I’m making some productivity changes. They may confuse some, but have faith! It means, ideally, that I can better entertain you in the future.

1. Email

• Checking it twice a day only.
• Filtered the bejesus out of it, so things are sorted into specific folders as they come in. I’ve found companies that cheat this system and flag everything as “urgent.” These are also the people that send a promotional email daily, a hands-down worst practice.
• In most email responses (there are obvious exceptions for people I rarely see, am interviewing, etc.) I am striving to make email responses 5 sentences or less.
• Emails that require longer than 5 sentence responses do get dropped to the bottom of my queue, and will likely get responses on weekends.

2. Social media

• Also attempting to go on twice daily only (with breaks for Words with Friends.)
• May cheat, using Bufferapp. I am doing this yes, to promote the book I’m writing, but also to maintain a presence when I’m unable to share immediately. Also, I find a TON of cool stuff worth sharing in my RSS reader – and posting it all at once is really annoying; this helps me pace it out.

3. Phone

• Phone calls must be scheduled. These can not go over 15 minutes, and must happen after 5 pm, or even 8 pm. I am more flexible if you want to use Skype or Google Hangout, but an appointment is still required.

4. Fridays

• Friday is now my official reading day. On Fridays, I read. This is time I also use to catch up on forums, read emails, highlight magazines and most especially READ BOOKS.  I allow myself slightly more latitude on social media that day as well.

5. Actual socialization

• I am also making it a point to try to do something at least once a week with a friend. Sometimes I need to hunker down, but if I can do a lunch or catch a movie, that’s totally OK.

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1. It comes with corporate sponsorship. Corporate sponsors have no business in the legislative process, and yet there they are, ubiquitous as ever. This particular piece of legislation is one more sign that corporate personhood is the worst thing the United States has introduced into law since Prohibition. Prohibition brought about organized crime in the United States. Corporate personhood has legalized crime.

While the link referred above has an extreme tone that undercuts the very points it’s trying to make, it also has an extensive list of the corporations sponsoring SOPA. Highlights include:

• CBS
• NBC Universal
• Nike
• Pfizer Inc. (now why would a pharmaceutical giant want free range censorship?)
• Burberry, Coach, Dolce & Gabanna, Coty Inc., Kate Spade, Revlon
• CVS , Rite Aid
• Harley-Davidson Motor Company
• Reebok
• Sony Corporation
• Dow Chemical Company
• McGraw-Hill Companies
• Walt Disney Company (no surprise there, they’re the source of nearly all copyright manipulation that has happened in the history of the United States)
• Wal-Mart
• Xerox

I would love it if a more expert blogger might delve into the number of “psychological associate” companies included in the list.

2. The proposal violates the 14th Amendment without question. While some argue it violates the 1st Amendment, there is too much wiggle room on that – government enforcement personnel  aren’t PREVENTING you from saying what you need to say, they’re just going to yank your site after you do say something a corporation doesn’t like or after you link to something a corporation doesn’t like. The biggest problem with the amendment is that there is NOT a check-and-balance. This protest is, ultimately, citizens engaging in their end of the check-and-balance system US government relies on.

3. There is actually a proposal for a reasonable alternative, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act, that has gone virtually ignored. The key to this is that pressure is not placed on the judicial system to enforce already established copyright protections. Instead, responsibility goes to the International Trade Commission (already set up for this stuff!) and they do an investigation of problematic web sites. It allows for due process and everything!

So, while you protest SOPA by writing to your representatives, you might consider advocating OPEN, if you feel that it protects our intellectual rights the correct way.

Why SOPA but not the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA?)

It’s worth mentioning that while there is a massive hue and cry over SOPA, there are objectors who have brought up the question about why we are not so vividly protesting President Obama’s shiny new power to retain prisoners indefinitely.

The reasons are actually simple. If you are a judgmental/sanctimonious sort, you will likely see these reasons as a moral failing on a grand scale. I encourage you to check these tendencies if you are blessed to be aware you have them: it’s that very mentality that eventually kills progress on a given cause. Consider this as a way of informing a new potential roadmap for activism.

1. People will act on what is likely to affect them directly. In the book the Information Diet, author Clay A. Johnson rightly points out that US citizens have become so overfed on a diet of confirmation bias and news that in fact does NOT impact their lives in a direct way, that most respond with apathy until there is direct interference. It’s very possible for me to interpose myself between Fat Chic and a determined shopper, to get the message to the shopper of “Hey, you need to do something about this if you want to shop or be entertained.” I do not have the means, however, to directly impose myself between a military official and an unjustly detained prisoner. I have a high likelihood in such a scenario of becoming an indefinitely detained prisoner. This has no appeal.

2. The best activists do it for themselves. (This was pointed out in Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project.) I am a feminist because I am a woman, and I am continually appalled at the disrespect I am expected to tolerate just because of my gender, for example. When I support causes for groups that I am not a member of, it is because when my personal friends have better lives, we all have more ease in socializing; racism, sexism and homophobia screw with my ability to have a good time with my friends. Ergo, I am a vocal ally and advocate in related causes because the opposition harshes my mellow.

3. Not everyone agrees that the NDAA bill is in the wrong. It’s not necessarily hardcore, let’s-monitor-your-pants Republicans that are supporting it. There’s some serious crap that has gone down with Pakistan, and just as the US depersonalizes people outside the country, the US in turn gets highly depersonalized. That depersonalization is the key to anything from domestic abuse to international terrorism.  Let’s revisit the concept of confirmation bias: when we already have an opinion, we have a tendency to filter out information that doesn’t support it. There is some well-researched information on adding this “indefinite detention” easter egg to the bill on both sides of the issue, but there’s very little out there that gives a whole picture. Obama never advertised himself to be anti-war, but for him to allow himself such an extreme power suggests that there’s much more to the picture than your favorite news source is willing/able to cover.

4. The bill gets revisited annually, because it’s a military budget bill. This does not fix the problem of the human rights violation, but it may be a factor in the low/apathetic response from the citizenship. Also, it does mean that those with loved ones that are detained can keep trying this year, and know they will have a good opportunity to keep trying to get it overturned next year.

5. We the people have been information overloaded into apathy. SOPA is different because it gets between us and what feeds our apathy; by cutting the “drug feed” we are waking people up. There are so many causes that need our attention, and all the clamoring causes a sort of scattered shut-down because so many of us have convinced ourselves the only way to be “good” is to support “all” the causes, while supporting the causes that have the most meaning to us and that affect our own lives the most directly are often cut short of key support because we have convinced ourselves that this is somehow self-serving, on the mistaken and unbalanced theory that ALL self-serving is “bad.”

There is one more thing worth mentioning that links SOPA and the NDAA together: if SOPA were to pass, the ability of the people to speak out against prisoner retention and any other violation of civil rights would be exponentially reduced, reduced to a smaller reach than all citizens had even in the 1960s. Information distribution has changed drastically, and it would be harder to get a message out, organize, or raise awareness. Yes, those of us who have regular Internet access are a privileged class. Poverty in the United States is still, on a comparative scale, some of the most comfortable poverty in the world (this does not mean to imply poverty is EVER comfortable.) We can have fingers shaken at us for simply having this privilege – and some do, using Internet access to do so- but we can also use the tools of our privilege to protect our own rights, making our modems an additional right filed under the “right to bear arms.” Computers and communication can also be used as our tools of self-protection, of protest, and even of dealing with a corrupt government. SOPA, and its protest, is something we can address with the power we have immediately onhand. NDAA is something we have to address leveraging the power that those of us who voted entrusted to someone else.

Therein lies the difference; in SOPA, we have more direct power than we do in the NDAA.

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There has been argument from a certain overclass of which I am part that Martin Luther King Jr. did not merit a national holiday. “George Washington Carver did more the country if they must make a holiday of a black man,” said one woman I knew, sneering in distaste. Her argument was that he did something for everyone, while MLK Jr. only did something for black people.¹

This, as we know, is bullshit.

Civil rights are for everyone. Just because a group of abusive white men see themselves as victims by having the law take away their “rights” to have victims does not mean that it doesn’t ultimately do them good, too. They may not see it that way, but being forced to acknowledge humanity in any class, race, gender and variations of all of that is a giant step that makes a lot of people who are accustomed to getting their way without question feel obsolete. The very root of this stuff is from people needing to feel important, and there are a lot of men and women in the world who have become accustomed to having it done for them. This DIY of self-importance is a new and often rattling concept. (Self-important falls in a spectrum from healthy to pejorative.)

We are all racist. I’ve spent some time thinking and reading about institutional racism. I am not an expert, but I have made an effort to inform myself. I agree that our institutions ARE racist – black and Native American students in Minneapolis are suspended at a disproportionately high rate in contrast to their peers. Our prison populations are over packed with people of color, and even those who have the financial means are often unable to leverage the same appeals systems that white money can. At this point, I think that the banks are equal opportunity exploiters, but I daresay that given the opportunity such as that presented with the current Somali financial crisis,  they will do a special screw-over on people of color. Oh yes, there’s a problem, and it’s pervasive. I’m not sure who declared President Obama’s election the “end of racism.” It’s not. I’m still not sure that wasn’t said in jest – racism is an endemic part of US American self-identity, and don’t preen too much Canadians, I’ve caught some of you at it, too.

Here’s the other part of it: while our institutions are indeed racist, the races that they are racist toward are ALSO racist. I have heard the argument that institutional racism means it’s a one way, monogamous deal. That’s crap. People of color do some hating on the side and right out front, too. I’ve had “cracker bitch,” yelled at me a few times (and that’s the only epithet I’ve had hurled at me from that arena I’m willing to print), not for something I did (that was apparent to me, anyway) but for a)dating men of color b)for showing up to shop in a black neighborhood and c)for showing up white in my own mixed neighborhood. I have encountered women of color who automatically assume because I’m a woman of no color that a)I am automatically afraid of them and b)that I automatically hate them. The women that have attempted to intimidate me when I’m waiting at a bus stop and minding my own business have been confused and annoyed when I don’t respond as they expect. I have had men of various nationalities and color approach me and outright demand sex from me, on the assumption that a fat white woman will naturally be eager for any male attention – and on the assumption that my skin (or my Pagan religion) meant I come without sexual morality. (Just because it’s not YOUR morality does not mean it’s not moral.) Certainly there’s some misogyny mixed in there, too, but all the same, I’ve had some crap dished to me because of my white skin – because that was the only real information that the person doing the dishing had about me in those moments. This is not about whether my suffering is proportional to the daily pressure that people of color endure – we all know it’s not – but it is present, and can be a factor in my endangerment, too.

I’ve said some stupid shit in my day – there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t know was racist until I got the hell out of Indiana, and I’m only glad that people chose to gently educate me instead of throttle me Homer Simpson-style. I’m sure I still say stupid shit. I am part of a racist culture, and I am racist.  I’m truly grateful Mrs. Keene in the 7th grade had me read Cry the Beloved Country; South Africa’s situation forced me to take a look at what went on in my own country, so when the clue-stick appeared in early adulthood, I usually took it as blessing rather than a beating.

But Martin Luther King Jr. did lay out a vision, and every day of my life I am putting energy into the vision that his children, and their children, and everyone’s children “will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Civil rights are ONE way to get individuals like you and me  to look for the content of another person’s character. To know any person, to make an effort to know any person, before you engage, assume or judge, is a powerful and sacred act. It changes what you decide about sex – the content of the character of a same sex couple marrying can bring happiness and stability into a chaotic world; it changes how you see single parenthood; it changes how you see the elderly because you take time to know their stories. It changes how you see race, as you learn to see the person. The way we consume media and live our lives ultimately reinforces racism as we see only pictures that we judge and snark at, without ever truly seeing the person below. We depersonalize celebrities so we may stick them in our confirmation loops, and thus we never see them, only what we want to see in them; often that comes with justification and practice at hating.

Perhaps, as a ritual, it might be worth seeking out someone else’s story today. Listen to someone talking on the bus; read something at the Experience Project; even watch something from one of the nationality channels on cable access. Leave your “I” out of it – don’t relate yourself or inject yourself or make yourself a character. Just listen, read or watch that other experience. Today is not about your story – it is about hearing another person’s story.

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1. There was also MLK’s consorting with criminals that was brought up, but given that a)he was a reverend and holy man and b)the situation he was in at the time, I think that this is in no way evidence of his corruption. I heard a recording of him from when he spoke in Mankato, Minnesota – there’s no doubt in my mind that the Holy Spirit, however you may see the Holy Spirit (I’m Wiccan, so very different from most people, but I believe in it) was with him.

The best known was to get my book finished. While it’s not finished, it’s on contract, which was much farther than I expected to be by now. While I am progressing at a consciously slow pace, I AM progressing.

The other two were integrated/related:

From 2007 – 2010 I have been plagued by illness. A cold would give way to a flu, which would give way to a persistent cough. The week before my father died in 2009, one illness actually rendered me temporarily deaf.  Related to that, I wanted to spend more time using my gym membership, and Mike and I moved around finances so I could have one in lieu of relying on the seasonal nature of Minneapolis community ed. (I still highly recommend community ed as an affordable way to enhance your life and achieve your goals.) I was part of the cycle where I would get started on a fitness program, and then get struck ill and struck hard enough I had to stop. I could rarely make it through a six week course of water aerobics and make all six weeks.

What I stated at the beginning of 2011 was that I wanted to spend “as much time as humanly possible at the Y” and to “do something about my constant health problems.”

I did not have a specific plan for either, but it ended up working out for the better.

Mike changed his work schedule so that he comes home in time for me to go to group classes at the Y at 5 pm.  In the summer, after reading that Pilates and Yoga had the best long-term results for fitness, I took the evening Pilates course on Tuesdays. Right now my gym schedule is M-W water aerobics, Th pilates, and F on the treadmill. I try to leave weekends open for my own sake.

While I’ve never suffered joint pain outside of areas where I’ve broken bones, and I actually don’t have the back pain common to most North Americans, I have noticed a greater sense of ease in my body after taking Pilates. I’m also no longer collapsing and thinking “I’m gonna die!!!!!” during class. (All bets may be off for that should someone introduce me to this Reformer I keep hearing so much about.)

I also read up a bit on how colds persist, and talked to another writer who swears by Airborne and raising the core body temperature. I’m raising my core temp at least 4 days a week, now, so that’s covered. The reading about how viruses live mostly in your nose and throat led to two new things, one of which I had previously resisted:

1)I now use a neti pot 1 – 2x a day. Salt is cheap and easy to obtain, and while I worry a little bit about damaging my olfactory nerves,  there’s relatively little evidence of people experiencing damage after long term, proper use.

2)I have a “health cocktail” that I’m especially quick to use when I’m having a hives breakout: 1 tsp of baking soda in an 8 ounce glass of water, with a bit of lime juice and stevia tincture added to ease it going down. This has also turned out to be a great stomach-settler, and tastes way better than Alka-Seltzer.

I still take a zinc supplement, and when a cold does sneak up on me, now that I’m resistant to using sage, I often use coltsfoot and lemon verbena. I take very small doses of kava kava when I’m anxious. I also discovered, thanks to Mike’s ketogenic diet adventure last summer, that if I eat the “full fat” version of foods, from dairy to meat to chips, I eat LESS of them and ultimately consume less calories than I do if I eat the “reduced fat” versions. Since I am still following intuitive eating¹  it seems to make sense. The “full fat” is actually more natural than the “no fat” approach, and I still think that using eating as a way to feel morally superior is fucked up.

The end result? I have brushed by colds in the last half of the year, but nothing has taken me out of the running for more than a day, and most days I was still able to get up and go to the gym. I also seem to have very reduced allergic reactions. I’ve also invested in a cool air humidifier, which when used in concert with my air filter, has more or less ended the nightly asthma attack that would wake me up coughing.

So all around, it’s been a big improvement.

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1. contrary to popular belief it is NOT eating whatever the hell you want – there is behavior change attached

So, in 2012, these are the habits I want to establish:

• Getting up at 6 am, ideally daily. This will take practice, fail a few times, and take some self-persuasion that getting up early can be fun. I never really slept past 8 am as a teenager or in college, and the late sleeping now is a combination of making up for years of much needed sleep deprivation, meds (most of which I no longer need/take as I get a better handle on my allergies) and possibly just making up for lost childhood by sleeping through an awesome adulthood. Even 7 am would be OK. This does mean enforcing upon myself a 10 pm bedtime at least 3 times a week. This is mostly about keeping up with my writing and blogging schedule, including the Artist’s Way work. This is the year I really need to start producing articles for anthologies, annuals and the like.
• Going dancing every other week. No drinking, especially if I’m by myself. I can go back to DDPP, sure, but I also may go to one or two bars with dance floors where I feel comfortable safe. Several times through my twenties I took a look around at my life and thought resentfully, “I thought there’d be dancing.” The best way for me to get that is to just go, go alone, and not let the usual social entrapment (well intended, not conscious, or founded in insecurities I don’t share)  snare me from it.
• Use my museum memberships to their fullest capacity. I’m a member of the Walker and MIA this year. I’m going to really make it a point to be more involved in both. This means lots of artist’s dates, which is good, because I’ll need them with the work I’m doing.
• Be more visual. Share more photos of my life and experiences; I still take the photos, but I realize I rarely share them. You may not see immediate results of this – I do need to tag the daylights out of flickr, but thanks to changes on the site the greasemonkey scripts that made this easy to do in less than a decade sometimes just don’t work anymore. With this photo sharing, I also need to use more words about why I took the photo.
• Get face to face time with friends once a week, if not more. This will take some work and planning, but I know I can do it. I need to respond to the question about whether my introversion goes in phases. It does, and it’s complex enough to merit a blog post since I’m exactly halfway between an introvert and an extrovert.
• Cut down email/Facebook/Twitter to no more than twice a day. (OK, probably a little more checking for Twitter.) I can corral most stuff to Tweetdeck, which allows me to backtrack on Facebook and LinkedIn; and learning to ignore fresh email as I work through my Google tasks will be tough for me. I’d love it if Google had an “email closed” version that could a)save and email and b)work outside of my  browser. It would really help me focus better, since I do like adding tasks directly from my email. Chat messages do go straight to my phone now, so any chat you send me is essentially the same as calling me, but probably faster.
• Also, TV on weekends only. That’s my best way of keeping up with the work I have at hand, and allows me to feel productive at a relaxed pace. Oddly, I can sense my stress levels increasing when I’m on a regular TV diet – but in concentrated bursts, it’s relaxing, rather than stressful.

I recently read in the Happiness Project about the statement “You can do anything you want, but you can’t do everything you want.” I’m not sure I’m willing to believe that – but is that denial, or does it just offend my somewhat childlike sense that all things are possible?  I do know I can’t do everything all at once – but I’m hoping that these changes, making sure I expend energy on what I do want, will make it possible for me to do one hell of a lot.

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Light

•  I got a book contract! Yes, in 2012 (or 2013, depending on the polishing it takes) Divorcing a Real Witch will see print. There’s a lot more to it that has my stomach turning in knots – marketing, workshop planning, showing up at bookstores if they’ll let me – and for that, I will be asking for help. There is stuff you yourself can do; if you want to help, comment here or join the mailing list posted in the sidebar. Most of what I will ask will involve you, say, posting a link to your Facebook wall and saying “I know who wrote this!” (or I read her blog, etc. etc.) If you yourself are a published Pagan author, let me know if you’d be open to doing an endorsement – I will of course have you read a copy first to ensure it’s something you would in fact endorse. It helps is you’re NOT opposed to divorce.
• I went to Paris! It was awesome, and most of the French wait staff were lovely.
• I self-published a book to get a feel for the new publishing industry. It proved informative on many levels, and has sold about 50 copies. It’s one of those things that gets no in-between reactions – it’s either “brilliant” or “heinous.” Reactions reveal far more about the viewer than it does about the book. I broke the taboo that things must be “good” and “perfect” and went with “real” and “flawed” instead. Some people are eager to break that taboo, while others responded as though threatened, or as though I were a naughty school child for daring to produce such a document. Somewhere creativity and academia need to come together; in the process we really need to clear out both the willful ignorance and the condescending elitist pedantry that have both prevented intellectual growth in Paganism. I have no illusions that I am any good as an artist or illustrator – this was more of a “yes, I have this limitation to, but do it anyway for the goal that lies beyond it and beyond the pettiness of complaining about crooked lines.”
• My Facebook fan page has grown from 50 something to 80 something. I really would like to see it hit 100 by the end of this year.
• Fat Chic got a mention in People Style Watch, which has led to not only a readership boom, but has helped renew my enthusiasm for the project. I have a good sense of what’s possible with the blog, how to make it unique, and how I can make it kick ass.
• I got in a retreat at Spring Green, Wisconsin. For some bizarre reason this town has always been a source of spiritual renewal for me.
• I finished a complete novel, now left to age in my “drawer” for at least six months. I now know what it takes to get a book written at a reasonable rate, and this has made me feel confident that I can get other works done while doing the marketing and promotion for the Divorcing a Real Witch (tentatively titled) book.
• I successfully established a 4 hour a week minimum gym habit. Mostly I do treadmill, water aerobics and Pilates. In the summer I try to squeeze in a yoga class, too. I have to consider what’s best for mind/body/spirit all together – on the one hand, I’d like to go back to bellydance classes. On the other hand, it’s an added expense, and there’s always a costumery and “special workshop” push that’s beyond my sewing ability and far beyond what my wallet can handle. I just like to DANCE, yo.
• I learned crochet. I hope to keep learning more, as long as my friends are willing to teach me.
• I also learned origami. I can do owls and a few other things that require a bird base, and make cootie catchers and crowns. I’m on the market for a decent paper cutter – I’ve been slicing down old magazines for practice paper.
• I think at this point I may have the healthiest/most conscious (self-aware) group of friends that I have had in the course of my life. Related both directly and indirectly, I’m wondering if I would benefit from getting more involved with some of the feminist organizations in town.
• I’m moving into year 4 of working through Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way book series. Really and truly, it has made a difference. An interesting side note is that, just as it mentioned in occult practice manuals, some people have found the changes in my attitude about art and creativity offensive despite these changes offering no threat to themselves.  What’s interesting are those that are the most threatened are the ones that talk the most about goals and projects they have – and that they never move forward on (or take a step and then self-sabotage.)  Other acquaintances, however, have taken note of the changes the work has brought about in me and have elected to come a bit closer: notably these people are all producing creative work, but not saying much about it until they’re done – or are talking about doing it, because that’s how they spend the bulk of their time, even when in day jobs they don’t like.

Middle ground

• I’m neglecting Magickal Realism and for the time being letting it close/expire by attrition. As some of you will know or even see, I’m still making things, but between the vagaries of Etsy, an upsurge in customer entitlement behavior and my writing career growth, I am relegating it back to hobby/private service. People keep comparing it to Black Phoenix Alchemy, and since I have no interest in doing what they’re doing, it’s annoying that I have to expend energy fighting that perception. I love perfume and bath product design, but my creative impulses in that area are leading me more towards studying hoodoo, learning to sew and lots of interesting upcycled/trashion applications that are occult practice friendly. The business never really recovered after the time I had to take off when my father died, and it seems like all paths are leading me to writing now, anyway.
• I’m having to bend on my rules about science fiction conventions and the like. It’s really about my dislike of crowds, and my impulse to get combative when someone assumes I think/perceive the same way they do (happens more at conventions, for some reason. I like Tenant – NOT A FANGIRL!) With the five year anniversary for the Doctor Who meetup coming up, I’m going to have to work hard on improving my tolerance for people inside my space.

Shadow

What follows is the negative things, most of which happened during the extended winter. I share these things for reasons both self-serving and audience serving. First, I believe silence is the most poisonous substance the soul contains. Attempts to shut me up, make me disappear or silence me are typical of those who slide by on negative energy only (instead of a proper balance of light and shadow.) Attempts to shut me down tend to be harsher than what most people experience in US culture, because I am large bodied, outspoken when I see reason to be, and female. I also call attention to things that we’d all like to ignore, like the weird thread of misogyny in gay culture (not all gay men have this, but I’ve heard enough opinions about women’s public hair from parties that have no reason to see it to know that there is SOMETHING VERY WRONG), or that so many Pagans are still screaming “misandry” when in fact misandry and misogyny have become equally prevalent and equally serious problems in our subculture. Also, the insistence upon trying to stay “in the fringe” while complaining about the decisions of overculture that affect us all anyway is neither healthy nor useful.

Because I know people would like to jump on both of these, let me make this understood: I have a journalism degree. I know the ins and outs of libel law. I will NOT EVER post something libelous on my blog. I am quick to distinguish fact from opinion, and if I am printing/publishing these statements, it is a)because I believe them to be true and b)I have written and voice records to back up what facts I do assert. There’s been a lot of good old fashioned backbiting and backstabbing, and not one person directly involved has made an effort to deal with me honestly. While I suspect that in at least two, possibly three cases, any word against me would actually make me look really good to a lot of people (and this has happened before), there is some distinct narcissism going on that makes it impossible for these people to recognize that a)I am not an extension of themselves b)I only think about them when they’re annoying me while I’m trying to do other things and otherwise, they’re not really part of my consciousness and c)I do not have proof, but I do have carefully documented behavior, that suggests there’s a thread of disorders running through this group that were turned on me. If I had not been coming out of grief and some problems with Mike, I would have registered the issue and disengaged sooner. There is a third party involved who had nothing to do with any of this bullshit, and I am sorry for any betrayal he feels about it, but I still assert that I am not the person who betrayed his trust. I tell the truth even when I really WANT to lie.

Lost some people from my life, only two of whom I really consider a loss. (It’s not the ones you think.) They think I’m crazy. I think they’re crazy, and they played this situation  extremely dirty, accusing me of things I never said and exaggerating actual small actions that happened under duress into what they want others to believe is a pattern of criminal behavior. Given the severity of false accusations leveled against me, I can’t really bring myself to wish them well.  I responded in the anger of any person would when presented with a pack of lies; I did not in the course of my response utter or print a single threat. What disturbs me is how two people lateral to this situation who were incredibly poor guests in my home have remain fixated on me despite only passing contact with me since then.

But one more phone call from the lateral crazy people, and I will be getting a restraining order. I think six months of silence from me does not merit a harassing phone call over what was either a)an honest mistake on my part since I wasn’t exactly filing away every detail I was ever told by these people or b)a hallucination on their part. Also, I have Google Voice. ALL my voice mail records are retained and publishable – FOREVER.

I also had to make some final decisions about my remaining family that were not pleasant, and that, had I felt there were any other options, I would have taken instead. It broke my heart to do it, and it broke a deathbed promise to my dad, but I had to cut them off. To stay in that relationship would mean I had to live under the pall of abuse for the rest of my life, and I hope my father did NOT truly want me to remain in an abusive relationship for the rest of my life “just because they’re family.”

They are in the habit of assuming I think and feel things without ever talking to me to determine what I do in fact think and feel, and when they are wrong, they get all upset at me not sharing their assumptions and go off complaining about what they consider my distorted values.  In addition to this problem with assumptions about my interests and a persistent push to make me more like them (rather than accepting me as-is in the manner that they demand I accept them, or asking and actually listening to what I say, instead of interpreting it to their own mentality) they have an obnoxious habit of making plans for me, again without discussing said plans or whether I would be willing to cooperate, and enlisting their friends and extended family into pressuring me to go along with those plans.

After my mother’s BFF gave me a manipulative guilt trip for “not visiting enough” at my father’s funeral, and this was followed by the openly contemptuous behavior of my mother’s family – highlights included one cousin asking “What’s he like?” about Mike in that tone where she was clearly expecting tattoos and a meth habit (despite not asking me a single question about my own life, or even trying to contact me to know anything about me) and my aunt-in-law trying to get me to talk about my wedding plans at a fucking funeral (I really think she wasn’t being mean, she’s just really THAT STUPID and insensitive. Points to her husband for mostly shutting up and staying away from me – I know that asshole made plans for me, without my consent, but at least he treats me with a modicum of respect now that I’m happy to give him in return, even if it’s the respect of courtesy-based avoidance.) Since it was visibly clear to me at the funeral that my mother and sister had carefully cultivated an attitude of contempt towards me, and the only person that asked me about my life was a guy who had wanted to sleep with my sister for years and who was not the least bit interested in what I might say, I recognized immediately that there was nothing left worth building on with my father gone.

I kept my promise to my dad I would follow through on the wedding, and I did, and there was relationship fallout from that, along with mother and sister immediately trotting out abusive behavior, and deliberately not communicating, or communicating on assumed beliefs and not on anything I actually said. Then, of course, backpedaling, lying (I caught them both in several) and pouting  when I got angry at their completely unwarranted behavior.

Conversations after led to exchanges where I would say something about my life, it would be greeted with silence, and then the subject changed to something about their own lives. My sister would actually, two minutes or less into a conversation, IMMEDIATELY just have to talk to someone not on the phone, leaving me listening to her one-sided conversations. It was rude, and an obvious tack to avoid conversation with me (while lying to me and claiming that she considered my calls a priority, when her behavior made it clear she saw them as an intrusion.) The only contact she initiated was around her birthday, probably because she hoped I’d feel guilty enough to get her a birthday present.

…the manipulative overture actually pissed me off enough that I canceled the one I was going to send to her.

[Gifts received from my family are always a point of dread. They’re never about what I like or enjoy, they’re about who they want me to be, and they’re almost universally godawful. Just knowing these women has caused me to hate my own birthday and Christmas.I don’t want to see who they’re wishing I was this year.]

My mother’s conversations were especially bad about the one-way, especially after she got herself a boyfriend. I understand that the boyfriend died unexpectedly – but not until I was treated to the horror of my mother listing her relationship as “it’s complicated” on Facebook (a status best reserved for those who are bi, poly, or have a situation with a spouse still living) and more than one screed about how my sister should get herself a boyfriend. Before the death, I refused to talk to her without having her on speaker so Mike could hear – this way he was reassured I was in fact not crazy, especially as she was fond of dropping some “tidbit” my father had said while alive, and tell me “not to tell Mike.” She had no concept that Dad and I used to have complete conversations when no one was allowed to disrupt us: there’s once when he was in the hospital and he actually said, “Oh good, your mother is gone, I can actually talk to you.” My father was never an emotional withholder – if he knew he’d be heard, he’d say lots, and he went out of his way to make sure he did to me.

After the boyfriend’s death – and I do feel for her, especially with her finding him, but there’s nothing I could possibly say to palliate THAT experience – she had completely ignored my feelings from the moment my father died forward, tipped off when she made a point of asking me how I was with the pastor watching. (Kris, Alice,  the overimportance they both place on men, it was irritating – Mike got thanked for a lot of work I actually did.)  The last straw for me came when she COMPLETELY IGNORED me getting a New York Times mention. She posted on my Facebook wall (instead of her own, as was appropriate) about my niece’s stupid theater competition (way to encourage her to peak in high school, it’s turned out so well for my sister –sarcasm), but a New York Times mention, she didn’t even acknowledge. That was the last straw as far as she went.

My first boyfriend died when I was 14, and my mother’s response was to inform me I wasn’t allowed to be “too dramatic about it.” I still can’t forgive her, and while I sent a sympathy card as custom dictates, I can’t bring myself to do any more for her. I’ve been treated to her screaming on the floor when my aunt died (the fat shaming bitch one), her “all about me” bedside scene with her shrieking “my love” as Dad lay conscious enough for me to sense he was as disgusted as I was (trust me, my mother is NOT an affectionate woman. She and my sister only express affection when they’re angling for something), and long, dramatic, self-indulgent speeches about how she “reached her crisis” in whatever loss she’d experienced lately, with no consideration for the fact that I had lost that person, too. That it wasn’t just HER who loses anyone.

But I was never allowed to be “too dramatic” despite losing someone who meant the world to me on an annual basis from ages 14-33.

So any sympathy I can extend her about this latest loss is about as flat as the cardboard it’s printed on. After all, this is the least of her manipulative non-communications. I was furious when she decided I “wouldn’t want to know” about my dad’s quadruple bypass (this was her being petty after I called her out for bullying me on one of my rare visits, that were rare because of her persistent bullying) and when a neighbor who had been part of my life since elementary school died, she mentioned it only in a self-pitying post on Facebook, instead of actually telling me. Of course, my sister did tell me about my father’s bypass back then – mostly because it gave her an opportunity to be dramatic and emotionally manipulative.

All of their behavior is based on convincing me I can’t win. If I continue to try to engage with them, I can’t. I can be miserable, and say I’m still in touch with my family, or I can be sad for a little while and end my relationship.

I choose to end my relationship with them. I’m seeing a therapist to help me with this transition, and to make sure I am doing this from a place of health and not disorder. (My views are consistent. I am a totally sane abuse survivor, and like most survivors, the people who know the abusers in a social context are the least likely to believe or recognize that they are in fact abusive.)  Previous therapists I have had as I could afford it have proposed the idea, but usually we opted to try to find another way of relating. At this point in my life, I can honestly say I have tried everything and nothing has worked. I can only have a healthy relationship with a person who wants a healthy, honest, open relationship with me, and this is not something I will have. Since these people do nothing to benefit me in any other way, I have no reason to keep them in my life, and I will be happier with them gone.

I don’t know entirely the role of my father in the abuse dynamic that played out in my home. He was a survivor of abuse himself, and it was so severe that the violent atmosphere my mother created for me seemed tame, even calm and disciplined, by comparison. This does not negate what I experienced. It was still abuse. My mother’s refusal to recognize and own her behavior is very typical of abusive people – while non-abusive people do sometimes have bad moments, most when confronted respond with questions and not denials. That my mother would “counter-attack” when I did confront her only when there were no witnesses, especially not my father, suggests to me that she has been fully conscious all along of what she does.

Family does not need to be perfect. Sometimes they yell, or mutter, or flush the toilet when you’re taking a shower. Stuff happens. What happened to me was far over the line of the friendly hostility of the functioning American family, and it wasn’t just because I was fat. I don’t know who my mother sees when she looks at me, but it sure as hell isn’t me. I’m pretty sure she hates herself, and her attempts to force me to become her over the years has made that spectacularly upsetting.

So it’s a hard road, but there are generational damages that are not mine to fix.

That’s the shadow side. I feel like these specific fall aways have happened for my benefit; certainly there’s movement towards things that are newer, better, and about my goals rather than about my talent being co-opted into someone else’s agenda. (Collaboration is a very different thing than the stuff I was being asked for.)

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1. If you are Pagan and you change religions, I am not mad at you. If you are Christian, I only hate you when you act like a jerk, which is the same standard I have for everyone of any faith. If you are atheist, I also only have a problem with you when you are a jerk – don’t make God versus not some stupid tug-of-war, and we’re totally cool. My personal religious practice isn’t about trying to “win” and I don’t care about prizes like heaven and punishments like hell.

Yes, in some cases I am sad that I can no longer share this aspect of life with someone who means something to me. But it’s only the end of the relationship if my beliefs are now something that actively disturbs you. I’m very used to not sharing beliefs with people, and these days religion has become like sexual orientation: it’s up to you to figure out what you were born for. It’s out of my hands, and as long as you’re not all “woman, get in yo place!” about it, I’m cool. Just communicate up-front that there are things you want to do differently, or other playmates. We can work out new ways to relate and interact. There’s a great big world to share, and it doesn’t all have to involve spiritual stuff.

2. I honestly don’t give a shit if you go to Doctor Who meetup or not. I nag about the RSVPs because the bar we use cares very much, and really does need to know the numbers before we go. I’ll be annoyed if you RSVP and flake after three requests to update if your plans change because I do face repercussions. Doctor Who is my thing. It is the thing of many members. But any pressure you feel to join is from your own inner voice, and is not coming from me – I really don’t care. If you’d like to hang out with me some other way, I’m sure we can find something.

This reaction to me when people find out I run Doctor Who meetup is totally because of the way enthusiasts act about conventions in the area – the “you have to go!!!!” stuff makes my stomach do unhappy things the same way it does when Jehovah’s Witnesses want to personally discuss the latest issue of the watchtower with me before I’ve had a cup of coffee. I practice a non-conversion religion, and it leaks over into just about everything else I do. I want people to feel welcome, but also completely unpressured. I keep coming across situations where people obviously feel pressured – and it’s not coming from me, but it’s being projected onto me since I’m the face of the organization. Yes, I’m trying to get things done right now.

3. If I am arguing with you, it’s not because I’m trying to win.
I try hard not to get into arguments; I get that people come to their own opinions by their own means, and I can’t travel that path with another person because I’m on my own path. I do find myself arguing when I feel like perception has warped the facts. If you think I’m a hellbound heathen because I’m a babykiller, I’m going to address that. I don’t kill babies, and that perception is NOT fact and needs address, NOW. If, however, you just think I’m hellbound because I’m some sort of Pagan, then fine, that’s your opinion and we’re both going to have to wait. (Of course, if that is your opinion of me, we probably won’t hang out much anyway.)

I just wanted to put this out there. I actually saw very active guilt body language the other night, with people bringing up Doctor Who meetup with me, and that was just weird. All I want is people to be accurate about whether they’re going – I honest to gods don’t care if you don’t go. If it’s not your thing, it’s not your thing. I know I’m kind of intense, but I put a lot of effort into creating laid-back environments for that very reason.

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I consider attaining gender equality a necessity, and I believe that a big part of that is getting women to rally their courage and change, break, and destroy female to female communication as we know it. Why?

Because there are aspects of female bonding, sharing, and pecking order arrangement that is not really communication. Our tendency to have expectations of others, especially other women, that we do not verbalize explicitly, is at its best a way to breed silent disappointment and at its worst and most common a method of bullying.  Without finding the courage to speak our minds to each other in respectful and honest ways, ways where we account for the other having a different experience from our own, we create a network of suppression.

I just had to end a relationship ultimately because of this exact behavior.  Over the years, resentments built. Expectations and demands were cast onto me, but no one stopped to explicitly detail them to me. I was supposed to be acculturated into a lifestyle and mindset that I did not question: this was first, to escape the possibility that I might not to consent to it, and second, to avoid accountability for doing something to me that was just plain rotten. A pattern of behavior emerged where my interests were marginalized, conversations were one-sided on the other person’s side, and it became clear that forcing me into a mostly silent position in the relationship would give them a sense of power and me a sense of powerlessness that they desired.

Perhaps some of this was unconscious. It doesn’t make it any less abusive.

Notably, one person decided to start communicating with me in passive aggressive ways, and like a typical abusive-female, found support from whatever peers she could for this being the “best” way to handle me. Results were typical of high school cliques, with abusive searches in my name, and people hopping on to social media to send me verbally abusive messages. None stopped to question this, or to look at the actual behaviors: I had sent forth no communications, and except for the final shut-down, I had remained polite and distant in the few communiques I had allowed them to waste my time with. I was made out to be “crazy,” a popular tool of disempowerment for those uneducated in how mental illness works, with the false belief that social pressure from people who have never offered me support would somehow “bring me around,” based on an assumed need for approval from these people. The big failures of this plan were that I never got social approval while living with them, and I only found it when, as an adult, I consciously dropped the assumptions and mores that they had acculturated into me. My life got better when I quit their tribe.

The truth is, if these people had chosen to be honest and direct, instead of playing “guess” culture games, like “asking” if I had filtered their emails when they had in fact sent no communications during a crucial period and “asking” if they could call when I had never told them not to, we might still have conflict, but it wouldn’t have led to a “stop communication” directive. Essentially they have reframed the situation in their heads so that they can tell themselves I am the bully, when I am not the one who decided to play the “freeze out” game in the first place. I am also not the one who has asked friends and neighbors to “spy” on me via social media; I find the intelligence of the people who have agreed to do so questionable. It’s one thing if I were in fact a child, but I’m close to 40, and I definitely do not fall into the vulnerable adult category, so going along with these requests is a)creepy and b)makes the morals of the people doing this highly questionable.

If these women had engaged in open, honest communication, we wouldn’t be here right now. But it’s for the best. Just seeing them makes me sick to my stomach; that’s what happens when you’re perpetually the monkey in the middle and they are determined to make sure no matter what you do, you “lose.”

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"A well-dressed woman, even though her purse is painfully empty, can conquer the world." - Louise Brooks

Today, I am 36. I also found out I have the same birthday as Paul McGann (my least favorite Doctor through no fault of his own… Fox networks…) and Louise Brooks. So many people were so caught up in me sharing a birthday with that pratt Prince Charles because my name is Diana that they completely overlooked the interesting people. Then there was the year it came up that birthday had something to do with Hitler…

Between this year’s birthday and last year’s birthday:

• Fat Chic got a mention in People Style Watch, to go nicely with that New York Times magazine mention last year.
• I have found a publisher for Divorcing a Real Witch (title now tentative.) It’s up to me to actually finish it, but I’m much more nervous about the documentary portion and marketing. It helps that I’m on my 3rd draft, and it’s mostly refining the writing and fact-checking. I really think that the submission portion is more about me feeling ready to launch the rest of the work than it is about facing a fearsome editor.
• I’ve been to Paris. That one wasn’t even on my bucket list. This is mostly because I don’t have a bucket list.
• Mike and I took ballroom dance, couples massage and French together.
• I have had to get rid of a huge portion of my wardrobe.  Refer to closet collapse mentions.
• I have kind of kicked the perfume business to the side for now. I love doing it, but I’m following my heart, and my heart wants to write.
• I’ve gotten myself into a steady 4 days a week habit at the gym, including Pilates.
• The Doctor Who meetup has grown to more than 350 members. This has more to do with the rising popularity of the show and persistent word of mouth from one of my assistant organizers than it has to do with me, but it’s still nice to see.
• The re-release of the Spellcasting Picture Book has sold give/take 50 copies. Given it’s unknown, in crayon, and the sort of thing a huge swathe of occult types will not only not get but actively hate, that’s remarkable.
• I’m 23,000 words into my nanowrimo novel, even with taking a day off here and there. 1700 words a day to get to a novel or finish a project is not bad. I’m pretty sure I can do this!

Given how frustrated and unaccomplished I felt at this time last year, that’s really something!

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In my case, I tend to expect too much. I then get mad at myself for thinking “too much” and proceed to yell at myself for coddling. I then get mad at myself for yelling at myself.

This happens most often after I look over project piles that somehow amassed in every room of of my home.

I once attributed this series of “incompletes” to some moral or character failure, especially when my whole house wasn’t magically polished, and bursting forth with high profits, finished books and magically made homemade decor at the end of every day.

Then the Artist’s Way changed the situation. I started paying close attention to the experiences of others struggling with the emotional, physical, mental and situational blocks to creativity. I realized something:

our ability to create is absolutely infinite. But most of us are only able to access a limited amount of that energy at a time.

Suddenly the real dangers and temptation of methamphetamines have become very clear to me.

I read one author – if I remember who it was, I hope to come back and link properly – who, upon her pregnancy, expected to have 9 months of creative orgy, or perhaps six, once the morning sickness passed. She planned elaborate gardens, a decorated house, finished books. Instead she needed lots of sleep. She expressed guilt at how flesh did not follow spirit.After giving birth, her creative energy returned. She figured out that it was because her creative energy was quite busy creating another human being. The garden could wait until mitosis finished, thank you.

While I have heard of women having the opposite experience -pregnancy leading to a mad “nesting,” I suspect that this woman’s experience is far more typical than people would like to admit.

Pregnancy is not the only way creative energy can face limits. Just as I have to build my capacity to conduct energy in magical practice, I have also had to build my capacity to be creative for extended periods of time – or to bank the material from those rare creative frenzies so that I can work even while uninspired. Even so, there’s only so much to go around before my soul needs the food that it pulls from so that I may create (or “shape” as those of the Reclaiming tradition prefer.)

As a writer who makes it a point to know other professional writers, I know that all of us committed to the craft learn how to work without inspiration. Inspiration, a neurological flash, is what starts the work, but to continue it takes the real muscle structure of commitment and consciously formed habit.¹

This is how I forgive myself for being more oriented to writing here, and for my books, rather than focusing on the plus-size fashion blog or my Etsy shop. I only have so much creative energy at a time. While I am doing what I can to increase that creative energy by going through the Artist’s Way, psychotherapy and re-establishing my meditation practice, as well as sticking to those artist’s dates, it is still something that I must steward, just as I am stewarding myself in creative physical endurance (and enhancing my creative output in the long run) by making sure I continue going to the gym 4 days a week.

This understanding that our ability to conduct creative energy is finite and can be increased over time lends further credence to Julia Cameron’s credo of one small thing. That “small thing” becomes a little bit larger every time, every day, as we build our skill and endurance over time, until we are accomplishing great things by the measured increase of our ability to conduct that creative energy.

But it’s perfectly OK that we can’t do everything. We can do anything, not everything, and sometimes the only way to get it done is in very small chunks with what energy we get for that day.

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1. note I do not use the guilt and complex-creating word discipline