Or why I sometimes have a hard time following my own advice.
Once upon a time, when the budding psychonaut was a tiny psychonaut, the hub and I volunteered to run the kitchen for a weekend martial arts sports weekend and dojo “campout”. We created the menu (supporting a long list of food sensitivities), collated a shopping list, purchased the groceries, and coordinated a kitchen full of volunteers for two lunches, two dinners, breakfast, and snacks for 100 people.
(Please note the hub has direct commercial kitchen and restaurant management experience — no one wants me in charge of cooking by myself.)
The first night, after a 16 hour day in the dojo kitchen, we stumbled home (sans kid, who was of course participating in the sleepover) and had a dinner of olives and peanut butter… the only food we had in our own household. Because of course we’d been so busy shopping and cooking for the event, we hadn’t done any for ourselves.
Just a week ago, I warned my newsletter readers of the oddness of the two weeks between eclipses. It’s always a strange time full of lessons, omens, and challenges. You’d think I wouldn’t be so shocked when my own life is strange and full of lessons, omens, and challenges… and yet, here I am.
In fact, the workings of wyrde in our own lives is harder to see than in others. Just like it’s easier to get perspective and planning advice from an outside source. Sometimes people assume that because I plan other people’s stuff for a living that I’m really great at planning my own. Now, in truth, I’m probably better than average. But that said, I still have the same human weakness we all do… being too close to my own shit.
We all need sources of perspective in our lives to help us step back from the work we’re buried in to see the larger work of figuring out who we are, taking care of ourselves (olives and peanut butter, really!), and consciously living our lives in an enchanted way. I’m laughing at how caught by surprise I was and have resolved to be more aware moving forward. We’ll see how goes.
