Like my made up Latin for the day? Thought so!

I spent my weekend conflicted but calm. We had our Yuletime party at church and I got my tree up finally. We’ll spend this week decorating it in various ways. An email will go out later to friends to see if they will participate in the first annual ornament giveaway. Next year, we’ll turn it into an exchange when I have the actual time, wherewithal, and foresight to be more prepared for something like this. I think it will be fun. I think also, next year, I’m going to start promoting some kind of card/art exchange.

In January, I’m going to be starting up a blog “carnival” for thelemic/pagan/whatever authors. If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry, you will. I’ll be working out some of the details here over the next few weeks. I already have the “account” setup for the hub, but I still don’t even have a name for it yet. So I’m serious when I say it’s in the nascent stages of design and planning. I’d like to be able to have about six months of issues planned out ahead of time so that there is a good foundation to see if it will actually draw interest. It’s working in other religious communities like wildfire and it can’t hurt to see what it might do for ours.

I really need a personal manager that I can send on fishing expeditions and foundation building chores. I have too freaking much going on that there is just not enough of me to go around. Figuring out that I cannot do much more than survival mode on the paycheck I have is disheartening knowing that with two of us things were just fine and that abandonment allows R/ED™ to live care free while we wonder sometimes how bills will get paid. All things considered, I’ll never understand why those who have no responsibility, those who are cowards in life, and those who are disinclined to any kind of actual principles (moral or otherwise) are the ones who always seem to get ahead in this world. Those who are principled, good people suffer just for trying to do the right thing without compromise.

Bloody Catharsis

You’re everything that’s so typical
Maybe you’re alone, for reason
You’re the reason
(Beautiful) Just as beautiful as you are
(Pitiful) It’s so pitiful what you are
Should have seen this coming all along

I’ve been offered a form of emotional catharsis that I’m still considering. I’m not sure that I’m undisciplined enough to let go of my emotions in such a manner without a more forceful impetus. Whining (public, private, internally, externally, whatever) about one’s hurt feelings and emotional overload is not the same thing as actually dealing with those emotions. But to actually “let go” is something I’m not exactly sure how to do. Without trying to sound overly pathetic here, I’ve lived quite a sheltered life when it comes to certain things. Even through some of the most devastating situations I’ve always had R/ED™ there picking up the pieces and putting life back on track. Frankly, that just cannot be underestimated as a major factor of my own issues at the moment. She’s not merely in my veins; she is my blood.

When I think of my own emotional context, even what people have seen on this blog and elsewhere, it is more like a pinprick in a water-filled balloon. You get a small, direct stream of leaking water from the balloon, but you can see the rest just sitting there behind the barrier holding all the rest in place, forcing it out that little tiny hole, and just waiting to burst out all at once. The idea that the balloon could burst is foreign to me. I think it would be overwhelming to anyone in the vicinity. I neither have the will nor the time for such release. Or do I? Maybe I need to make the time. But I still have this “letting go” hang-up I need to get through.

That said: due to control issues (and the mental/emotional blocks I know I have already) I’ve considered something more extreme: a bloody catharsis that takes the body over the edge and makes most all of these fluffy playtimes I see around me look like … well … fluffy playtimes for those trying to get laid—and I’m so not interested in sex right now. I’m not sure that there is anyone willing to go that far with me at the moment. I’ve come to the conclusion—not using my own words here—that the women around me that exhibit such proclivities [Edit: oops! should have added "except one" here] are players playing with other players. Nothing wrong with that: but stop making yourself all deep and dark and shit and just call it what it is: getting laid. And, personally speaking, I’m sick and tired of people thinking that they need to fuck over their mates just to get laid. So I’m thinking copious amounts of blood, pain, and barbarism. What could be done to my body—to be blunt—could never compare to what has been done in the most heinously barbaric manner to my soul by R/ED™. If the only way to move on is to remove the source of the “infection,” then it’s time to find a way to remove it the old fashioned way.

So let’s find something that truly cuts to the core of it all rather than merely plays with red spots and bruises. Let’s find reality over fantasy. And then I dare some of these to bring their bullshit playtime around me again.

But, you know? bishop was born of a catharsis, a purging/deconstruction of the old to make way for the new that was so extensive it required a whole new persona, a whole new name, a whole new worldview. Nothing quite like that this time, but I will be changing my online persona (i.e., the secondary emails I use, the profiles I create, etc) to something more relevant to this particular change in life. I haven’t settled on anything specific yet, but it will follow a new line of an old thought. It will not, however, negate the current Eremitic Life foundation I’ve been building. This is real life. The other will merely separate out my online “life” for purely aesthetic reasons.

School, Work, and Finals! Oh My!

I still want to be able to work 20 hours a week and get paid for 60. Why is that so hard in this country? LOL!

Kidding.

Sorta.

This is my last week of school for the semester. I have my Biology final and lab practical this week sometime. I haven’t exactly worked this out yet. [Wednesday. This will be happening on Wednesday.] I have to be at a campus to take them and even though I’m not exactly planning on passing them (or passing them with flying colors), I still have to allocate about an hour for each one. My midterm and lab practical took me about 40 minutes overall for both, but I still planned for the two hours.

But, once this is done, I’ll be finished up here until January. (As an aside, I did make an A in Computer Lit—as if that was somehow unanticipated already. And my Cultural Studies grade was already posted and I made an A there too.)

In January, I’ll be taking Speech Communications, Introduction to Astronomy, and Cultural Anthropology (taught by the same professor I had for Sociology last year—so I’m just a bit excited about that!). Anyone that has a decent digital video recorder that I can beg from you or buy cheaply, I would certainly appreciate such a thing since I’m pretty sure I’m going to need it for Speech class.

That will leave one class open to complete Phase 1 of the Evul Master Plan. I’ll finish that up in Summer I and then graduate with the Associate of Arts—Humanities Emphasis there to move on. After that, things are still up in the air, but my goal is to find a university that will take me, has housing of some kind we can afford, and move us there. Ideally, it would be a university where I can stay through the last three phases so that I don’t have to keep running all over the place to finish up this plan and, just maybe, end up teaching there too. Granted, that’s a pipe dream, but at least I’m dreaming still. That’s got to be a positive sign for me.

Interlude of a Memory

Today is a bittersweet day for me. I long so much to do something but I know that someone else is already in my place, doing those things, filling my void, ripping apart 13 years of happiness and passion. So all I will say of today is this: Someday I hope you recall just how important these words are and how much you truly betrayed everything we stood for—”Our miracle lies in the path we have chosen together [and] the true magick of love is not to avoid changes, but to navigate them successfully. Let us commit to the miracle of making each day work—together.” The sad part is that had you actually kept this vow to me, we wouldn’t be in the mess that we are today.

Rules Free Weekend

We did a Rules Free Weekend this past weekend. It was partly because we had so much going on, but also to see if we could find different ways of providing motivation and rewards for good behavior. Since it was CartoonNetwork’s second sneak peek weekend for their online game, FusionFall, and he’s recently been given a City of Heroes/Villains account again, he wanted to pretty much stayed glued to the computer. (There’s another thing we need: this one has issues since we moved that it didn’t have before: not sure why, but things that she would play just fine now crash the machine. No idea why …) So we tried this and it worked out pretty well. We have some bumps to deal with, but I think that such a weekend once a quarter would be helpful for Jinx to just get out from under even some of his own rules that he made up for our home. It really does kind of release a lot of tension that builds up.

Not that he’s not a good kid the majority of the time, but I’m also trying to get him to see that some of the rules he made up are pretty superfluous in the big picture. I’m willing to follow them to set a good example, but I think he got caught up in the creative side of making these rules and didn’t really think down the road how they would weigh down some of his activities. Now he just doesn’t know quite how to admit that either they are dumb or that they need to be modified to something more useful. (This seems to be a common theme running through our family.)

Future, Future

I need to query the Dartabase soon. I am in need of a Personal (Information) Manager, Lifestyle Guru, Accountant, and Private Events Director. Heh. I think I’m finally up to my gills in babysitters, even if I do need one more for specific weekday nights for a support group thing—why would anyone put a group thing on a weekday night if single parents are going to attend? and especially on a school night? I don’t get it!. But I need to find someone I trust, has absolutely nothing more than platonic (or less) intentions in my home, and great with kids. I would prefer a teenager, actually, just because then all my bases are covered: no accusations of impropriety possible, no possibility of “taking over as mommy” (and even less of this chance if I can find a teenage boy that could play on Jinx’s level), and a complete lack of any interest beyond getting paid for the job. I mean, I know there are adult friends of mine that could handle this, but most have significant others—which is why they could handle this—and not really available for this level of need.

Jinx and I are doing fine. In fact, we’re doing fucking awesome. My dad commented yesterday that he’s highly impressed with our adaptability, our guts, and our drive. He even commented that he was telling one of my late mother’s friends at church about how impressed he was and especially that my home was much cleaner than his on a regular basis. LOL!

Yes, folks! He cooks, cleans, vacuums, walks the dog, works out, does laundry, even brings home a paycheck while going to school full-time, and all with a child in tow! What a guy! He just doesn’t do windows—not even in the buff. Sorry.

Oh. Right. And I’m still working on the new pictures. Just taking a bit longer than I anticipated and not really high up on the priority list right now.