find some stuff to do magic about (feat. practicing sorcery is fun and good)
Do you want to do magic? Yes. Do you know what to do magic on? Maybe not. Here is a post for that. Take what you like and leave the rest behind.
Confront your learned helplessness face on because I'll bet money that there's a shit ton of stuff in your life you'd change if you hadn't trained yourself to pave it over just to make your highway of life a little less bumpy.
Let me tell you something I believe. I believe that most all of us have been trained to think that:
wanting things to go well,
wanting to be happy,
wanting little joys and pleasures in life,
and wanting not to be aggravated by the small things
somehow makes us weak, lacking, immature, or insecure,
or even worse,
that putting up with bullshit is somehow automatically makes us a better person, as if we've all got a cosmic thermometer that won't ding "good person!" until we've had it up to here with bullshit and then still force ourselves to grin and bear it.
"If I do magic to shorten the Starbucks drive-through doesn't that make me impatient? I don't want to use magic as spiritual bypassing in order to avoid my flaws."
Well then. Far be it from me to decry the kratophany of Prometheus getting his liver pecked out by eagles every day, manifest in your sacred sacrifice of having your minutes pecked out of your day, one by one, as you wait in line.
Make a list. Keep it with you. On paper, on your phone. Doesn't matter. It's a list of things you'd like to change. Little fleeting things that rear their head only for a second or so before our industrial-powered steamrollers smash it into the ground. Big things that you stew over day to day.
No problem is too petty. No splinter in your side is too insignificant. Betty at the office blows her nose every day at 8:15am and if you have to hear it one more time you are going to burn the building down? Put it on the list.
Do you have to leave 20 minutes early for work on Thursdays because a freight train blocks the freeway for five minutes and your city backs up like Betty's nose? What is magic going to do, rearrange the city's entire traffic patterns? Maybe so. Who cares. That's magic's problem, not yours. Put it on the list.
Have your eye on quite a cute designer bag? Does it cost your monthly rent? Put it on the list.
Learn to stare your life in the eye again with the verv of someone who has just found a reality-warping gun with unlimited ammunition. Game night gets cancelled too often? You never remember to use your pizza coupons? You can never remember to get ginger ale at the store? Put it on the list.
Feed yourself what ails you like a crab going absolutely bonkers in a plankton-filled tank.
just do some of that normal "witchy" stuff, why not
Protections: Not only for spirits and stuff!
Against unwanted solicitors
Against your room mate's creepy partner coming over
Against debt collectors finding your new phone number
Against surprise quizzes in your course
Against nightmares
And from time to time a sorcerer does like a good house ward. Experiment with yours, why not? Waiting until you're under attack to learn how to put up protections is like waiting until you're drowning to learn swimming. Sure, the sheer adrenaline-fueled terror might get you somewhere - or it might get in the way.
You don't normally use altars? Build one, why not. Build secret ones in shoe boxes. Experiment with altars and compound magic.
Perhaps you'd like a mini spellcasting kit to go? I don't know if making one counts as doing magic, but it's fun to make them.
Why not develop and prepare an oil or incense blend that must steep for a few months before it's ready? You don't need it now, right? So that means it's prime time to make things that are supposed to "mature" before use.
And hey, what's the deal with cleansing? A lot of people make fun of it now. Some people say it's important and necessary. Why not get really into cleansing and develop your own take? Practice gentle cleansing, nuclear cleansing, cleansing with pure energy and cleansing with candles, cleansing with cleaning products and cleansing with joy.
casting a spell right now is not the same thing as activating it right now and you can still gain a lot of experience in magic without releasing spells into the wild
I think that a lot of people think of spells as I light the candle and the spell is activated and it goes and does the thing, so if there is no Thing right now, then I can't cast the spell,
whereas if you reframed it as I am creating a spell-creachur that will hibernate in this little vessel until I spill it out into the world,
you may actually find that there are dozens of spells for you to actively develop, experiment with, cast, learn from, and passively benefit from - without necessarily needing any of them right now.
And the benefit is, if you don't actually need it right now, that takes a ton of pressure off of you. If you're not acting out of desperation, experimentation can be very fun indeed.
What about the most intense jaw-breakingly stupid strong protective amulet you've ever conceived of? Make it, why not. Make five prototypes on your journey to the strongest danged protection amulet this side of social media.
Who cares if you don't need them? Maybe some day you'll meet someone who does. Or, you know, magic is fun and doing it is its own reward.
What about a talisman for dreamwork and astral travel? Make something that reeks so intensely of the moon that it launches people out of their bodies just by walking past it.
Decide to perfect the most dazzling money-drawing candle spell. Make that your thing. You don't need cash right now? No worries; donate it to charity.
Have fun. Experiment. Made something that came through a little too hard and now it's causing problems? What a wonderful opportunity to learn how to disassemble a spell vessel.
Make yourself a cabinet full of enchantments. Learn how to contain the energy radiating off of all those enchantments. Realize you need more space and learn to combine multiple similar enchantments into one vessel.
make trusting friends who will let you cast on them.
(self explanatory)
