After last week’s big announcement of the hand bound Loki devotionals, I spent the weekend trying to catch up with a few important things.  At last, taxes have been taken care of, laundry done, some cooking accomplished, medical stuff addressed, and my practice routine resumed. To tell the truth, I’m a little overwhelmed at all the projects I’ve got on my plate right now. The book project I’m working on for submission to a publisher has all but stalled, Heartroad 2 is gathering cobwebs, and the article I said I’d have drafted in a month is, eh, going to take a little more time. There’s also Many Gods West to prepare for, some other craft projects that have been languishing, and a custom project that I need to get back to. Oh and, you know, the day job.

I’ve created a little schedule to keep my writing efforts focused. I work at my writing job 6 – 7 days a week in addition to my day job employment so it’s very hard to predict where my creative energy is going to be. BUT my goal is to open a particular document on particular days of the week. I don’t have to do much – I just have to do something.

So! Tuesdays will be Many Gods West material (since today is Tuesday and I decided that’s what I wanted to work on today. Tomorrow will be the article, Thursday will be Heartroad 2, Friday will be erotica for the Kindle market (I’ve written a couple pieces and eh, every $.33 sale helps). Perhaps Saturday will be the Santa Muerte writing project. Perhaps Sunday will be prepping my 2016 Pantheacon submission (because that’s a thing that needs done, too).

I’m happy to have so much work to do, even if it’s going to be tough to accomplish. For several years I hid from most forms of community engagement in order to focus on school (and let’s be honest, because the Heathen groups I was involved with collapsed into infighting, murder, and allegations of child porn so there’s that). I prefer practicing privately; I’ve become very jealous of my time and energy. In many ways I don’t want to share, not when I’ve experienced such a long track record of getting very little in return for my effort. I’m not just talking about getting back a positive community experience; the energy exchange I trusted in simply didn’t seem to come about. In many ways, I feel like I got away without sustaining more damage. I also encountered a level of conflict regarding Loki that I simply couldn’t tolerate after a while.

Community engagement can be hard for all kinds of reasons and I think there are times in all our lives when we simply don’t wish to have it in our sphere. Coping with the anger and fear and distrust and yeah, even the disgust that comes up with dealing with humanity in general has been a challenging thing for me but it’s also been a very important lesson. We must engage with humans in order to understand humans, and we must understand humans in order to represent the needs of our species to the Powers that are concerned with us. Anyone who communicates with the Powers on behalf of any human – including themselves – can’t afford to be dismissive of the human condition, including all the suffering and hypocrisy and anger and violence. These things have to be confronted, recognized, named, and dealt with on personal, interpersonal, communal, and global levels. Checking out of this work can become a disadvantage. Checking out of this work can put a worker at a disadvantage.

Setting heavier thoughts aside, there are many things to look forward to this year but managing the stress and busyness of it all will be a distinct challenge for me. In the meantime, I’m also working on preparing a handmade devotional book for Odin. I actually started planning His the day after Loki’s was finally released. I’m really excited to work on Odin’s and I’ll probably start formatting it before the month is over. Is there any traditional material related to Odin that you’d like to see in a devotional book?