Dog-Day Ennui

"Lassitude" also came to mind when I started to write this post, very late last night. I love the sound of that word - lassitude, can you feel it roll off your tongue? - and it's perfect for this feeling. One of the reasons I love language - there's almost always a word for what I'm feeling, and almost always a perfect word.

I'm not sure what it is. Call it ennui.  Call it lassitude. Call it laziness. Call it writer's block. Call it a case of The Summertime Blues. Whatever it is, it has engulfed me, and I feel like I can't really find the enthusiasm or focus to do anything other than the occasional workout at the gym; otherwise, I'm sitting in front of the computer and playing Elvenar (which is a really fun game, by the way, if you're into being an elf, a la Tolkien), or sitting in the backyard with my iced tea, staring at the hazy sun as it beats a slow path from east to west during these dog days of the end of summer.  I feel like the girl in Edward Hooper's painting, "11 A.M.," sitting staring out the window in nothing but my shoes, waiting for something to happen.

EDWARD HOPPER’S “11 A.M.,” 1926

Just sitting there, waiting for it to be noon. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for someone.... And while I love Hopper, I don't want to be one of his paintings. They're....bleak.

When I started all of this, first Persephone's Pen, Ltd., then Sally-Cat Content, Inc., and finally, the umbrella of GoddessVox, Inc., my dreams were huge. I wanted to not only write for people, I wanted to make my companies successful enough for us to be able to hire and train other women in recovery, so that we could help them acquire marketable skills and move on to a real job with a real paycheck. To help them break the cycle, to help them get to the point where they can take care of themselves and their families as the independent, capable, self-reliant human beings that they are. And my writing; I wanted to share ideas, I wanted to make a difference. 

As it stands at 11 A.M. on August 17, 2016, I have accomplished none of that. My writing, when I get any done, is either pointless advertising copy or corporate blog posts. I have a client with Persephone's Pen that regularly orders erotica, but it's been like pulling teeth for me to sit down and write anything of quality, anything that I'd be willing to actually charge for. I don't charge much - this guy's paying me a penny a word, which is 1/4 of what I earn writing ad copy and blogs (but he's been with me from the very beginning) - but I do take pride in my work, and if it sucks, I'm not letting anybody else even read it, let alone pay for it. He depends on me for quality, for character development. My erotica is the furthest thing from porn that you will ever read. It's hot, yup, but it's also meaningful.

Except lately. Lately, all I want to do is sit in the yard with a glass of peach iced tea and watch the sun move from east to west, wait for the fall. I feel like I'll be better when this oppressive heat and humidity is finally gone and the clear, crisp days of autumn are upon us. I'm not exactly depressed, not in the clinical sense. I just don't have any motivation.

Granted, there have been a lot of giant upheavals in my personal life lately, some of them overwhelming. But, as that well-known sage "They" is oft-quoted, "It's always something." "They" also say, "This too shall pass," not to mention, "One day at a time," and "Keep it simple, stupid." (Keep It Simple, Stupid, that's KISS, get it? Huh? Get it?) "They" have quite the pithy way with words. "They" can also be a pain in my ass.

Since I can't seem to "shake it off" like I usually do, I'm going to, for once, lean on Herr Nietzsche for encouragement. Perhaps this period of ennui is meant to give me time to dig deeper, deeper than I've ever gone, and come up with what's next to move the whole thing forward. "They" are fond of saying, "God (or the Goddess) will do for you what you cannot do for yourself." And I tend to believe that's true. But I also tend to believe in the other side of that - "God/the Goddess helps those that help themselves." In other words, God/the Goddess isn't going to do it for you if He or She deems you fit to take care of your own business.

So, I'll sit in the yard some and watch summer turn to autumn. I'll sip my peach tea, write some blogs, take on the occasional project, and do some serious drinking from my innermost fountain. It's never failed me in the past. 

Here's to the full moon tomorrow night.

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To find out how you can help people suffering from mental illness, and to help get rid of the stigma, please visit The National Alliance on Mental Illness to take the pledge, get involved, and make a donation.

For more information on mental health, please visit The National Institute of Mental Health.

Thank you for reading. If you liked this post, or any other posts, please don't forget to like and share. And please leave a comment if you're so inclined. As you can see, I have no followers - you could be the FIRST! (Who knows, you might get a t-shirt)

My Mom's a Witch!

There's a story I love to tell people about when my kid was really little. There was a social worker involved in our lives at that time (because of me, separate blog post ENTIRELY but you know I'll write it eventually), and my kids were living with my sister. The social worker, a very unfunny woman with NO sense of humor, asked Spawn I about me.

"Mom's a witch," Spawn I said, totally deadpan.

"What do you mean, she's a witch?" asked Sorry Sally the Social Worker.

"She can make people disappear," said Spawn I.

"Who did she make disappear?" This from Sorry Sally.

Pause. Deadpan still.

"Daddy."

My daughter claims not to remember this exchange, but I sure as hell do. I was in the next room, and I nearly dropped my coffee cup all over the kitchen floor, and I damn near choked on the coffee that was pouring forth from my nose and sticking in my throat. I had to step out the sliding doors into the freezing cold backyard to keep Sorry Sally from hearing the gales of laughter that were issuing forth in a gurgly fashion, combined as they were with the regurgitating coffee. It was the way she said, "Daddy," in that matter-of-fact five-year-old's voice. 

Despite my shitty parenting, my kids have grown up to be wonderful young women.But the fact of their success as young adults has little or nothing to do with my parenting, because, due to my addiction and mental health issues, my sister had to step in and raise them for me. I won't go into personal details about the hows and whys, because I don't want to embarrass anyone, but I didn't see them again for 10 years. And a lot happens in 10 years. But they were never once, not for 10 seconds, off my mind or out of my heart. And they were never very far away, no matter where they were, and that was because of my faith.

My elder daughter was under my roof until she was five; and it was a Pagan roof. The little one was only with me for a year. I'm quite sure that neither of them remember living in a Pagan household, and my sister converted to Lutheranism from Catholicism when she married her second ex-husband, so the girls were raised in what passed for a "Christian" household. I won't chime in here with my opinion of people who rally Christ to their sides while doing all manner of clearly un-Christlike things. That's also for another post. But Spawn I seems to now be leaning toward a more naturalistic approach to spirituality. I don't abide with telling kids what they should or should not believe; I think the best thing is to let them sort through it all (and there's a lot), answer their questions as they come up, and hope that they make the best choice FOR THEM.

Spawn I believes in God, that much I know, but so do I, just not the Judeo-Christian God that looks like an aging wrestler with a gigantic beard. She moves through this world coming from a place of pure love for all living things. She respects other people, nature, and all those who come across her path, whether she actually likes them or not. And that's really all I could hope for as a parent. She and her sister make me proud, even though I have no right to claim pride in how they've turned out.

Pagans are different from other religious types because we don't proselytize. I can guarantee that no witch has ever knocked on your door trying to sell you on "signing up." We don't have buildings with stained glass to advertise our place in the community, and we don't have parochial schools (although I know of a few who insisted on home-schooling their children because they lived in the Bible-Belt, south of the Manson-Nixon line, and they didn't want their kids around that - and I can't say I blame them, but we live in NY). We also believe that everyone is on the path that they should be on at that particular moment. So while I would love for both my girls to eventually embrace their birthright (which is what the Craft really is), it is by no means my top priority. The only things that matter to me are that they love and are loved in return, that they get hurt as little as possible (I'd like them to never get hurt, but life being what it is, that's never going to be possible), to learn from it when they do get hurt, and to find and keep happiness. That's it. No riches, no fame, no glory. Just that they be happy and at peace.

When and if they approach me wanting to know more about the Craft, I will be more than happy to answer their questions and, perhaps, down the road, welcome them into the fold. In the meantime, I told you at the beginning that they were never far away, no matter where they were. That's because, on my altar at home, the contents of which come with me wherever I call "home", are two shells. I picked each one of them up during my pregnancies, and I anointed them and set them on the altar. During the day, they are enclosed in a little red cloth bag that hangs nestled in my cleavage, over my heart. At night, they are on the altar, and when the moon is full it shines in on them through the windows, recharging them. Those shells are my girls, and they will always be with me, no matter where the tide blows any of us.

This is Spawn I in a recent photo. It's shocking that she looks so grown up, since I'm only 30.

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To find out how you can help people suffering from mental illness, and to help get rid of the stigma, please visit The National Alliance on Mental Illness to take the pledge, get involved, and make a donation.

For more information on mental health, please visit The National Institute of Mental Health.

Thank you for reading. If you liked this post, or any other posts, please don't forget to like and share. And please leave a comment if you're so inclined. As you can see, I have no followers - you could be the FIRST! (Who knows, you might get a t-shirt)

It's Nothing Personal

Before I get started, let me just say that I have no idea what happened to the formatting on my last post. It's all different fonts, and different font colors, and I can't fix it. Maybe it's black magic from another, less famous blogger. Or else I'm a techtard and I don't know what I'm doing. 

It"s probably the latter.

Moving along. For some reason that continues to escape me, still, people seem to think that when I write something, it's a personal attack against SOMEONE, usually them. 

It's not.

My last post, about Alice (she's in the hospital now, by the way, and has been for a week - I'm hoping she gets better soon because I miss the fuck out of her), seems to have ruffled a couple of feathers in the "professional" community. There are people who think that I was attacking them, their profession, their skills as practitioners of that profession...and it's simply not true. I don't know why these people didn't leave comments, since my comments are unrestricted, but whatever, that's their choice and I respect it.

I don't for one minute believe that anyone on Alice's treatment team has anything but the best intentions for her and I don't believe they want anything other than for her to get better. I just don't agree with the way it was gone about, and I have every right in the world to voice that opinion, here or anywhere else that I feel so inclined. Besides, the post wasn't strictly about Alice - none of my posts are about one thing or one person - it was about MENTAL ILLNESS and the fact that everyone is affected by it. Everyone. I was attempting to make people aware of that, to open the eyes of some who may not be aware that they could be in a position to help someone who's suffering. So if you read it, and you got upset, I'm here to tell you: It wasn't about YOU.

None of my blogs are personal, except for the ones that are about me. And I'm not as passive-aggressive as I used to be: If I really have a problem with you, believe me, I'll let you know about it, and I won't make little side comments in a blog that probably nobody reads. I'll call your ass. 

I wrote about Alice because, as her friend, roommate and fellow traveler on the road to mental wellness, I am not part of her "treatment team" and I have no say in her treatment because of that. I have told the people who ARE on her treatment team when I see things and hear things that "aren't right," but I do that when I think ANYONE in this house is decompensating (a fancy-shmancy term for getting sick). I know that they would do the same for me. But, because I'm on the other side of the mental health line, it's a rare occurrence that anyone listens to me, let alone does anything about it. Yes, it's frustrating. And that's why I write about it. Because there's a whole world of people outside of this house, outside of the "treatment teams" and the professional caregivers, and perhaps if I reach even one or two of those people, and some help is afforded to someone who needs it, that might make a difference.

So. That post wasn't about you, or your character, or your skills, or your abilities. If you were offended, I don't know what to tell you, other than that everyone who reads this blog is free to contact me via email, or to leave a comment on the post in question. Feel free to have at me.

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To find out how you can help people suffering from mental illness, and to help get rid of the stigma, please visit The National Alliance on Mental Illness to take the pledge, get involved, and make a donation.

For more information on mental health, please visit The National Institute of Mental Health.

Thank you for reading. If you liked this post, or any other posts, please don't forget to like and share. And please leave a comment if you're so inclined. As you can see, I have no followers - you could be the FIRST! (Who knows, you might get a t-shirt)