Preliminary August #DoMagick

I have finally figured out what I’m doing for my August #DoMagick Challenge.  The topic for the month is summoning. As you likely know, Daemonolaters don’t like, or use, the word summon on principle alone. You summon a servant or something that you control in some way.  Perhaps it is silly semantic nonsense, but it did give me a new perspective of the challenge.  That said, I could really use some motivation/inspiration. One of the things I need to get back on track is the writing because other things have been sucking up all my writing time in recent months. I’ve been lucky to shove out 250 words a day – super pathetic for me. I’m on deadline now, which means I need all the creative help I can get. While I’ll be working with Sorath, Bael, Leviathan, and Paimon during my daily work –  I’m going to summon my muse every single day for 31 days in August.

I will come up with a morning ritual I can use to do this at the start of each day, and I’ll slip it in after my morning temple opening and meditation.

Perhaps this will also help me to say NO more often. Part of the reason I’m in the bind I’m in time-wise, is I have said YES too much and now I have too many to-dos. I’ll be stepping down from some of those roles in January, but until then… I have to suck it up and make good on my promise to see these roles through. I’m not just talking about being at the helm of our published author group (which is A LOT more work than I expected), but I also got roped into stepping into an interim priesthood position at Temple of Atem and while ToA is serving its purpose to help educate my seminary students, it was never my baby and I gave up the general/temple priesthood years back for a reason.  I am Hekau Lector. Beyond that and attending (perhaps even performing) the occasional liturgical rite, I have no interest in being at the head of ANY temple. I’ve done my time and I’m ready to give over my life in service to Thoth and Ptah now.  Perhaps that means, by default, being in service to others. I don’t know. But I do know I’d much rather serve the Daemonic than be stuck in the rigid confines of the temple structure with deadlines and people expecting me to meet deadlines or perform certain tasks that I could not care less about.

There’s a reason I closed the online OFS group all those years ago. I spent all my time dealing with that and had no time for writing. My time was better spent (and has served more people) writing and sharing information through my books, rather than sitting in some online forum answering the same dull questions over and over again as new seekers ebb in and out through the revolving door that is the occulture.  And here we are again. All my time is being spent managing everything EXCEPT my work, and it’s coming time for me to step back into the shadows so I can get back to work.

I know I’ll be stuck with the general running of ToA until summer of 2020 when my final class of Seminarians should be graduating. However, by next year I should be able to find a new priest for ToA.  I have been asked to be on managing council for the OTH, which I’ve kind of been doing unofficially. But whatever. I told them I’d think about it and give them an answer in 2019. I also told them that I’m not taking another seminary class on. I am committed to 2 more years of teaching seminary and I seriously haven’t even found time to do my second year student evaluations! Which I really need to sit down and do. Maybe this weekend.

Now I’m just rambling and you probably know more about my personal commitments than anyone really cares to know.  Add to all that family, friends, and the writing and guess what loses? Uh huh. 🙂  ::sigh::  No worries – I’ll get it back on track. I just need some summoning in my life.