Starting Somewhere: A Slow-Cooked Introduction
Because every journey starts with an awkward introduction
I hadn't planned on this - an introductory post. These things usually feel like those mind-numbing workshop icebreakers where everyone pretends to be fascinated by your hobbies and favourite season. As much as routine and process drives me to distraction at times, here I am realizing I can't mentally engage with writing other things without doing exactly that thing I've always found superfluous. Sometimes the cosmos has a twisted sense of humor.
I thought I'd just, you know, write stuff. Simple, right? Then I heard a podcaster ask "who is the book for?" during a review, and that question has been haunting me like a particularly persistent dog fart in a closed room ever since. Who am I writing for? Surely answering that question would position my writing to have some appeal to a particular audience, and therefore be useful for others? I did my usual trick assuming that something simple would indeed be... simple. Right? Right? Yeeah.
Let me rewind a bit. I've been playing with weird stuff for a long time. Back in the day, I'd sneakily borrow books on Wicca from the local library and hide them from my mother like contraband. Since then I've (slowly) moved through being a member of a Christian church, making friends with spirits and angels, automatic writing sessions, exploring the witch part of me, meditation and journeying, and enough divination tools to open a metaphysical warehouse. All of it was useful and some of it still calls to me, but I never quite found my 'thing'.
In between all this, I had down times. A busy job, family drama, garden-variety existential crises, and a questionable attempt to relive my "young adult party phase" (spoiler: it was just as good second time around). Anything occult took a backseat. Mental health had its say too. Anything occult or vaguely woo-ish wasn't on my radar. It should have been, looking back, given some of the experiences I had.
Then I had a life-altering medical crisis. Not a near-death experience or anything quite so dramatic, but it was life-threatening. I came out the other side of it, but emerged into a depression so profound it made Nietzsche look like a motivational speaker. I clawed my way out eventually, powered by pure stubbornness rather than any enlightened awakening. I got back to my version of normal after about six months, but something was still off. Like wearing someone else's glasses - everything was there, just slightly wrong, out of focus and not quite where I expected it to be.
I started back with the woo-woo stuff. Slowly and without much direction. About the same time I discovered podcasts. They weren't new by any means, but they were new for me. Bring the two things together and suddenly, through my car speakers, came voices talking about all the things I'd thought were just my periphery of craziness. There I was, grinning like a village idiot or jaw-dropped in wonder during my morning commute. I'd found my tribe - scattered across the globe like some cosmic game of spiritual hide-and-seek, but they existed. Life didn't exactly snap back into place - I still feel like a square peg being smashed into a round hole, but I felt balanced.
If you're skim reading, my fellow potatoes, here's the core: connection. Not the warm-fuzzy-group-hug kind, but the "oh shit I'm-not-alone" kind. And if I'm honest, listening to some of the guests on those podcasts who I instinctively knew weren't making up stories, it was the "oh shiiiit" kind as well. But I had, eventually, connected with people. They didn't know that, but it's irrelevant. The Work I knew (vaguely) to begin with, and now there were other people doing all of the things that I felt was fundamentally me. I can't really put into words how profound that was for me.
So where am I going with this? Why write? To connect with 'my tribe'? While a virtue in others who write for an audience, that ain't me. If I told you I was writing for others, I'd feel like a complete knob. At best.
So I'm writing for myself. Why? Three main reasons.
Firstly, the process of writing connects my actions, thoughts and feelings about the Work back to myself like an iterative loop. By reconnecting with what I do and think by writing it down, I feel more whole afterwards. Or to put it another way, my mental state most of the time feels like a child's flimsy collage with newspaper cuttings and macaroni falling off all over the place. After writing, though, that scattered mess transforms - like it's been re-stuck together with two-part epoxy. Strong, solid, more real.
The second reason is harder to articulate but just as vital. Writing clarifies my thinking, helps me make connections between concepts, actions, and thoughts that I might never have seen otherwise. Take starting this blog - I've had the urge to write for well over a year, constantly putting it off for one reason or another. When I finally started writing these ideas down, I had to confront why I was spending my precious free time here instead of in the garden, reading, gaming, or hanging with my dogs. The answer emerged through the writing itself: because it helps me figure stuff out, helps me make connections I'd never quite make on my own. See? Connection again, sneaking in through the back door ;)
The third reason is because I want to write to my younger self. Our younger selves help create who we become, so I wouldn't necessarily change (much of) that. But damn, I wish I'd had some sort of idea about what I was doing way back then. I gleaned a bunch of the fundamentals from all those books surreptitiously devoured as a teenager. I did rituals, read cards, talked to spirits, journeyed - some of it worked, some didn't. I revised and experimented a little, but I had no real direction. Or clue. Back then, without internet resources and groups, I was left to my own metaphysical devices, stumbling through the dark with occasional flashes of accidental insight. Looking back, if I'd had something to look at and ponder that was a bit more advanced than uber newb, but not quite "ascended master knows all" level... well, maybe things would have been different?
So here I am. Somewhat on the esoteric side, with the energy level of a potato, writing for connection and for younger me. If someone else finds all of this useful, then welcome to my corner of the internet, where we take the Work seriously but never ourselves.
