Good grief!

I have tried to get back to my writings for a few months now. Bits and pieces have floated about the ether above my head waiting for me to touch them and allow them to wash over my imagination. To be honest time is completing getting away from me. I’ve had time off and planned on writing ALL THE THINGS! And then I will either be too exhausted mentally from the 60 hours a week I am working or too many other things need my immediate attention.

There are times that living alone has been a true blessing. I have had a lot of healing to be done from the traumas of the past and if I am to be frank I still have a ways to go. The best thing that happened to me in the past five years was to move to this little house and then the COVID quarantine. I am now classified as permanent work from home which allows me to be free from the pressures of scrambling to catch a bus and the 4-5 hours of lost time in transit. Buses never go in a straight line from point A to point B. The solitude has been very good for my soul. Then a little over a year ago I disconnected from social media. Not worrying about whether people like me or if I have offended someone has removed a lot of stress from my shoulders. It was odd at first not checking FaceBook every morning and throughout the day to keep up with what people were doing. Then, after about two weeks, it stopped being weird. I would have a twinge every now and then but most of the time it was no big deal. Very few people have noticed I’m gone so it really helped to point out those that actually cared about me. Every few months I go in to my messages to see if I need to answer something but other than that I don’t go on it at all. There are only two people who regularly text me for proof of life and one of those is my cousin.

This brings me to the flip side of living alone. It can be very lonely. While most of the time I am pretty good not having people around touching my stuff, asking me annoying questions, criticizing something I have done, or just making me feel generally bad about myself in some way there are those moments when I would love to share some insight, or joke, or just share a hug with another human being. Don’t think that’s an invitation to touch me though. Touch is very personal and intimate for me. I try to be casual about it like other people but honestly it’s really difficult. If I let you touch me it’s because I feel you are safe and I like you. Violate that trust and I will avoid you like the plague. And my trust in others is VERY fragile. Reference my comments above about healing from trauma.

So I would love to have someone to share all this with, but then I think about them touching my stuff and I get twitchy. It took me a long time to start expressing myself through my decor choices. I can’t think of a single roommate situation where I was able to put anything of me out where others could see it for fear of losing a roof over my head. Any time I tried it was dismissed or belittled to where I felt I had to hide every piece of me that wasn’t quiet, bland, or some variation of white or grey. I stayed in survival mode and catered to whatever pleased others to the point where I didn’t have any idea who I truly was. I didn’t even realize that I could enjoy bolder patterns and colors until I moved here and no one could tell me no. Or that it was okay to be a little messy, or that things don’t have to match, or that my lawn doesn’t have to be ‘just so.’ I was so afraid of being abandoned and not wanted that by making myself into whatever pleased them I was essentially abandoning myself. So, yeah. Lots of processing and healing from those times are in effect.

One of the ways I work through the above is planning. I want my own homestead someday where I can have all the animals I can afford, a huge garden that is fairly self-sustaining, an orchard, my own Vé, an outdoor ritual space where if I want to be in my birthday suit under a full moon it will only scare aware the cats and bears. I don’t have that now but I dream. I keep working on paying debt while trying to learn how to homestead on a much smaller scale. I work hard and try my best to do it right. I watch my homesteading channels and when I am feeling really frisky I grab one of my beautiful books and try to get some reading done while the chickens cluck around the yard.

This site is about my spiritual work. But our spiritual lives are impacted by the day to day events and details so it is often hard to separate them. I know that this post isn’t much about following the Vanir but I have posted quite a few things in other sections today for your entertainment so allow me this more personal update. It’s all about balance.