Facelift.

So, I've been maintaining an online presence since... the 90s? The early 2000s? Back then I had a livejournal, because of course I did. Eventually I moved on over to blogger, and I've had this sporadically updated slice of the blogosphere since 2011.

We're closing in on 2016, and I decided to give this place a bit of a facelift. Tidy up some information, and perhaps most importantly... change the name.

'Walk Softly Witch' was taken from a pulp novel - something about it tickled me, and I loved the cover. I actually started doing burlesque when I was heavier than I am today - this was before my breast reduction surgery, and I remember feeling that to do burlesque you had to go full pin-up. There was a period where I would pin curl my hair every other night  and I actually wore colour sometimes. It didn't last, obviously, because goth is like a stylistic version of herpes.

But that's not really who I am anymore. People evolve, or at least get better about paring back the shit that isn't truly necessary to their enjoyment of life.

So, looking back on over a decade's worth of both blogging and magic, what's the constant?

Music.

And here we are.

Another Girl

I ave spent the past two weeks on a roller coaster of social activities, including two large scale holiday staff parties - one for the company I currently work for, and the other for the one I had recently finished at. (Both at the same venue, which was kind of funny.) I drank too much at the former but was relatively well behaved at the latter, and wound up with sore feet at both.

Outside of that, I attended a craft fair, had a meeting about the upcoming Comedy of Terrors show, went to see Nightmare Before Nutcracker, and had a very intense magical evening with a friend who has not been doing so well lately. For a hermit like me, that's a lot of socialising.

I'm pleased to say that on this stormy Saturday I am doing nothing. I've had my coffee, and shortly I will clean the house and then go get a sandwich from the bakery around the corner. The house is fairly clean - aside from some dishes I've been hoping will vanish into the ether - but it definitely needs a good psychic scrubbing. As I said, some pretty heavy magical work was done earlier in the week and it's best not to assume all of that emotional discharge took care of itself any better than my dishes have.

I don't do a lot of magical work with others. Including a person in ritual is different than doing a spell on their behalf, and requires more consideration. There are people who I know and love that I think would be very difficult to work with, not because they're assholes but because I think they would have a difficult time opening up.

Magic and ritual looks goofy. Combine that with the fact that you really only get out of it what you put in and you can see why the more cynical you are going in the less effective the whole thing is gonna be. Those of us filled to the brim with sarcasm, or those who are naturally skeptical or filled with doubt are prrrrobably better off working on their own shit alone so that the presence of others does not trigger performance anxiety.

Obviously my friend was not one of those people - she's a very artistic person who is very open with her emotions, and so the evening went off better than I could have hoped. But there's still the clean-up to do, especially with all the usual emotional drain December brings. No sense living like a filthy hamster when you know it will further zap you, no?