I find it a lovely coincidence that this week's Wednesday Wishcasting centres around wishing to have, because I have been doing a lot of thinking about what I want lately. I realized not long ago that I tend to keep my wants very spiritual and righteous. (She says with a snort). I want world peace. I want to be the best I can be. I want my children to grow up happy and healthy. 

For a long time, wanting stuff was a waste of energy. It made me unhappy to want stuff because I was too poor or too overwhelmed with merely surviving to even think about stuff. Stuff was not on my radar and when it got on my radar, I wiped it off (like one would wipe off bird shit). I resented wanting. I resented stuff. I resented wanting stuff.

Etcetera.

Lately, though, I realize that stuff is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm at a place in my life where I can, without shame, admit that there is stuff I want. I want an iPhone. I want a room of my own. I want to travel to Glastonbury. I want to lose fifty pounds. I want to remain a non-smoker for the rest of my life. I want to write. I WANT TO WRITE. I want to write.

*Nods emphatically*

I also want a BA (which I'm working towards) and a VW Golf (once I get a driver's license) and I want to go fishing.

And it's OKAY to want stuff. It really is. It's SAFE to want. It is, in fact, GOOD to want. There is no one standing over my life with a sledgehammer waiting to punish me for wanting. 

So, hi. My name is Fey. I wish to have the audacity to unashamedly want.

 It is my fondest wish these days to have a room of my own. This fantasy (because in a two bedroom house that is currently inhabited by three people during the week, four during the weekends, and also two puppies and one cat, a room of my own is as fantastic a wish to have as – oh – having a million dollars?) has been taking shape over the last several years and occasionally finds me surfing websites about yurts and 'tumbleweed houses'. I become glazed-eyed and desperate when looking at photos of tiny spaces built for one. I drool.
I want.
*Sigh*
Tonight, I shall be content with not having smoked for two days, being taken out to dinner by my beloved, and good marks in school. One day, though, I shall have either a yurt, a tumbleweed house, or a room of my own. *nods emphatically*

via www.randomhouse.com

I'd really like to plough through both these lists of 100 Best Novels, just so I can say I'm well read. I have read quite a few on these lists, but not *all* of them, you know? I like lists, and I like crossing things off of them.
I wonder if anyone else is challenging themselves to do this kind of thing and where I can find them. Having literary challenge buddies would be kind of fun.

I blogged over here today.

I’m trying Typepad as an alternative to Wordpress, and though I love Wordpress, I am not loving the amount of spam I’ve been dealing with lately, so I’m trying something new. Please note that until I make the final decision with regards to whether or not I’m moving to Typepad altogether, I will be posting links to my bloggy things here so you can find me. Once the final decision is made, I’ll be redirection my domain over to the new place, so you won’t lose track of me. :)

 I'm thinking a lot about why I blog and whether or not I have a mission for the practice. Is it just a near-daily venting of the spleen? Do I want to accomplish something? Inspire? Create?

Being as easily distracted as I am, I find it difficult to settle on one topic of interest and stick with it. I have a lot going on in my life. Various pagan studies, University studies, an excavation of my essential self after years of being a parent and leaving my own sovereignty in the dust of my past relationships, a poetry workshop that feels like it's cracking me open (in a good way), art journaling, puppy training…

I have a million interests but none I'm really all that willing to settle on as a 'main topic' for this (or any other) blog. I think I kind of like the idea of 'main topics'. I think I like it when other people do it – my "With Morning Coffee" list will prove this to be true – all the blogs I read are very focused and target one particular aspect of being. I find the kind of blogs that meander all over a life's content kind of boring…

And that's exactly the kind of blog I write. 

Well, frak me. 

:)

I'm always going to be a work in progress, and I fear I'll never settle on a main topic for anything, including my life's purpose. I'm coming to a sense of peace with this, but I would like to be an interesting blogger – a blogger who isn't just pissing in an ocean but one who actually has something to say. It's not about number of readers or comments or anything like that. It's about being proud of the product of so many hours spent sitting in front of my screen composing -

Well – meandering journeys over the totality of my life. 

Heh. :)

I'm pagan. I'm a student. I'm a woman. I'm a poet-in-training (after years of believing I *was* a poet, and after subsequent humbling years of realizing I was no such thing). I'm a spouse. I'm a little on the broken side, though I don't seem that way to the casual observer. I'm a strange combination of agnostic and fey. I read tarot cards. I tune into the seasons of the year as though they are a map of life that can set me in the right direction. I am without any sense of direction at all, like one of those poofy white dandelion seeds – taken by the wind and tossed here and there. I have few goals. I'm not very ambitious. I don't want to start a business or live off my art or promote anything I'm producing. 

I just wanna write.

I wonder why I'm suddenly questioning whether or not that's good enough.

My original mission for this blog (and it's tag line speaks to this) was to find, in each day, an example of ordinary, outrageous beauty. I wanted to take the long look that poets take at my surroundings, my experiences, the offerings tossed into each bowl of hours that I wake to every morning. What was beautiful today?

That is the question I've been wanting to bring myself back to day after day.

What was beautiful?

The problem (?) is that everything is beautiful. 

So I write about everything. 

I'm going to have to learn to live with that, I think, and quit whining about being a mediocre blogger. There are more important things to excel at, yes? 

Yes.

If you don’t see anything here you need a more current Browser that supports DOM/DHTML

Please note that this is an embed from my poetry journal at Pathetic.Org. I have no idea why I’m even posting over there, but, hey. Jim comments now and then, and as long as one person’s reading, I’ll keep posting!

I've noticed that a lot of my favourite writers on the web use Typepad, so being adventuresome as all getout, I figured I'd try it too. They have a free trial – free! – so, yeah. I'm trying Typepad.

If I like it, I will be mapping thedailyfey.com to this location. So far, I'm finding this incredibly easy and very spam unfriendly – a definite plus considering how many spam comments I get even with Akismet installed on Wordpress.

So…

Today was filled with sand and puppies and long drives and sunsets. This seems like an excellent place to begin. 

Today is a good day. Yesterday was good, too, but my post doesn’t really reflect how good, so I thought I’d tell you just how good yesterday was. Ready?

So, I did nothing of any value except three pages of art journaling (too personal to share) in my new leather bound art journal, and I watched The Mists of Avalon. Twice. I drank an entire pot of coffee with cream AND sugar (no artificial sweetener for me yesterday). Then I cooked London Broil for dinner (I guess that had redeeming value, eh?) and went to my kid’s school concert which was a rock style caberet type night. I didn’t wear earplugs. (This earns me a pat on the back, yes?) Then we took Jamber (my son and his girlfriend are tight enough to warrant one name between them) and Leah (my step-girly) out for nachos and desert at East Side Marios (gag, but hey! It was fun.) We came home and watched U.S. of Tara and Nurse Jackie, and then collapsed into bed. I read for a half an hour (Eat, Pray, Love) and slid into a dream-filled, delicious sleep.

Today started with me being rousted out of bed by the smell of coffee, because the Beloved put some on for me. It’s raining and grey and chilly, but I have a road trip to Guelph planned, just so we can drop a friend off to see another friend, and because we like driving around in the rain blasting Dire Straits album Communique. We will then return home with beer and I will play with art while the Beloved kills things in WOW. I’m making butter chicken for dinner. At some point I will work on stuff for Poetry For People, and I might even dip my toes into a lesson for English 11U. I am three weeks or so ahead in my university course, so I’m not touching it until I get my first assignment back and I know where I’m at with that.

On Sunday, Stacey and Char (also sisters of Avalon) are picking me up and we’re taking a road trip to Stratford (of Date Night Fame) to check out a new occult shop that opened there recently called The Magic Box. There will be giggling. There will be lunch. There will not be any morose thoughts over my nonexistent relationship with my mother, but there will be celebrations of my own status as wicked good mom who didn’t eat her young when she had the chance. I think the Beloved is making me waffles with berries and whipped cream to start my day. You know how I know? I told him this was what I wanted, and because he is made of win, he will deliver. My children will likely not acknowledge mother’s day with more than a nod in my general direction, but after 20 years of this, I’m used to it. They will most likely buy me a house in the country after they have children of their own and realize just how brutally difficult this job is. Then again, three quarters of my children are boys and will likely not even notice how hard it is because their wives will be doing the mothering…

Hopefully, they make their wives waffles and berries with whipped cream, too.

See? Rainbows and Lollipops. :)

Love to all,

Fey

The post arrived today as it does almost every day, but today, instead of bills, I found a bulky package containing my black leather bound art journal from this incredible Etsy shop. As a member of Art Journal LOVE, I got a steep discount, and I have to tell you – I am completely thrilled with this purchase. The journal is hefty, chock full of beautiful paper, and just rustic looking enough that I won’t mind slopping paint around.

Also, I redesigned the blog. Also, I sent my first assignment in to my university tutor yesterday. Also, I am actually managing my time better. Getting up two hours earlier than I would normally get up is helping a lot since it gives me two hours to putter around as my weary self seems to require first thing in the morning. Also, I feel like I’m done therapy – like I have the skillz I need now and as long as I actually apply them, I’ll be okay…

Takes a deep breath.

More than okay, ackshully, because I am truly feeling much, much better. One constant source of stress and angst is up North getting his proverbial poop together (we hope) and even if he’s collapsing in a heap of parasitic dependence on his Grandparents, you know? I’m okay with that. My sense is that they broke him. (There’s a long story here about them essentially abducting my kids for five years based on several false assumptions (that I was a bad mother, that being pagan is the same as being a devil worshipper) and poisoning their little minds with Pentecostal Christianity of the most extreme kind, but I’m not telling that story today. Let it rest with this – they turned him into a spoiled, entitled, momma disrespecting, angry, emotionally violent drug addict. Now they can live with the consequences because after six years of post traumatic stress inducing cloud-of-doomness, I am done.)

Am I sad? Yes. I’m sad. But I am also relieved. Six years of hell have come to a close and I feel like I can breathe easy.

Wow.

That was a lot of venty mcventyness.

Thanks for indulging me.

Fey

It has been an interesting few days, what with preparing the Eldest for his journey up North (way, way up North where the sun shines all summer and the moon shines all winter), starting my University course, continuing my English 11 U course, continuing my apprenticeship with The Temple of Witchcraft, plodding slowly through my Bardic Grade, doing orientation with the Sisterhood of Avalon, and starting (*gulp*) a poetry workshop with Sage Cohen.

Oh, and then there’s the puppy training and the other kid I’m raising and the house to clean and the dinners to cook and the walks to take so my muscles don’t atrophy, and the art journaling so I don’t lose my ever loving mind in all this madness and rushing about to get things written, read, answered and turned in.

And then there’s the repeated attempts to quit smoking and the lovely effects of the drugs I’m taking to assist me in doing that…

And the fact that I’m really, really, really hard on myself.

I am a little Frazzled. There are joys in the frazzled fur of my being, like the Tribe and doing well in my courses and feeling challenged in a great way in my apprenticeship and the fact that I had the guts (*gulp*) to do Poetry 4 People in the first place. And there’s a road trip upcoming with my girls, Stacey and Char to Stratford, and there’s Mother’s day, which whispers around here indicate might actually be celebrated this year with more than a ‘Happy Mother’s Day” and a hug.

So, good. All good. But frazzled.

It’s kind of astonishing to me how often I use this word in reference to myself. Or the things I create.