What I'm going to do here...

I created this blog ages ago, then sort of forgot about it, as I wasn't sure what its main theme should be.  I have another main blog, that used to have everything on it, but has now shrunk to book reviews, as I slowly lost confidence in my own meandering voice, after several years.  There's been nothing there since January this year. 

That's partly because I got very busy in the physical world, and partly because I had no clue what I wanted to say.  Its not necessary that I talk for an audience, thinking aloud; but then I wondered if there were others out there feeling as lost as I have come to feel.  The strange and unsettling combination of being an introvert, an instinctive pagan (societal cues from my growing up in the 70s, sure, too), and quite lefty in a world of loud and angry rightwingers.  Cognitive dissonance on so many issues from the minute I wake to the minute I sleep.

There's the cost of living crisis, which has prompted me to have to have two jobs, which means during a third of the year I work from 7 a.m. to 11/11.30 p.m. at night.  There's having an autistic child who demands and needs a lot of my attention - and if he can't have it during the day, he'll get it when I first wake up and when I come home at night.  The lack of sleep plays havoc with my mental health, as does the physical exhaustion of the two jobs.  One is very physical and the other very cerebral.  I thought they wouldn't clash, for that reason, but tiredness at one directly impacts the other.  The juggling I've had to do over the summer months to try and keep from getting fired at both has been ridiculous! 

I have a partner, who works from home, but the quality of jobs out there in his sector is decreasing, as does his job satisfaction and wages.  My wages become more and more important, no longer a supplement, but now a mainstay.

So, that was just background, my starting point.  I fondly imagine that I can somehow balance out all this as much as I can, especially my mental health and tiredness levels, by turning to my instinctive frames of reference: paganism, and also Buddhism and Quakerism (the non strictly Christian kind).

One of the main problems my paganism has, in its eclecticness, is that a lot of it works around strong observation of nature, and the Wheel of the Year.  Now, if you pay any attention at all, you'll see that the markers, the seasons and their associated points are all out of whack.  I'm in England, but you'll find this everywhere, I should think.  So my very point of reference, my wonderment at nature and its beauty (and ruthlessness), is increasingly far away from its 'traditional' points, due to climate change.  The planetary doom is never out of my mind.  The thing that is my lynchpin is shaking free.  Surely I should be out there with Extinction Rebellion and others, trying to save the planet at whatever cost to myself before it's too late?  But I can't afford to be arrested and get a criminal record or custodial sentence in this moment.  What would happen to my wages, my children?  There would be an eviction.  We'd be homeless. I can't do that to them.

I don't see enough pagan sites and books talking about this.  How the markers are frying and we can't focus on the old ways of doing things anymore.  (Yes, by 'old ways' I mean anything since the 50s and Gardner, I don't buy into the idea there was a female pagan hegemony in a cloudy far distant past; not in a big way, more likely in small ways in some places - I'd love to be wrong.)

So I thought I'd do something small and...doable.  I thought I'd actually read and re-read some of my pagan and Buddhist and Quaker books, and do all the exercises and record them.  See if I come to a position where my personal life and my chosen philosophical positions actually make sense in dealing with the world as it is now. If I can make any changes that might help.

So I'll be going through books and posting my answers here.  Probably not the very private ones, but most of it.  Because maybe my thinking aloud might help some others out there to feel if not less confused too, then at least understood.  Not alone. There might be some joy to be found too. There's so much joy in paganism, Buddhism and Quakerism: so much listening to the world, it's small pieces, and finding the world in a grain of sand.  It would be amazing to find some joy amidst the tiredness and responsibility.

Wouldn't it?

 

(PS, amazing pic taken by my longtime friend Edward, now away in the Summerlands.  Art will live on.)