Under the Snow

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So, I didn't end up being able to push through the weather tonight to get downtown to the Imbolc ritual. To tell the truth, I've only ever observed it, never really ritualized it at all. Not because it's not an important holiday -- because they all are -- but like my parents who only really celebrate Christmas, I prefer to do an actual, written out ritual for Samhain. The rest end up as merry get-togethers or little mini candle-light rituals, which are a few moments of observation and reflection.

Instead, I am in the midst of studying -- as my blurbs have probably pointed out. Not just for college -- nope. I am working on (slowly, I must admit) reading through "Hands on Chaos Magic" by Andrieh Vitimus, by the reccomendation of a Tumblr Follower, and "Taking Up the Runes" by Diana Paxon, as recommended by a dear friend of mine. For each, I'm not even really ready to reflect on what I've learned -- I need a lot more time during the semester to internalize and put new information in this sort of grouping of categories to use.

As always, my main focus is writing -- from start of the day to the end, I am full of ideas. You're talking to the kid who would stand in the stationary section of the department store or book store until the moon fell out of the sky just because she was deciding which notebook would be just perfect. (Don't even get her started on how much she would spend on pens and notebooks if she had the means. No. Seriously. Not a conversation the parents need to find out about, hehe.)

I find that studying magic in any sense is really inspirational -- not just for my fiction, but it weaves its way into my poetry in the form of curious imagery, or mention of pagan and/or witchy terminology. It is the basis of why I blog. It is what drives me to keep seeking. It is getting closer each day to my tenth year studying, and I still do not know hardly anything. All that is for certain is that I have to keep going -- have to keep learning. I'm at a place in my studies where I can no longer fathom a life without magic. Without paganism. Not that my spirits, ancestors and deities would allow me to back away, cut ties with those things and close myself off and ignore all abilities I have made stronger.

Some people live their lives aiming to be something when they "Grow up." I have no choice now -- I live my life equally as a writer and as a pagan, and I do not give one bat of an eyelash at the future of my career for that statement. I need to be accepted as a whole, not as a part. I need to be happy -- and for that I have to be honest. If I am a pagan and a writer, I can't pretend to be anything else for the sake of a career. It is easy to write every day -- now that I feel empty if I don't; now that if I don't write something each day, my brain would be evicted from my skull for lack of space between the flying ideas and to-do lists.

... Imbolc is happening even if I didn't celebrate it tonight. Just like life is awakening under the snow, I am understanding and preparing myself for the world out there. I know who I am, what I need and what I want -- almost as well as I know those things for my characters. I still have a couple more years to go in undergraduate studies after this semester is over, and then a couple years in graduate school -- but it is not time wasted. It matters not how crazy I make myself, or how much work there is. It's about getting from point A to point B, whatever it is. It's the journey. It's the preparation for the journey -- just like seeds starting to wake up under the snow in the middle of winter.

So I'll keep reading and studying. I'll never stop writing. And we'll see what this year has in store for me.