Magician's Garden,  Magick,  S. Connolly,  Sephira Alchemy,  Spirituality,  the writing life

Day Ten: Finding Joy! #DoMagick

After my morning meditation and finishing some errands, I came home and worked on that final chapter. It was today, for the first time in a long time, I felt like I’d reclaimed the JOY I feel from writing.  It was the first time in a long time I actually said to myself, “This is a fun book, and I really ENJOYED writing this one!”

I also started considering all the things I am doing and whether or not I enjoy them.  There are some drastic changes coming in what I will be doing. I think I’ve finally hit that “mid-life crisis” point where I’m realizing that life is too short to spend it doing things that don’t bring you joy. Plus, summer is coming and I want to spend my weekends taking long walks, puttering around in my garden, or going hiking and bike riding with the exceptional spouse. I don’t want to be cooped up indoors in front of my computer all summer! I want to be able to take an impromptu walk on a Sunday, or sleep in until noon if I feel like it without feeling like I have so much to do that I better not! I want to have BBQs with friends and not have to worry whether or not I’ll get my weekend readings done.

So things that could potentially be kicked to the curb in or by 2019:

  • Volunteering. While I don’t mind sitting on the occasional committee, judging a contest, or helping to coordinate or run an event in some capacity, this year made me realize that while I’m good at planning and administrating — I don’t **like** it. It’s the same reason I’m now Hekau and not a General Priest. Don’t get me wrong, I love the people, but it’s a lot of tedious work and it’s a HUGE time suck.
  • Readings. It’s not that I don’t like doing readings, but it’s another time suck that literally eats away my Sundays. I may just cut this back to two days a month. We’ll see. I have a lot of regular clients and for the last year, I’ve been booked solid 2-4 weeks in advance.
  • Special Orders for Sephira Alchemy. I want to make what **I** want to make, when **I** want to make it. Special orders are time consuming and oftentimes require me to scramble to make what people want when THEY want it.  It’s that element of it that has taken the fun out of it for me.
  • Teaching Classes Regularly. I have kind of already cut this out. I’m teaching seminary for the next few years, and a few other classes here and there, but doing regular classes is exhausting. So unless it’s a special thing (that I am excited about) – I won’t be doing it.

Today – I ignored email and volunteering to-do’s in favor of meeting my deadline.  At six, I had to pause for a few hours to do the Deeper Down podcast with Shaelyn and Jason, and then I set out to format the new book and get it live. I did meet the pre-order deadline! Woohoo!  (Pre-orders are another thing I’m getting rid of in my life.)  It still has to be made available to all the other websites and in paperback, but I’ll save that for Thursday. I actually enjoyed my day today, and I’m feeling excited about taking my schedule back from everyone else.

Tonight’s meditation really FELT cleansing. It was like being hit with a cool, refreshing wave of relief.

Steph is an award winning and bestselling author of thrilling steamy and paranormal romances, dark urban fantasy, occult horror-thrillers, cozy mysteries, contemporary romance, sword and sorcery fantasy, and books about the esoteric and Daemonolatry. A Daemonolatress and forever a resident of Smelt Isle, she is happily married and cat-mom to three pampered house cats. Her muse is a demanding sadistic Dom who often keeps her up into the wee hours of the morning. You can contact her at swordarkeereon@gmail.com

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