)

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

I want to put a small altar in the garden when I re-do it but I don't think my neighbors would understand. Likely I'll have one in the garage when I'm finished as that's my personal space and nobody else's.

As for time - you're absolutely correct. I've been meaning to hammer my schedule into place but it's been a little tough due to "unexpected" events.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

You'd be surprised what you can "hide in plain sight". Didn't you mention that you were building your garden with an image of the Green Man on some of the stones? And a fountain, a birdbath, even a "charmingly rustic" tree stump, can be an altar. (Just Who or What do you want an altar to, anyway?)

(I've never had a private space since I became a Witch. When I need to, I'll set up altar things on the ironing board, a coffee table, even the back of the toilet. Improvise! The Gods will understand.)

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

I need a formal altar for some things I need to accomplish in life. And while The Gods do understand and grant me great leeway there is a certain...push...to have a formal space like that. And the push is both external and internal.

As for hiding in plain sight about the only thing I couldn't hide would be a pentagram. (I live in a really blue-collar neighborhood and I know a bunch of people wouldn't be okay with that even if the garden is behind the garage.)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

I understand the push to have a semi-permanent, fixed sacred space; sometimes I still long for one myself.

I've hidden a pentagram in plain sight for decades. I put up "Christmas" lights - hey, Yule is all about light and fire! - and I constructed a large framework in the shape of a five-pointed star, and wired it up with white lights. Pentagram? What pentagram? It's a Christmas Star! ;-)

I also see for sale in yard-and-garden places a lot of three-dimensional metal stars, in various sizes, either painted "colonial" colors or with a weathered metal finish. Apparently they're derived from barn decorations from 200 years or more ago.

True, neither of these has a circle enclosing it... at least not visibly...

In your garden, if you have a circular space, just put lanterns, wind-spinners, notable plants, anything you like, in five places around the perimeter of the circle... then "connect the dots" in your mind...

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

Gods. Today's Imbolc and I didn't even think about it. Have to light a candle...

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

'Twas Brigid's Day - the Triple Goddess of healing, poetic inspiration, and smithcraft (which today generally seems to mean anything to do with technology). She has blessed me with two out of three of Her gifts... but I'm still hoping for the third...

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

This is going to sound odd, or would to most people, but if we're talking computers the only way the situation becomes "balanced" is if the user and the computer are in tune.

Computers are made up of earth, fire, and air. Humans, water and spirit. So the only time a computer is in balance on all five points is when neither the computer nor the user is having a problem.

(Servers have to be run as a triangle of earth, fire, and air and if properly arranged can and should be left alone unless something goes wrong.)

I've seen so many computer flake because their users are experiencing problems in their own lives. A perfectly maintained system is no match for a person going through an upheaval in their home life. Trust me on this one.

Interaction with technology is one of the gifts I use daily and poetic inspiration comes now and then but healing is the one I don't have.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

That's a very interesting way to think of the magickal relationship between computers and people! (Curiously enough, I almost never have problems with my computer, except for those that are the result of it just being too damned old and under-powered. Of course, I've been a technomage all my life, long before I knew the term...)

Healing is also the gift of Brigid that I lack. And so many people I care about could use some!

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

Most Pagan people don't have a problem with computers from what I can tell. (This is about a decade or more of observed data.) Oddly Wiccan/Pagan people seem to have a better grasp of technology than most or at the very least seem less afraid of it.

The term Technomage for me is very real because if we don't kill ourselves as a species we'll very soon have the ability to present that image to whoever we want. We're approaching the Clarke Limit at a vastly accelerated rate.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

My father was a technomage, only he thought of it as "being good with machinery". Without even realizing what he was teaching, he taught me the mind-set appropriate to technomagick, along with the physical and logical skills. Like any other Talent, or talent, some people have more of it than others.

Most pagans are more used to working with computers, although a fair number of them are fundamentally Luddite. (There's a pervasive, almost unconscious, belief that, say, a flute hand-carved out of wood is somehow "better" than a molded plastic one produced by the thousands in a Chinese factory - even if the plastic one actually sounds nicer.) Conversely, though, I think that programmers and geeks are more likely to open to the concepts within paganism - this may be a result of having grown up reading science fiction and fantasy.

And I tend to prefer Clarke's Law reversed: "Any sufficiently advanced magick is indistinguishable from technology" ;-D