A writer I follow on Substack shared her story of a miserable writer's retreat, and I was like, yeah. Solidarity.
I've gone on one writing retreat and I also didn't like it. I cried every day. My teenage daughter had the worst experience of her high school years while I was away, and I was on the phone trying to help her every night, riddled with guilt that when she needed me, I was gone on my first 'me' trip in 15+ years. The writer running it (who I won't name because, duh) sorted us all into 4-person groups. Every group but mine seemed to bond, and I ended up feeling lonely and left out. One participant drew little caricatures of every person there as a gift… except me. The writer running it did in-person critique sessions for every attendee -- supposed to be one of the big draws -- and she scheduled me to go first, point-blank saying I seemed lost, and then she clearly hated what I'd submitted. I spent the entire session with her having a panic attack, which either I covered really well or she ignored. I don't get writer's block, or hadn't until that retreat. I couldn't write anything for 6 weeks afterward. The cherry on the top of this expensive shit sundae was the mandatory 'rituals' every night, which were some sort of group archetypal Jungian therapy I had 100% not signed up for, didn't want, and which also made me cry. Note to anyone thinking of doing this: don't.
Now whenever I think, oh, a writing retreat, that might be fun, I'm like, no. It won't. No retreats. No cons. No book clubs. Whatever it is that I am, it's too off even for other people who want to live all day inside their heads playing with imaginary dolls. I can mask like a boss, but masking and writing are mutually exclusive activities, and the emotional vulnerability required to do the latter makes the former impossible, and without the former, I can't people.
All of which kind of sucks.
Making a Confession, Stepping Away from Kemetic Orthodoxy, and Kicking My Own Ass in the Process
I know I've been a little quiet again here recently, save for building upon the foundation of this blog and occasionally setting up some of the framework for how this blog is going to look, feel, and act in the future. That's very much by design actually, as I've been dealing with family shenanigans again, taking care of my own personal and physical health, helping to finish taking care of a long term problem that's been festering in my personal Blind Pagan community for over ten months now, and finally, though not the last nor the least of what's currently going on with me on my end, I just finished up participating at the national convention for the National Federation of the Blind this weekend. Yes, I'm fully aware I'm busy like headless chick in staked to the back of a fucking Roadrunner.
Anyway, I have a confession to make here and I'm fully aware that actively choosing to become a Remejt and ignoring the issue at hand puts me squarely in the wrong for sure.
During this weekend while I was resting and waiting between two events being held by the convention that were hours apart from one another, I decided to do a lot personal soul searching and decided in the end to take no further steps with Kemetic Orthodoxy and instead allow my membership to falter, fall, and fade away like dust in the wind in the end. I actually regret agreeing to stay on as a Remetj at the end of the beginner course. I regret doing so because agreeing to stay on as Remetj was in a number of ways me lying to myself and not being completely honest all around. Some of my beliefs are incompatible with Kemetic Orthodoxy's beliefs and practice, and I should have said something right there and then. I plan on emailing someone on the site and asking them to go ahead and remove my membership or whatever it's called on the forum.
I came into the beginner course with two goals in mind, one of which would only work if I ended up becoming a Remetj. First, I wanted to learn some decent structure to help jump start my Kemetic practice, as I am currently unable to get ahold of any accessible copies of materials that are recommended as must have reading resources for getting into practicing Kemeticism. Second, I confess that I was extremely tempted by the idea of the Rite of Parent Divination or at least the idea of it as an easy way to figure out who one's gods are without doing the proper work and all the blood, sweat, and tears that usually go into that kind of work in the long run to be successful at forming healthy and strong relationships with beings, deities, etc.
I'm ashamed at the fact that I tried taking the easy way out in a way, instead of taking the first real step on the road to figuring things out on my own. I've never done that before. Yes, I've sought aid from other Diviners to obtain clues that I was missing out on to help me narrow things down and find the right trail to get where I want to go, or to confirm or debunk a conclusion or possibility when I think I'm at the end of the road, end of my rope, and there's not really anything else I can do except get a yay or nay on the subject at hand. But I've never shyed away from the work before, the real hard personal work that goes into building proper healthy relationships with beings, deities, etc, and I'm kicking my own ass hardcore for trying to take the easy way out this one time.
It's not an excuse I'm trying to offer here but merely offering the facts or at least what I think happened or at least the processes that were going on in my head when all of these things happened, but I think the struggle that I've been going through the past year regarding straightening out my practice between Greek or Roman (I'll talk more about that in a later post), that my exhaustion of sorts got in the way of my proper mindset of things and I ended up throwing my own rules and personal protocols of doing the work tofigure things out straight out the window for something that would make things easier. Just typing the words leaves ashes in my mouth.
Either way, in the end Brighid made the whole thing moot in a very interesting way. See, Brighid and I have a personal deal or pact you can say, that among other things, she gets to call the shots on which deities I can and can not worship. This is something I entered in with her with my eyes completely wide open and understanding completely what it meant to give her that kind of power. I made this deal with her several years ago as a last ditch attempt as a desperate and last resort sort of action to save my sanity and most likely my life. I mean that in all seriously. I was being attacked by a deity that refused to take no for an answer, refused to respect my sense of consent, and was gunning for me in a way that would either see me as her's and her's alone, or dead in the process. I'm not kidding when I write that, not one bit. I can tell you some crazy horror stories regarding what happened during that terrible year, as it was the kind of year where everything crashed and burned as if it was ignited by Napalm of all things.
But I digress, as I tend to do way too damn much. I got my second vaccination shot for Covid on the eighteenth of June, which was a Friday, and ended up obtaining a Fever of One Hundred Five that Saturday morning. Brighid decided to take that as an opportunity to rekindle our relationship in the exact same way she did when she first healed and claimed me Fifteen years ago this past February. We've been struggling with just about every aspect of our relationship for the past seven years or so, and while this didn't fix everything completely (as there is still a lot of work for both of us to get things where we both want things to be in our relationship), this whole crazy spiritual ordeal cleared the way for us in so many ways that I can't even begin to describe properly.
One of the things that got brought up was the status and nature of every relationship I have or hoped to have with every deity I've been building a relationship with for years now. A lot of uncertainties, confusion, illusions, and chaos all fell away. There are some major changes in my practice I need to write about at some point, but I'm still wrapping my head around it all first. I haven't had the time to do so yet, and it's something I'm working on as I type this all out.
With all of the things that were cleared away, she showed me which of the Egyptian gods I had a fledgling relationship with, many of which I should have known (all things considered with my brief history with Kemeticism), but didn't have a clue until this crazy shit happened. That doesn't mean that everything is fine and dandy. It's far from it actually. I may know which of the Netjeru I have fledgling relationships with, but I need to do the work to actually build said relationships with those Netjeru on my own. I need to and I'm going to put in the blood, love, respect, sweat, and tears I put in with every relationship I have with deity and non deity alike.
And with all of that now written, here's my confession for whatever it's worth. If nothing else, I now have a clear mind and a far more cleaner heart. I'm a firm believer in stepping up and speaking out about making mistakes, fucking up, and not being or doing my best and then work on fixing those mistakes and doing my damndest to be and do even better next time. This is the first step in doing so, in my heart and mind anyway.
You mentioned going through a writing block a bit ago, so don't worry about this if you aren't vibing. But if you have the energy or time, would you consider doing a little writing bit with the prompt "I can't reach it" from the dialogue list? With Aizawa and a character of your choice! (P.S. for the symbol confession reblog, is there a favorite song you have right now?)
Symbol Confession: Favorite song right now? My favorite song is Two of Us by Louis Tomlinson but I’m currently obsessed with Hero Too from My Hero Academia’s Cultural Festival!
Yeah, I still have writer’s block at the moment xD I’m doing everything I can to try and make it go away but it’s not working that much xD
Anyway, let’s try the prompt!
Aizawa let out a low growl as he stood on his tiptoes, reaching for the box that was on top of the shelf. There were still a good few inches between his fingertips and the box that he needed.
This was annoying.
He hasn’t felt this small since high school. With an annoyed huff, he climbed onto the shelf, a small smile coming to his face as he finally managed to get his hand on the box. He was going to punch Mic next time he saw him, this had to be Mic’s work. Mic always got a kick out of seeing him struggle to grab something. Maybe it was nostalgia back to when he used to be short.
He gasped as he felt his foot slip from the metal shelving. He will never admit it but he flailed. His arms and hands clambering for anything to grab onto. Failing to do so, he was defeated as he felt himself falling backwards towards the floor but the impact never came.
“Aizawa-kun, are you okay?!” Aizawa wanted to slap himself as he recognized that voice almost immediately. In seconds his feet were back onto the safety of the floor. Toshinori Yagi smiled down at him as Aizawa felt his face flush over.
“I’m fine.” He mumbled, motioning towards the box on the shelf. “I can’t reach it.” He said in defeat.
Toshinori just smiled again. Turning towards the shelf and plucking the box off of the top of the shelf with ease. The blonde’s grin got larger as he handed the box over to the younger man. “Here you go.”
That was even more annoying. Aizawa mumbled out a quick thank you and all but fled from the room. Toshinori just chuckled as he also left the room behind the Erasure Hero.
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Bonus: Hizashi did it on purpose. The box contained Class 1-A’s lesson plans. Hizashi finds joy in Aizawa’s annoyance. Yes, he also heard about this and cracked up until Aizawa had him hanging upside down with his capture weapon.
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Hopefully this is okay, my writing takes a toll when I write with writer’s block. I hope you like it! I choose Toshinori just because he’s really freaking tall xD
So on my Instagram acc Playboyjohnnycakes, I post anonymous confessions and I was wondering if any of you would send me confessions privately. It can be personal or about the outsiders, or about a celebrity. It doesn’t matter!!! I might start posting confessions on Tumblr, but for now, I’ll post them on Instagram.
Honestly though? Despite the crossover’s shortcomings, it was so good to see team Phantom again. The moment Danny spoke, I was gone. Nostalgia just took over. Even after 10 years, the voice is the same. It felt surreal.
I appreciate the video for that, at least. I remember how much I loved this show.
