I tried to vigil, but I made the mistake of letting Bug stay up with me, and then she demanded couch cuddles around 11pm and... well next thing you know it was like four.
I did, however, manage a bit of divination and the major project I wanted to do, which was setting up a Sewing Corner in the dining room.
Which reminds me that teigh_corvus asked me: You've spoken about house-based magic/ ritual in the past. I'm very curious as to what that looks like now, and would love to hear your thoughts on the how/whys of its evolution.
When I first started thinking about hearth magic, I spent a lot of time flailing, trying to figure out what home even is. Wards, of course, that was the easy part. But what else is it? An altar near the stove? Plants outside? Spells anchored in the ground?
Then I was staying home with Bug after she was born and there was cooking! Sort of. And cooking is still a sort of, in that I'm no Pioneer Woman or anything, but when I get my ass to do it, it feels energetically good.
And it's slowly become to clear to me that most hearth magic is like that. It's not glamorous, or super fun, because it's work. But it's always better to have done it than not to have done it. That means relationships with extremely local powers - the pond in the back yard, for example - and it also means stuff like doing the dishes.
It means trying to make better choices about shopping - buying secondhand, or local, or ethical, or a combination of the above - as a way to manage the energy that comes into the house. It also means forgiving myself when I don't have the energy to do it as well as I'd like, because forgiving myself for not being perfect is the first step, followed by trying again.
What I would like it to mean, eventually, is also things like "has a local support network" and "can care for self, family and ideally neighbors in a crisis" with a heavy dose of self-sufficiency. Neighbors has become more important now that Bug is friends with all the kids in the building; I don't want to think about the emotional fallout of ignoring her friends' suffering or whatever. I can't even say no when she wants enough snacks for everybody.
One of the readings I got ended with a quote from Bruce Lee, which was an instruction: "Be a practical dreamer backed by action." I think that's what I want to carry into 2019. Focusing on action, on the little things that add up.
... Not that I cleared the table or anything tonight, so it's still a long way to go. But I can look at one cleared thing and go from there. Progress is progress.