cutting

So after some waffling I decided a little cultish activity never hurt anyone -who isn’t a virgin, so I’m exceedingly safe. I’m going to do the New Year, New You put out by everyone’s favourite magickal dilettante, Deb. If you’re unfamiliar with what it is, see the original post, and if you’re too lazy to click but willing to read here it’s basically about magickally taking charge of this coming year. I decided to do it because right now it currently matches up with what I’m doing, and I keep saying to people I just need prompts and ideas to work sometimes, so hopefully Deb and her muse will help me shape up a bit this year.
First prompt: Making Way
You can’t start putting all this awesome new crap into your life and body until you get rid of the old crap. Old crap here is defined as many things such as relationships that are no longer working, old crutches, clutter of the mind and of the house.

Cleaning House: Due to extenuating circumstances I’ve been really behind on housework and school work since September. Deb makes a point I completely agree with, clutter messes up the energy flow of a house, usually I’m on top of this. I have Christmas break though, I can already see more of my bedroom floor than I have since September. My room will be clean by New Years, and once my room is done it’s just a quick matter to fix the rest of the house. As for her concerns about holding onto crap I’m lucky; I’m non-sentimental, a Buddhist, with a Grandmother who was a full-blown hoarder, so really I don’t hold onto much. In fact the only thing I really keep would be books. I’m sorry, but I love books, they’re better than people. Also because of my work: personal, academic, and magickal I need to constantly reference books. I’ll give them a once over to see any that are truly useless to me and donate/sell them, but I doubt that would eliminate more than 25.
Time: I was playing catch-up, piled on catch-up, piled on catch-up, which is not an efficient way to use your time. I’m catching up on my readings for school and cleaning up. Since I no longer have to spend five hours a day in ritual this semester I won’t have to play catch-up. TV. I’ve been debating for a while, but now is as good of a time as any, I’m getting rid of my satellite. I don’t watch much TV, when I do it always takes up more time than I plan (catching that 30 minute program becomes at least an hour), and anything I really want to watch I can do so on the computer putting me in control, rather than network programming. I’m also going to limit recreational online time to a max of two hours a night. It shouldn’t be hard, I used to do that, but like TV it slowly grew. I haven’t been keeping track, but less computer time should open up at least five more hours a week.
Big Rocks: I was going to put this under Time, but it fits here too and fits my mental state a lot better. Until one of my volunteer positions ends, I’m not going to take up another volunteer job, and I’m not going to do more than 10% overtime in them. I currently co-facilitate a Queer/Trans youth group, I’m site support for a mentoring program for high achieving high school students from the poorest neighbourhoods in my city, I help out with a tutoring program, and I’m an unidentified position with a local high school’s Equity Club (Gay Straight Alliance). This on top of going to University more than fulltime, with a four hour round trip, and all the other obligations of life. I barely have time for everything as is. I can safely drop the tutoring (it’s overstaffed) and once that is done I won’t take up another position until one of my current one ends, and maybe not even then. I have a bad habit of people tossing responsibility at me and if it is something that holds my interest I run with it, but to do so will just wear my down and make me less efficient in what I want to do.
Another rock I’m going to drop is some social conditioning about family. Family is a huge thing to me, in multiple senses of the word. In the last year I’ve been trying to revive a relationship with someone in my family, I see them fairly often, we talk a bit, but there is less socio-emotional connection than any of my friendships. I love him but as people in a social context there is nothing there, so I am going to stop trying to become social and friendly with them, which means no more awkward dinners where nothing is said, and come to terms with the fact that family bonds and love don’t require friendly, constant, social interaction. We were fine before I thought the relationship needed to be fixed/revived (I don’t know if it was ever vived), and I can stop funnelling time and emotional energy into something that -at least for now- isn’t working.
To me this seems like a lot of Saturn work is in my future for the next week or two, plenty of shielding and boundary work, cleansing, chopping, cutting, and releasing. Thankfully I’m a fairly Saturnian person (born on Saturnalia to boot), which is why Saturn appears in symbolic and non-symbolic forms in my blog banner, so I’m at least ready to start some chopping.