hi. it’s been a while!

not surprisingly, the past six months have been quite a bit more overwhelming than the whole of 2020… in different ways, of course. much of it has been processing the personal and societal trauma of a pandemic, navigating and processing again as the united states claims to be returning to normal, in addition to a whole lot of other stuff that would be challenging outside of a post-pandemic world.

intentions & resolutions

for the most part, i’m doing pretty well with my goals for 2021.

i’m still working on my intentions most of all, but i am making progress— that’s what matters the most. it’s difficult work. i’ve had to face a lot in regards to my mental health and childhood traumas that i’ve been stifling for years. continue to have to face.

a big support in that has been recommitting to my druidry training and reconnecting with my spiritually, a well that was entirely dry throughout the pandemic. i’m endlessly appreciative of my dear friend skeptical druid who is also working through the course. we do our best to meet weekly to talk about our practices, and even though we often end up talking about our dogs, work, or partners… the accountability has really pushed me to make time for connecting with nature, meditation, journaling, and prayer.

i’ve been relying less on tarot recently, though it is still a major part of my practice, so i haven’t spent a lot of time working on memorizing the meanings. while i continue to read for myself and occasionally for loved ones, i don’t mind needing to rely on the guidebooks.

through the above, i also am definitely prioritizing self-care this year… but more on that in a different post. creativity has been a large part of that self-care, too— whether it be creative writing at wolf rpg again, or simply coloring.

i flew my crow pose early on in the year, and so that goal has adjusted to see how long i can hold the pose by the end of the year. i’ve also picked up a wider variety of fitness habits & classes in general: continuing on with personal training, learning to roller skate, committing to a regular yoga practice, and getting back into aerial silks.

reading this year is going better than last year, but it has still been tough until recently. i definitely failed at my goal to only read books i own several times over at this point. if i course correct for the next half of the year, that will still be a major improvement!

some new (but old) writing

as part of my efforts to integrate all parts of myself into one online presence, i’ve gone back and added posts to this blog that i wrote during my other attempts to write regularly. posts on october 6, 2018 and earlier were written before betwixtcraft was betwixtcraft. it was fun to look back and revisit: but also, how is it that i still feel the exact way that i did all those years ago? am i really that stagnant?!

oof.

boring technical things

at least some of this is probably worth its own post in regards to using technology more consciously & mindfully, but…

all of my domains, including betwixtcraft, are now hosted on greengeeks. primarily because my previous host was not upgrading php to the most recent version and wordpress was getting angry, but also because i wanted to support a host that puts the environment and reducing tech’s impact on the world at its forefront.

in addition to swapping hosts, i have also swapped email servers. a friend introduced me to fastmail and only a few hours into my trial yesterday, i’ve committed to hosting my domain email there for the next three years (at least). the webmail you get through cpanel is a little lackluster in terms of organization and spam filtering; but there a lot of reasons to reduce google’s footprint in your life. fastmail is a great (paid, but private) alternative. as a result of this and consolidating to my domain emails, i’ve been doing a lot of inbox clean-up and sorting to make sure i’m not drowning in e-mail offers or bad news, keeping only what’s most important in my inbox (and less important things immediately filed away, but easily accessible). next up is moving my personal calendar there as well.

and, in general, i’ve done a lot of clean-up in regards to my various social media accounts.

the rest of the year

after rereading some of my pre-betwixtcraft blog posts and retroactively adding them here, i’m feeling much more inspired to keep a blog again. my irrational, subconscious quest for perfection has continued to be a creative block on my life; so much of The Work that i am doing for myself is finally putting those people-pleasing tendencies to rest. and then putting them to rest again and again.

maybe i’ll have less spiritually-focused posts here and there. maybe this blog will always be all over the place.

but betwixtcraft was always meant to celebrate that mess, because that mess is what it is to be human.