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A Few Updates on Projects I’m working on

Astrology and Divination Newsletter

By the end of this weekend, I’m planning on having my first newsletter ready to send out.

This will be a once monthly letter, within the first week of the month. I refuse to spam but I will send out random updates occasionally but the updates will never be more than one to two extra a month.

Guided Dream Journal

I’m almost finished with my dream analysis journal. There will be a dictionary that will go with it, but that will be later this year.

When I get it published, I’ll be posting it on here. It will be 15 and will contain information as well as a journal to record your dreams.

Bethcessories Design

I’m putting the finishing touches to cleaning up the look of my shop, Bethcessories  It’s been up and running but I am going to be holding a special sale to celebrate the official grand opening when I have more stuff.

Bethcessories Design is my personal brand. I create every item myself. I also offer dream interpretations, tarot chats, tarot readings, rune/iching readings and Astrological charts, as well as spell SUPPLY kits.

I’m currently working on some Zodiac coloured decorations, and I’m hoping within the year to add curtains.

You can see my reviews here.

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Participation trophies and ribbons

One thing people are always screaming about are how Millennials grew up getting participation trophies, so that makes us “entitled” and that makes us think we deserve more than we do.

It makes me think of when I was in school, when we had competitions and I didn’t place, I wanted to be invisible. I hated those stupid ribbons- they were a symbol of failure not fun rewards for participation. I don’t know anyone who took pride in receiving a participation trophy- unless maybe they had physical disabilities and competed against fully able bodied children. (I can’t speak for them- so I don’t know how they felt)

It was also not our idea to give trophies to every child- we were children, not the adults leading the competitions so to blame us for being the generation given the ribbons is unfair itself. It was not our idea and we didn’t demand it. (parents likely did)

I wasn’t even that interested in the awards themselves- just to show to my parents (I do still have them somewhere but my mom saved nearly everything) but the stories about winning the field day or coming in second/third place were what I was proud of- one of my classmates got a bunch of participation ribbons and I actually traded them a second or first place for them to show their parents- the award meant nothing- I had placed they hadn’t and trading meant nothing. They were empty symbols. I have yet to meet anyone who actually took pride in those ribbons, that’s not to say no one ever has but they were meaningless at best and embarrassing at worst.

Do I think they are good for some physically or even mentally disabled children at a young age? Maybe. Especially since children with certain types of disabilities can’t compete as well with “normal abled” children. Not to say there aren’t exceptions, but kids who have trouble walking or running can’t win a race against a kid who is a naturally fast runner. I had 2 problems that both were undiagnosed. I just thought that thanks to hip dysplasia, I wasn’t flexible. I thought my joints snapping in and out were normal reactions- I didn’t know that’s what was happening (or that each snap was weakening my joints and leading to the somewhat severe, at times, OsteoArthritis I have now. I also had no idea I had asthma until one of my lungs started to collapse a few years ago and I ended up going to the ER becuase I was having trouble breathing and my chest was killing me.

None of those counted as real disabilities. I worked out daily at home, could pretty much keep up with the athletes in gym class and running was my only real weakness. I didn’t know I had Ehlers Danlos or that some of the nervous habits I had meant I was double jointed. I also had no idea the breathing problems were asthma. I was simply called lazy, a slacker and made to redo until the class was over. I still remember feeling like my lungs were on fire and the pain in my chest, but I never had major attacks.

There are children with much worse disabilities, though, and those kids may benefit from the trophies. Like I said, I don’t know. At a high school level, it may be as embarrassing to them as it is for most of us at a young age.

 

Did you ever get a participation trophy in school? Were you as embarrassed as I was or was it something you took pride in?

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I’m doing a mini Facebook Fast

This is something I do occasionally, especially when going through my feed starts to feel like a chore. I do it, but then it makes me feel like I’m wasting time (which I am)

I decided to go until February 28 (so, log back on March 1- if I want to go through the annoyance)

I see no real need to keep with it, I see no reason to even have a profile, but I keep it. I was told a while back that I needed to make sure I had a business page so that I could tell people who didn’t have Twitter, Instagram or other ways of following my website or Etsy shop

 

As of tomorrow, I’m 1 week in.

My last log in was January 28. My first time doing a facebook cleanse, I barely could last this long. Now, it feels like second nature. I do these a few times a year typically. When I first started, I did it as a trial to see if I could get away with deleting my Facebook permanently. It didn’t work out too well.

I did delete my account twice. The first time, I needed to get ahold of someone and found it was ten times easier to get ahold of them on Facebook and not on the phone.

The second time, I was trying to keep track of all my friends and family who said to keep them updated about when I had my baby, so I started a new account and only added those select family, in laws and close friends. That turned into adding back several people who requested me and before I knew it, I was back up to 100.

I’ve never had an account much older than 1 year but this time I decided to keep it and make it less personal.

I’m not planning on deleting

I am working on redoing things. I have been and I post very little private now. I keep the thought that if I wouldn’t post it publicly on my blog, if I wouldn’t say it in a guest blog for another site under my own name, if I wouldn’t sell the story to another website, I won’t post it on Facebook.

I use Facebook as one site to share articles and blogs I have written.

I use Facebook for networking and marketing purposes

I have found the best move for me personally

Instead of deleting the account, I do Facebook cleanses, as they’re called.

I take a few weeks to a few months off then go back on but before long, the incessant negativity has gotten to me again and I end up planning out another break. Most people go back with a renewed appreciation of the site, I just feel like it’s still a time-suck and waste to go but find myself browsing through my feed.

I know sites like that are supposed to be good for staying in touch with friends and family, but it doesn’t feel personal now like it used to feel. Already, keeping it turned off and staying away from accessing it at all has been giving me a somewhat hard time. I tried to respond to a comment on my latest post that was published and couldn’t without Facebook. I also have had a few pieces published and Facebook is the first place I typically share posts- but I’m doing a 100% fast right now, so those are being bookmarked until next month.

I’m still on the fence about how useful the site is (outside of a few random groups for writers/bloggers) but since I was told I needed a page since some people only have Facebook, I need to maintain my two pages at least a little.

 

Have you given up Facebook or gone on a “Facebook fast?”

If you have, what have been your obstacles? I may try to turn this into the 99 days challenge and see if I can go the full 99 days, not sure. I didn’t plan this. I just decided to see how long I could stay off this time.

 

 

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Another birthday, another day

I think when I get sick, everything I’m working on suffers.

I have lost track severely of the self care challenge due to taking a full break from everything.

Thanks to my husband getting worse, we found out it was the Parainfluenza Virus- so it wasn’t treatable by antibiotics. We kept our older daughter home from school the majority of a week and now the three of us (me, the three year old and the seven year old) are on the mend. My husband is feeling better as well. He ended up taking 3 days off work but has been back for several days now and I’m back to doing stuff.

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I am officially 31 today, of course I don’t feel any different, just a bit more depressed about being that much closer to middle age and that much farther from my early 20s. Not sure if that will change, it maybe my OCD ruminating it in my mind over and over. I have the house to myself- so I guess Netflix and trying to straighten up the huge mess of toys here in the living room. We take them up to the girls’ bedrooms and they multiply as they come back. I look at pictures of peaceful and beautiful living rooms and it’s about the only time that makes me feel slightly jealous, I’m not a jealous person in the least, either.

I also have to watch out because I’ll start buying one item for storage and go overboard. I think random storage items are half my clutter. Funnily, I didn’t start decluttering after watching Marie Kondo- I started after hearing about her. I’ve been watching her show on Netflix and it’s helping a bit. I don’t thank my clothes but I can now fit them in my dresser. (ok, and my half of the closet… as long as some are in the dirty clothes basket… but I do wear everything now, for the most part.)

I go through my clothes on a regular basis so I only ended up with one bag to donate this time. The first time I really did, I ended up with three trash bags.

I fail to see how this is some kind of “middle class privilege” as I have read. If you live and have family, you can quickly build up things. I cleared 5 bags and 3 boxes out of my kitchen alone and need to finish the kids’ rooms. I got 2 bags of toys and 2 bags of clothing already.

We aren’t poor, but we’re not rich either. We just have ended up being given so much over the years, both of us came into the marriage with a bunch of stuff- stuff from when we went to college, stuff from my former apartment and a bunch of furniture and shelving that came with me from my mom and dad’s house. We use my old bed from when I was a teenager. We still use it (it’s pointless to buy a new bed, we had to break the box springs because of how narrow our stairs are so we are going to replace that when we move)

I’m currently working as much as I can on getting rid of as much clutter and trying to organize while I don’t have a day job, I could be unemployed for the rest of the month or could end up getting employed again next week. It all depends on what I can find. We’re in a kind of weird situation where I’m having to look for specific types of employment. Either way, this is my first birthday in years that I get to spend some time alone. The girls gave me my birthday gifts, my mom and dad came over with a flourless cake- it was a good, but rich, almond torte. Now, they are at grandma and grandpa’s house until tomorrow afternoon.

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Day Four of the Self Care Challenge

I didn’t post about the one yesterday because it was to “unplug”

Of course, as a writer, I can’t fully unplug for a full day but I did for a little bit. My three year old led me on an adventure- across some rocks (pillows) and up and down a mountain (the stairs). It was a fun adventure.

 

Today’s challenge is to write out what you feel. In a way, I did that with my last post about the quarter life “crisis” I have been going through for several years now. Anything else I write out will be on paper and totally private.

This challenge is going smoother than the other challenges I have attempted to complete in the past. They’re quick, easy and I can easily fit them into my day to day life.

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The ever popular “Quarter life crisis”

I read about the quarter life crisis for the first time several years ago when I was trying to figure out if I was going through some sort of “mid life crisis” early. I found out about the concept that tends to start somewhere around your 25th year.

From the time I was young, I had things mapped out in my head-
By 25 I wanted
1. A college degree
2. To be started enough in a career I actually loved to be financially fully stable
3. A husband
4. To be finished with pregnancy and have 2 kids
5. Be a home owner and not renter

Our reality at 25
1. I had a beauty school license
2. I was a stay at home mom by necessity, we took our daughter out in public once after she came home from the NICU and ended up with a cold and in the PICU, so we couldn’t put her in care for a while
3. I did get married at 22, so I met that goal
4. I was pregnant with baby 2 when I was 25 but we lost her so we only had 1 living child. I was trying to come to terms with my older daughter being an only child.
5. We still rented the first home we moved into when we first got married.

Hell, even at 30 I’ve been unable to meet all those. I still can’t find a major I want to study but I am working on going back to school hopefully this year and we’re hoping to be able to get the first time home buyer’s loan this year, but

My reality at 31
1. Still can’t determine a degree I want to study and go in debt for- so I’m just not sure a 4 year is right for me. I’m a licensed skin therapist and looking at an LPN program (waiting for the test to get in to the program in March and have been reading through study material). I’m looking at several other programs as well at a couple other schools
2. I just left a retail part time job and before that, I worked in a salon. Both were stable- like, I wouldn’t lose the jobs but the paychecks weren’t stable. I’m currently looking around at job openings and writing/doing Etsy full time until I get to my next step
3. I’m still married, we’re going on 9 years so that never changed.
4. At 27, I had my last child- this pregnancy was healthy and she’s now a very hyper and healthy 3 year old.
5. We still rent and still live where we moved when we first got together. We’re just hoping next year we’ll be ready to buy.

I’m starting to get out of my quarter life crisis, (funny when you know a name). I’m still a Type A personality with no career to throw myself into and I’m still a workaholic type with no work to throw myself into- which is most of the reason I have this site, my Etsy and my writing. I have to have goals and something to focus that particular energy on- I also have gotten to the point over the years I can’t stand working under other peoples’ rules.

I’m also starting to notice that there is nothing I really want to go into major debt for that will promise a pay out. (4 year college)

I’m hoping I won’t be as stagnant in my 30s as i was in my 20s. I’m still completely unclear to the path I want to take but I am starting to accept that I’m not “young” anymore, but not old either. I guess I’m in the middle age- not middle aged but not young adult. I know I could easily pursue a higher degree and I could easily go back multiple times but for what? To go into debt and end up with lower earning potential? To work for someone else? Live by someone else’s rules?

 

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I mentioned last month I was planning a newsletter

I’m going to put the sign up on here this month and it’s going to start next month.

It’s going to be about Astrology, numerology, tarot and other divination methods as well as any Wiccan/Pagan holidays coming up and moon phases

It will be just one time a month, I’m hoping to get the sign up form up soon.

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Day 3 of the self care challenge- listen to your favorite podcast

I don’t really have a favorite, so I looked around and ended up connecting to iHeartradio to listen to one. I picked one on Pinterest marketing for blogs and small businesses.

Not necessarily my favorite, but I’m getting decent with using Twitter and Twitter and Pinterest were my two goals for this year.