At the point when many people have already broken their New Year’s resolutions, I’m finally ready to discuss mine! Like another magician mentioned, it can be more useful to map out a list of goals for the year ahead, which I prefer to do. That way I can track my progress towards those goals while still cutting myself some slack when I need to switch gears or have a break.
My Tarot card for this year is the Chariot, representing direction, willpower, and balanced forces. That’s a perfect representation of what I have in mind for 2019. Although I accomplished quite a bit in 2018, I often felt as if I was fulfilling other people’s agendas or acting in a support role while others chased their dreams. There’s a time and place for that, but I’m glad that chapter’s coming to a close and I can focus on forging my own destiny this year. With that in mind, I’ll be limiting the number of challenges I participate in to those that genuinely interest me and support the work I already plan to be doing at that time. I feel I’ll grow faster as a magician and blogger if I stop shoehorning my practice into challenge criteria or my posts into what I can share publicly. You’ll find weekly updates here on Fridays from now on – or as close as I can get, barring disasters.
This month, I’m working through the Inner Demon Challenge on Instagram, hosted by purefield.healing. It’s rare to find anyone other than a Daemonolater who looks at daemons in a positive light, much less views them a way to improve your life, so I had to give this shadow-work challenge a try. While in keeping my personal analysis private, I am posting the results for the characters of my next Dalliances with Demons novel. As with Altar of Belphegore, I excavate this story a little more each day, sweeping away debris to get closer and closer to the core ideas. So far, I’ve discovered this much:
Her – What inner demons is she battling?
Him – What inner demons is he battling?
Her – Where these inner demons come from?
Him – Where these inner demons come from?
No one else is using the challenge to explore fiction this way, but I need to follow my own path for a while, even if that means going alone. From these efforts, I hope to produce three more books this year, most likely two pieces of fiction and one nonfiction. I always hate to name titles and topics because that locks me into what I have to write, so I’ve scheduled working blocks into my calendar just as I have in years before. It may seem like a woeful amount of output compared some authors – but this is also the year where I need to stop comparing. Again, I need to follow my own path this year no matter where it takes me.
Part of that is working through The Artist’s Way, which I’m starting officially on Sunday, January 6. I’ve started the morning pages back on Christmas Day, and I’m finding them both challenging and freeing. This process will take at least twelve weeks, but apparently morning pages are a habit you can keep for life if you dedicate yourself to them. We’ll see!
May you reach all of your goals in 2019!
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