This week's New Year New You challenge pushes all my buttons.
On the challenge post, Deborah says, "Now when you're most tired, now when you least want to. Now is the time you show the universe how magic is done."
Her timing is impeccable. I've been blogging up a storm here for the most part, but I have a dirty secret. My apartment is full of half-finished goals. I cleaned... sort of. I did job-hunt magic... mostly. I'm working on my next novel... kinda. And I just got done confessing that my laziness is born of perfectionism and fear.
Part of the problem is that I really am exhausted most of the time. I leave the house at 10 A.M. I get home from work around midnight. I'm trying to work my sleep schedule down to a minimum number of hours. I wonder if there's magic that can help that? I'll have to look into it. Quite a bit of my day is spent commuting; I should see if I could use that commute more efficiently. I could use it for writing, maybe.
I'm currently using it to read The Magicians, by Lev Grossman, and it's fabulous. I don't like to recommend things until I finish them, because I've gotten burned before, but so far it's an excellent book. The main character, Quentin, reminds me of myself in all the best, and worst, ways. At the beginning of the novel, he feels like a sidekick in his own life, going through all the motions but not getting anywhere. He's probably overly fond of a series of novels for children that are clearly set up to reference the Narnia books. Some inspiration is good, so I'm not going to fault myself for the reading, but step two needs to be actually writing something.
I'm afraid I'll do the job spell "wrong," though as long as it works, I guess it's not wrong. Now that I've gotten through two interviews, I'm hesitant to do anything for fear that I'll "ruin" it, which seems ridiculous. It's more magical thinking, and not the good kind. If I do the spell and it doesn't work, oh well, I'll get by on brains and skill. The odds of my accidentally creating an anti-job spell seem slim, as most magic is not, in fact, done by djinn who want nothing more than to willfully misunderstand everything in the most annoying and ironically literal way possible.
When I've gotten burned, it was because I... well, I hesitate to say that I deserved to get burned, but the kind of magic I was doing is the kind that invites backlash. "I really want this job and I know I'd be good at it" is not inviting backlash. It's inviting help and strength. And the gods know I could use that.