I feel…

For most of Sunday, I was able to keep myself pretty well distracted.  There was work, and there was the Art Show, and there was dinner and TV with my family.  But the evening wound down, and everyone went to bed, and there were no more distractions.  There was no way to avoid standing in the swirling torrent of emotions that the Orlando shootings cause, even though I also sort of feel like I don’t have any business having these feelings in the first place, as I sit, safe and sound, at home.

I am grieving, for such a large senseless loss of lives, of people targeted for something as innocent and joyful as who they love. And I feel somehow wrong for grieving, because I have distance from this loss.  It was not people I knew personally who were lost, but people that I never met, and likely never would have.

I am frustrated, that we still cannot pass sensible gun regulation.  This person should have not been able to legally own a gun.  He should not have been qualified to work for a security company. And because the loss of African-American lives has not been enough, and the loss of children’s lives has not been enough, and I know the loss of my community’s lives will not be enough either.

I am heartsick, that this may have been done by someone who belonged in our community.  By someone who had been so twisted and harmed by his family, and our culture, that he felt he had to lash out in this way, when he might have found a home with us.  And that he may not have found that home with us because of all of the division and wrongs we ourselves do to each other.

I am afraid, because my size and my strength cannot protect myself and my loved ones from a gun the way they can protect us in a physical confrontation.  And while I know that there are people out there stronger than me, who can attack and harm me even without weapons, I still felt like I could handle what might come.  I want that feeling back.

I am grateful, that those that I know and love are safe and sound, at least at the moment.  That I have the privilege of being able to keep those who support me near, and shut out of my life those who do not.  And I feel guilty that I am grateful to have these things, when so many others do not.  

I am saddened, that this newest generation has had their illusion of safety shattered even more violently than mine did.  That so many of them already had lost that illusion because of the thousand little ways we are all threatened every day.

I am sorry, that the the work so many of us have done to advance our rights has only been able to take us so far. That so many of us have let the victories we worked so hard for distract us from the fact that there is still so much more to do.  That we feel exhausted, and just want to live our day-to-day lives in peace, instead of continuing to fight against what sometimes seems like such an insurmountable obstacle.

I am proud, of those who stepped in and risked themselves to help the injured, and those who did what they could to help in the aftermath.  And of my friends who see how what has happened to us can be used to harm others, and have spoken out against it.

I am sickened, by the people who are actually celebrating this tragedy.  Who believe that those who died got what they deserved, for nothing more than who they loved.  And I am disgusted by the fact that I know some of those people are in my own family.

I am enraged, that the same elected leaders who have done everything they can to legislate away our rights and fight our equality, now offer hollow words of condolence, while simultaneously straightwashing what has happened.  That three presidential candidates stood on the same stage as a man who openly called for our deaths, and faced no repercussions.  That those same leaders call this an act of Islamic Extremism while supporting and being supported by “Christians” who call our execution good, and just, and right..

I am tired, of so many things.  Of fighting to be recognized as a human being.  Of speaking out for other oppressed groups, and then watching members of those same groups oppress mine.  Of seeing so many members of my own community throwing others under the bus and using them as a stepladder for their own gain.  Of so much us vs. them.  Of looking over my shoulder, of having to always be ready to defend myself, of having to be ready to defend others.

I am ashamed, of the members of my family and my community who use this event to fuel their racism and religious hatred.  Of those who would use our loss to justify further oppressing others.  Of the members of my own community whose racism, femphobia, transphobia, body-shaming, slut-shaming, and all the other sorts of active oppression we engage in makes us unworthy of claiming our own equality.

But…

I am hopeful, that no matter how hard they fight us, or how long it takes, the journey to equality is inexorable, both for my community, and for so many others who are kept down. That the more violently they lash out, the more we will know we are winning.  That we will find a way to help those of us trapped in toxic environments to escape and stop living in self-loathing and fear.  That my community will overcome it’s own prejudices and learn to support others who face similar oppression.  I’m not naive enough to think that it will happen in my lifetime, but sometimes holding onto that hope is all we have to get ourselves through times like these.

Changing up my workout program

Tags

weightlifting

I decided to bite the bullet and change my workout program even though I haven’t technically hit all of my goals yet.  I’ve managed to reach my goals for both the Deadlift and the Squat, but I’m still lagging on my Bench Press and the Standing Military Press.  I’ve been right on the edge with the Bench Press for a couple of months now without ever making it over the barrier.  I’ve sort of hit a plateau, and it’s time for change.  So here are the reasons why I’ve decided to change my workout program.

1) I’ve been having trouble working getting my workouts in for the last two months consistently. There are a couple reasons for this.  Ever since I moved up to Michigan, instead of working out a gym I have been lifing in my boyfriend’s basement.  While I was living there, working out was a simple matter of walking downstairs.  But now that my partner and I are living in our own place again, working out means I have to go over to their place.

And trying not to be disruptive to them is making my workout schedule very erratic.  I would ideally like to lift first thing in the morning, but I often end up not lifting until I get off of work.  My work schedule is also really erratic, which means I’ve occasionally had to lift in the evening.  This is sort of a problem for me, because when I work out late it ends up messing with my sleep.  So a lot of times if I don’t get out of work by a certain time (around 3) I have not lifted.

Of course all of this is a bit of an excuse, because of reason 2.

2) I’m bored.  For the past 4 months, I’ve been lifting (with more or less consistency) 3 days a week.  Every day is the exact same workout.  Squats, Bench Press, Deadlift, and Standing Press.  Doing the same thing every workout has started to wear thin.  I’m mentally bored with the exercises, but my body at this point is pretty adapted to them, and my progress is slowed down.  Also because I’m doing all big lifts every workout day, I’m not really giving my muscles the rest that they should be getting between workouts.

I think that switching my workout program will help alleviate the boredom and get me excited about lifting again.  So these are the changes that I’m making:

I’m joining a Gym.  Yesterday I checked out two local gyms, and I signed up for a 10-day trial at one of them.  I think that it is pretty likely that I will end up joining when my trial is complete, for a few reasons.  The cost is reasonable.  It’s only $22 per month when I buy 4-month blocks.  It’s a serious weight-lifting gym, not a fitness center overrun with cardio equipment.  It’s also the gym that my boyfriend joined at the beginning of the summer, and he enjoys it.  While he and I are on different schedules, at least there is the possibility of occasionally working out together.

I am switching to a split routine.  While I haven’t settled on a final exercise set just yet, I’ve moved from doing my entire body every day to focusing on a few body parts each workout.  I’m going with the push/pull split, so one day will be legs and shoulders, one will be chest and triceps, and the third will be back and biceps.  I haven’t settled on an order yet, but for this week I did leg day yesterday, will be doing Chest tomorrow, and back on friday.

I will be changing up my sets/reps combination.  For the past few months I’ve been doing five sets of five reps for each exercise (not counting warmup sets).  Since I will be doing a larger number of exercises for each muscle group, I am dropping down to three sets for each exercise.  I haven’t decided yet what I’m going do set as my rep range yet. Yesterday I kept it to five reps for each exercise other than the Calf raise, which I did as 15 reps.  I haven’t entirely decided on what my goal is for this phase of lifting, so I have to decide on whether I want to focus on continuing to build strength, building muscle mass, or triming down.  I’m leaning toward trimming down, which will end up involving higher repetitions at lighter weight, plus adding in cardio.

I will have to start working on adjusting my eating, especially if I’m going to try and focus on trimming down, but that’s going to come later, once I’ve settled on a specific workout program.  This part is going to be one of the more difficult for me, because my eating has sort of gone all over the place.  There was a period of about 3 months about a year ago that I was eating really well, but it’s been a mess ever since I moved up here to Michigan.  I’ve started some of the initial work to try and shift my eating, but that’s a post for another day.

But for now, I’m taking a new step in reforging my body.

On Animal Sacrifice…

Tags

Reconstructionism, Sacrifice, Vulcan

Recently in a certain corner of the Blogosphere there has been a big discussion of animal sacrifice in the polytheist community.  I for my part have only seen one side of the argument – the side in favor of honoring the practice.  I have not personally read the pieces arguing against it, largely because the blog posts that I have seen mostly refer to and cite those with whom they agree, which has a bit of an echo-chamber effect.

That being said, I do generally get the gist of the arguments that those who object to the practice of animal sacrifice make.  They believe that it is inhumane, cruel, and unnecessary. Many like to make the “slippery-slope” argument that animal sacrifice will lead to human sacrifice, which they naturally feel that everyone thinks is wrong.  I understand their positions, but I disagree.

First let me say that I have, on one occasion, practiced animal sacrifice (at least, in the context that we are discussing here).  The primary sacrifice that was made on the Vulcanalia was an Immolatio of fish.  Unlike most Roman sacrifices, the fish sacrifice was not performed in temples, with the viscera from the animal being offered to the gods and the flesh being cooked and eaten by the people.

This sacrifice was performed with large fires built on the banks of the river, where fish were basically hauled out of the water and thrown directly onto the fire. The flesh was not eaten by the people, rather the fish were consumed whole by the flames.

Several years ago, when I was still fairly early in my relationship with Vulcanus, I felt called to make a proper offering of live fish.  I debated this for a while, tried to figure out a way that I thought would be appropriate to substitute the offering, but in the end, I followed through.  I went to the pet store, bought three goldfish, and lit a small bonfire in my backyard into which I sacrificed the fish as part of my Vulcanalia ritual.

While I would not say that my decision to make the sacrifice was a “mistake.”  Instead  I would say that I performed the sacrifice in an improper fashion, due to lack of experience.  I still at times had misgivings about having performed the sacrifice, and have not done it since.  Instead, each year I have offered a fillet of fish, typically salmon, to Vulcan instead.  I wish I could say that I had some theological reason for deciding that the sacrifice was/is unnecessary, but I really can’t.

I have to be honest and say that the whole thing just made me feel uncomfortable in a way that I have not continued with the practice. That isn’t to say that I won’t perform it again at some point in the future, but right now, I don’t feel that it is appropriate for me to be performing that sort of sacrifice.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not think there is anything wrong with performing animal sacrifice.  I actually very much respect the practice, and would like at some point to be present for them.  But I am not someone who is properly trained in the process. And unlike with sacrifices of larger animals which can be killed in a very peaceful and dignified manner, throwing live fish onto a fire and burning them alive is something that I just haven’t been able to see as anything but cruel and inhumane.

But the sorts of sacrifices that I hear of being performed by the polytheist community are very different from the one I did. The animals are given great care and respect.  They are dispatched in the most humane way possible.  The sacrifice is performed by a trained professional to ensure that the animal does not suffer.  This is the sort of sacrifice I can easily stand behind.  I may not want to perform the sacrifice myself, but I am perfectly willing to have such a sacrifice be performed on behalf of myself or my community.

In fact, given the choice, I would much prefer that all of the meat and poultry that I consume be given a sacred death. I have a big problem with the way the agricultural complex produces the meat that we eat in day to day life.  You want to talk about animal cruelty? Go check out a CAFO, if you can manage to sneak onto the property.

Having established that I stand rather firmly in the camp supporting the practice of animal sacrifice, I want to discuss the debate itself, or rather, the arguments being made on my side of it.  Sannion in his posts on houseofvines gives a very insightful, clear, and rational explanation of his position on the subject of animal sacrifice.  He even does a great job talking about the possibility of human sacrifice that is neither sensationalized nor dismissive.   Theanos Thrax of Thracian Exodus likewise gives a similarly well-written statement of his position.

And then there is Galina Krasskova of Gangleri’s Grove.  I do not follow her blog on a regular basis, but my partner does, and I check in from time to time, particuarly when he says that she has posted something of interest.  And to be honest, I frequently find myself frothing at the mouth by the end of her posts.

It’s not so much the particular positions that she has in her tradition that I take issue with.  Rather, it is her tendency to make sweeping generalizations about polytheists, writing in a way that implies that she is speaking on behalf of all “true” polytheists.  It is the hard-line positions that she takes in a way that implies that the rightness of her position is self-evident, and those who don’t agree with her just don’t have a good enough understanding of or right relationship with the gods.

Well I am a real polytheist, whatever that actually means, and I say that there is room for disagreement between us, and that doesn’t make either of us wrong or less knowledgeable, or that one of us has a less real relationship with our gods.

In her Red Thread post, in which she discusses the animal sacrifice debate, she provides several examples of this sort of generalization.

In her opening paragraphs, she talks about how animal sacrifice is not some “hip new practice” that polytheists are just discovering.  She talks about how sacrifice is a well-established tradition within the vast majority of polytheisms.  All of this I agree with. But then she says this:

To think that we can restore our traditions with integrity, while neglecting this most fundamental of practices is…naive, to say the least.

And then:

It really highlights that while we may navigate between our contemporary secular (but really protestant christian) informed society to our ancestral ways, in the end, one must make a choice. The two mindsets are diametrically opposed.

And this is where I have a problem. Animal sacrifice has been a key part of various polytheisms all along, that is true.  But it is also true that the discussion of whether or not that sacrifice was appropriate, ethical, and desirable has been going on for thousands of years.  It isn’t some hip new trend either.

Part of the formation of Christianity out of Judiasm is the concept that there was no longer a need for animal sacrifice because Christ was the final sacrifice.  While she might choose to dismiss the example of Christianity because it is a monotheistic religion, the same discussions have been going on in polytheisms.

While when we think of Roman Religion we often picture the great animal sacrifices in the temples, there was also well-established precedent for bloodless sacrifice.  Ovid writes in Fasti that sacrifice to the Gods was originally bloodless, and blood sacrifices were only added later.

According to tradition, Pompilius Numa was the second king of Rome, and established most of the foundation of the Religio Romana.  Both Pliny and Plutarch state that in the time of Numa, blood sacrifice wasn’t just not included in public Roman rites, it was expressly forbidden.

Perhaps in the Northern Tradition which Ms. Krasskova follows, there has never been until recently debate on the topic of animal sacrifice.  But to pretend that it was a universally accepted practice among the ancients is disingenuous.  Perhaps for those trying to restore her tradition with integrity, it is naive to neglect the role of animal sacrifice.  But for those trying to restore the Numa tradition, neglecting the discussion of whether or not animal sacrifice is appropriate is equally foolhardy.

Her overbroad generalizations lead to a false dichotomy.  She claims that modern sensibilities and traditional views of animal sacrifice are diametrically opposed.  But that is not true for all polytheist traditions.  There are threads within polytheism that go back thousands of years, where the views with regard to animal sacrifice are quite in line with many modern people’s sensibilities with regard to the practice.

I agree that most people’s objection to animal sacrifice has more to do with modern ideas and beliefs rather than a deep analysis and evaluation of traditional ways. But that doesn’t mean that no one has made that evaluation.  And even if they haven’t, if we are rebuilding living traditions from the ashes of the past, we must take our current understanding and philosophy into account.  To not do so is to be a reenactor, not a reconstructionist.

If the old ways had managed to make it unbroken into the present, they would have undergone many changes during that time.  Religions, like the Gods, are living things that grow and evolve.  There would have been splits and divisions, fracturing of smaller and smaller cults along various points of belief.  If we dismiss those who’s views differ from our own as not being “real polytheists,” we are no better than the fractured christian denominations, each claiming that they posses the one true way.

If someone chooses to reject sacrifice, maliciously attempt to play upon readers’ unexamined sentiments by bringing up non sequiturs like human sacrifice, slavery, etc., equating these things with animal sacrifice, that is an attempt at violence being done to a tradition.

Human sacrifice and slavery being equated with animal sacrifice is a non sequitur?  If we are going to say that we are performing animal sacrifice because the ancients did, then asking why we do not also practice human sacrifice and slavery cannot simply be dismissed as a non squitur.  The reason why we perform animal sacrifice is not simply “because the ancients did it,” and we need to explain that to those who disagree with us, rather than simply wave our hands and regard their argument as beneath us.

“Because the ancients did it” may be where we started, but ultimately we have a responsibility to evaluate what the ancients did and determine whether they still apply to us today.  I believe in the case of animal sacrifice, it still has value. I believe that human sacrifice has value. I believe that slavery does not.  Other polytheists out there have the right to disagree with my positions and that does not make them any less of a polytheist than me.

While I agree that people who use the “human sacrifice” argument are trying to use it as an emotional trigger to shut our argument down, there is still a very real discussion that should be being had about human sacrifice.  Sannion and Theanos Thrax both addressed this issue well.  Ms. Krasskova’s dismissal does none of us any favors. Who is the one avoiding their unexamined sentiments here?

And it is her dismissiveness that is a big part of my problem with so many of her writings.  When she uses words to frame the opposing position like “contaminated,” “impure,” “corrosive poison,” “filth,” “obscene,” and “reprehensible” she displays her utter contempt for viewpoints other than her own.  And if she were speaking on behalf of merely her own tradition, I wouldn’t care.  I’m not a part of that tradition and I could frankly care less how other traditions view mine.

But Ms. Krasskova instead claims to speak on behalf of “real polytheists.”

I am a real polytheist.  I believe that the Gods are real, that they are individual beings with their own wants and needs. I believe that they have their own self-interests, which may or may not be in the best interest of myself or the rest of humanity.  I believe that they often help us and provide for us, and for that we should be grateful and give them the reciprocity that they are due.

I am a real polytheist, and I find Ms. Krasskova’s hubris to be incredibly frustrating.  I do not claim to speak on the behalf of all polytheists, nor even on the behalf of all Roman Polytheists.  I claim only to speak on behalf of myself, and my relationship with my Gods, and I wish she would do the same.

It’s not how many times you fall down…

It’s how many times you get up again that matters…

It’s funny how quickly I fall off the wagon on some projects and yet on others I can stick with them for months and months until I also fall off the wagon.  But ultimately, it doesn’t matter how many fits and starts I have, as long as I have one more start than fit.

There are a few reasons why I haven’t posted in a while.  The first is that I was doing these long involved posts describing the five aspects of my life that I’m working to reforge.  I already posted about my Career, my Body, and my Spirituality. But the next two topics are somewhat more daunting for me, my Relationships and my pursuit of simplicity.  They are still posts I need to get around to at some point, but right now I want to focus on what progress I’ve made since my last posts.

And the second reason was that life got in the way.  In september I returned to the Between the Worlds gathering, which took up not just the week of the event, but the week leading up to it for me.  Then after returning from that trip I went immediately into production mode for vending at the Michigan Renaissance Festival.

Once I got that out of the way, I started working on Halloween decorations. Confession time, I’m a bit of a Halloween nut. It’s been my favorite holiday for as long as I can remember.  When I was a kid, my brother and sister and I would create “Haunted houses” in our bedrooms and make our parent’s go through them.  When I was in High School, the Drama Club worked at a local Haunted house as a fundraiser, and I loved every minute of it.

For a while my living and working circumstances did not allow me to pass out candy to the Trick-or-Treaters or participate in the usual Halloween Festivities, but over the past couple fo years I was finally able to have a small bit of lawn to decorate, and for the last three years or so I’ve had beggar’s night off from work, so I was able to pass out candy.  This year I have the whole day of Halloween off, and a full yard to work with, so my only real limit is budget and time.

I hope before the holiday I’ll get a chance to do a post about my halloween celebration, but right now I want to focus on updates to what I’m doing related to the three things that I’ve already discussed wanting to change in my life.

On the Career front, I’m still working in the same jobs, and haven’t done any real job hunting.  I did meet with the board of the local ACLU this month, and I will likely be joining the board in November. My difficulty will be in trying to figure out where I fit in and what I really have to contribute, because the areas where I think I would be most useful to the group are in areas they aren’t actually able to engage in themselves.

I’m not really used to having to work within the strictures of a national organization, and the way they want to control the message that is being sent out by their members.  Back when I was actively involved in my fraternity, our national organization was really still in it’s formative stages, so that sort of control hadn’t been established yet, and I was playing a role in that formation, so this is going to be a new experience for me.

As far as the jewelry business goes, I did well vending at both Between the Worlds and the Michigan Renaissance Festival, and I plan on vending at both again next year.  I do not have any more shows scheduled for this year, which is really unfortunate because the holiday season is prime sales time for artists and crafters.  I am on a waitlist for one show in November, but I didn’t make it in last year, and I’m not holding my breath this year.

I do plan to send out a newsletter to my subscribers soon, and offering to do home Trunk Shows, which might get me a little extra income for the holiday season, as well as getting my name out there.  Right now I need to start planning and applying for next year’s shows, so that I can try to have a  full schedule for 2015.

I’ve also been working on other behind-the-scenes of the business, like working on designing my new set of business cards and working on designing a new display and booth layout. But my big project right now as far as the jewelry business goes is that I’ve been working on a master spreadsheet that will allow me to price my work more accurately and easily update it to reflect my constantly changing material costs.

This is causing me some discomfort in a few different areas.  First, I don’t work with spreadsheets often and they have a learning curve. Second, I’m realizing that while this calculator is giving me prices on my silver and gold jewelry that are pretty close to what I’ve been charging, I’ve apparently been severely under-charging on my copper pieces.    Pieces that I usually sell in copper for around $35 should apparently be priced closer to $50.  The hard thing for me is that I just can’t picture people willing to spend $50 on a copper bracelet.  I’m having a really difficult time reconciling that price point. I plan to do a few shows with this new pricing and see how things go, but I’m sort of worried about sales drops.  Of course, it could also lead to an increase in silver sales, since the prices on my silver jewelry will not be as drastic of a jump from the copper price as they have been.

When it comes to my body, I’m proud to stay that I’ve been working out pretty consistently over the past several months.  The past two weeks have been rocky, and I didn’t work out at all during my trip and the week after, but I’m very near the strength goals that I had set when I restarted my workout program.

The strength goals that I set were to lift til the point where my five sets of five reps were all specific percentages of my body weight.  My goals were for Squats, 110% of my Body Weight, for Bench Press, 90% of my body weight, for Deadlift 130% of my body weight, and for the Overhead press 60% of my body weight.  The process of lifting has of course affected my body weight, so my goals have become a moving target, but at my current weight of 288.5 lbs, my goals were thus:

Barbell Squat – 317, Bench Press 259, Deadlift 374, Overhead Press 158

During Today’s workout I lifted the following: Barbell Squat – 315, Bench Press 205 (down from 245 my last workout), Deadlift 315 (down from 385 my last workout) and Overhead Press 135.

I am so close to my goals that I can taste it, but every time I get within 10-20 lbs of my goals I stop working out for a week or more, and I have to drop my weight down and ramp back up.  I’m hoping by the end of next week I will have my Squat and Deadlift both over the goal line, and the Bench Press closing in.  The overhead press is my most difficult lift to increase, because its working the weakest muscles of the group, and I’ve been stuck in the 135-145 range for over a month now.

My overall weight keeps bumping up over the 290 line and then dropping back down again.  I know that it’s a lot, but bear in mind that I’m also 6’4″ and pretty muscular.  I keep hoping that I don’t cross the 300 lb mark.  Once I hit those strength goals it will be time to change up the lifting program, and start trying to trim down.  That’s going to be the most difficult phase for me, and when my exercise programs tend to break down.  But we shall see what happens.

On the spirituality front, there hasn’t been a whole lot going on.  I will do a separate post on the Between the Worlds gathering, but suffice to say that I enjoyed the gathering, and while I didn’t have a major pull this year in any new directions, I did feel like I got something out of this year spritually, which has not been the case for the last couple years.

I’ve tried meditating a few times, by walking a labyrinth, but not consistently enough for it to really count as the start of my five months of mental discipline practice that I’m required to do as part of the dedicant program of ADF.

I have been properly maintaining my candle as a Flamekeeper of BtW, and I’ve finally found 7-day candles that actually burns for seven days. I had to get them at a catholic supply store, but I’m not too distressed about that. That means that I am not simply keeping a candle on the one day of the week that I am responsible for the hearth flame, but I’ve actually kept a perpetual flame going since I got back from the gathering.  It is my hope to be able to carry the live flame back to the gathering next year in an oil lamp, and return my hearthflame to become part of the hearth of the community there.

I think those are about all of the major points that I want to hit right now, so I will hopefully be back soon with more posts on this ongoing project to improve my life.

Reforging my Spirituality

Tags

Cougar, Reconstructionism, Vulcan

Third in the roundup of the transformations I want to make in my life, my spiritual practice.  I am a member of Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF), which technically makes me a druid.  I am a Graeco-Roman polytheist (heavy on the Roman).  I am an ecstatic.  I am a pagan.  I am all of these things, but my actual spiritual practice is erratic at best.  I may believe in the gods, but I don’t work with them nearly as often as I should.

After a non-religious upbringing until I was about the age of 11, my father and stepmother decided that it was time for my brother and sister and I to start going to church.  So they joined the local Roman Catholic church and enrolled us in catechism classes.  I was put through a rapid catch-up program that summer, and went through first communion when I was in sixth grade.  I then went immediately into the confirmation classes for two years and my parents made me finish that.  I promptly never went to church again.

I never really felt like I belonged there, that Christianity just flat out didn’t make sense.  Eventually around the age of 15/16, I stumbled onto the book Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham.  It was sort of a revelation to me.  Right there in the introductory chapters was someone laying out in writing a lot of the things I had always believed about religion.

So I became a Wiccan.  I practiced secretly in my bedroom, keeping the sabbats, occasionally doing an esbat ritual, working a little magic.  I graduated high school, moved out, and was stuck with a roommate who would not tolerate anything other than Christian religious practice in the apartment.  Luckily I was only there for a few months before moving back home and starting college. 

In college I joined the pagan student group and was exposed to other forms of paganism than just Wicca.  Over time, I started becoming dissatisfied with Wicca as well.  A big breaking point for me came when I read The Witches Bible by the Farrars.  Reading that book and their views on homosexuality crystallized what wasn’t working for me with Wicca.  I came to see Wicca as fundamentally a fertility cult, and as a queer man, that just didn’t work for me.  I wasn’t interested in male/female polarity, it didn’t resonate with my life experience at all.

So I stopped practicing altogether for a few years.  Eventually I picked up a copy of Christopher Penczack’s Gay Witchcraft, and I found a way to start practicing again.  I attended a queer men’s pagan gathering called Between the Worlds, and had a whole new range of pagan spiritual options opened to me.

At BtW I took several workshops on topics related to shamanism and ecstatic trance work.  I found my totem animal/fetch (Cougar) who I still work with to this day.  I began working within a shamanic context, because all of the male/female polarity stuff that didn’t resonate with me was totally irrelevant to the spirit-work of core shamanism.  My primary guide along this path was another Christopher Penczak book, The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft.  Along with Michael Harner’s The Way of the Shaman.

A few years down the road, also at the Between the Worlds gathering I was part of a workshop where we did some shamanic journey work to find patron Dieties.  I got some very mixed messages in my journey, seeing what was clearly a craftsman god, but with symbolism mixed up from several cultures.  I was inside a volcano (symbol of the Greek and Roman craftsman gods Hephaestus and Vulcan), wearing an Egyptian style kilt (tied to Ptah), working at a forge with a silver hand (Symbol of the Irish god Nuada).  At first I thought I was going to be working with Ptah, but eventually I came to understand that my patron was actually Vulcan.

Finding Vulcan as a patron set me onto a roman path.  I started learning about Nova Roma, and the Religio Romana.  I adopted a pretty roman-style brand of paganism that worked for me.  I have never actually joined Nova Roma, or any other Roman reconstructionist group.  While I know a lot of the more wiccan-type folks tend to think of me as a Roman recon, I don’t think of myself that way, and I think the real recons wouldn’t either.

I have little interest in trying to recreate a religion that hasn’t really been practiced for nearly 2000 years.  The world today is a lot different than it was 2000 years ago, and a lot of what people did then doesn’t really work in the modern age.  Then there is the fact that there are things that the Romans did that I find pretty morally repugnant, like slavery and gladiatorial fights to the death.

And of course we don’t really know everything that they did, how they did it, or why they did it.  Our understanding keeps changing over time.  This has always been one of my objections to strict reconstructionists.  If recons have been doing something the “real” way the Romans, Norse, Celts, Etc did it, but suddenly we reach a new understanding of the religions of those peoples, does that means that the recons have been doing something wrong? that their religious practice is no longer valid?  And how long will it be before this new understanding is itself overturned by yet another new discovery?

 Personally I would prefer to do what works, what makes sense to me, and what has some actual grounding in the past.  While I do try to follow what the recons are doing, and try to have some knowledge about research on these religious practices of the classical Romans, I am not a slave to it.

I ended up eventually joining ADF because it offered a way for me to have a Roman-centered practice as well as continue to do the ecstatic work that I have gotten so much out of.  While most people hear the word “Druid” and automatically go to the Celtic religions, ADF is a “druid” organization that draws from a variety of Indo-European cultures, including the Romans.  And the organization has a very shamanic view of the cosmos, though some of them don’t like to admit it.  While ecstatic practice is not necessarily a big part of ADF, there are some of us who are actively participating in this sort of work.

Another reason that I joined ADF is that they have a formal training program.  This was a big draw for me. So often in the pagan community, people claim all sorts of titles of dubious distinction.  We have people who have put in decades of time, work, study, and magical practice who have earned titles like high-priest or priestess.  But then we have people who have read what I affectionately call “Uncle Bucky’s Big Blue Book ” (Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft) and have decided that they are also High Priests.  The bottom line is that so often in the pagan community, people can call themselves a third degree priest, and you have no way of knowing if they have actually earned that title, or whether they just decided to call themselves that.

ADF is different. If I am a dedicant of ADF, it means I have completed a specific course of study.  I have read the texts, done the work, written the papers.  And most importantly, I have had that work peer-reviewed by others who have completed the program.  The same is true of all of their study programs, whether a guild study program or a clergy study program.  ADF has very clear standards about what these titles mean, and that is important to me.

So I have tried to do the dedicant program with ADF in fits and starts.  I’ve never gotten very far.  Part of this whole transformation process for me is that I want to actually complete the Dedicant Study Program.  I also want to deepen my ecstatic work, to practice it more regularly.  I want to make my metalwork a more specifically spiritual act, a devotional activity to Vulcan.

This is my spiritual life so far, and where I want to go.  Where It will actually goes I cannot predict.  This is the start of my spirituality reforged.

Reforging my Body

The second of the five major transformations that I want to work on is my body.  I’m not just talking about the vanity things like being trimmer and more muscular (though those are part of it too), but about becoming a more healthy person.

After 16 years of not being able to see a doctor, this past February I finally was able to get health insurance and now have a General Practitioner (Thank you, Obamacare).   I went through my introductory exams back in February, with the bloodwork and the weights and measures, and now I’m on several medications.

First of all, I have asthma.  This is nothing new, I was diagnosed when I was 8.  Luckily, once I moved out of my parent’s house, where my stepmother smoked, my condition improved in a major way, so I haven’t had nearly as many problems as I did when I was a kid.  But I do still have issues, especially in the fall when my allergies are particularly active.  In the past I managed by having friends and family give me extra albuterol inhalers when they were done with them after short-term problems, and occasionally bought an OTC Primatine inhaler which honestly did little.  Now that I have a GP I’m taking a daily inhaler once in the morning and once in the evening.  I honestly think that this is overkill in my current condition, since I’m taking this new inhaler way more often than I ever took a rescue inhaler, so its something that I will probably be talking to my doctor about at some point in the future.

Next up, Psoriasis. I am very fortunate to not have the severe plaque psoriasis that my brother has, but I do have enough of a problem to cause discomfort and annoyance.  Happily, I now have a foam prescription that keeps the itching and the spots at bay as long as I use it regularly.  Again, thank the gods for Obamacare, because without prescription coverage, this medication costs $350 per month.  With my new insurance coverage, I pay nothing for it.

These first two are conditions that there is really little that I can do to “fix” beyond continuing to use medication to keep everything managed.  While the Asthma problems will be helped somewhat by having a fitter body, it’s still a disease that can be triggered by different stimuli, and I hit the trifecta. My asthma is triggered by cold, exercise, AND allergies.

But these next problems are ones that hopefully I will be able to actually take care of with effort.  At 289 lbs last week, I am definitely overweight.  Not nearly as overweight as you are probably picturing right now, considering that I am 6’4″ and have decent musculature.  But my body fat percentage the last time I measured it was around 23%, which is definitely above the ideal range for my age.  According to Jackson & Pollock I should be between 12% and 17%. While my more immediate goal is to hit that 17% number, what I’m really shooting for eventually is dead in the middle of the ideal range, so around 14.5%.

Then there is my blood pressure.  I’ve been pretty consistently pre-hypertensive every time I’ve had my blood pressure taken, whether at the doctor’s office, or some pharmacy blood pressure station, or random health studies that I’ve participated (I was part of the Adolescent Health Study from High School until about 5 years ago, not sure if they’ve stopped collecting data on it yet or not).

I’ve also pretty much always had high triglycerides. I don’t know what the actual numbers are or what they really mean, but I know that now that I have insurance, my Doctor has put me on Lipofen to manage it.  I would like to get myself off of this medication if I possibly can.

Here’s a new one I had no idea was a problem.  I apparently have low testosterone.  I had it tested last winter, and we found it was low.  The doctor asked be if I was interested in hormone therapy, and I asked to be given a little time to try and raise my testosterone without medication.  I know that things like exercise affect testosterone, and I hadn’t been working out much at the time before I was tested.

So I went home and looked into ways of naturally raising my testosterone, only to find that besides the exercise, I was already pretty much doing all the things that they said that can raise testosterone levels.  Last week when I went in we tested my T again, and it’s low again.  Apparently really low.  I’m supposed to have at least 400 apparently, and I have more like 220 (I don’t remember the unit of measure).  I’m meeting with the doctor again next week, and this time I’m going to tell him to go ahead and put me on the hormones.

I don’t really know what effect the hormones will have. I know that low hormones are supposed to be associated with low energy (which I often have), low libido (which I do not have), sleep issues, (which I sometimes have), depression (which I may have, but have no objective measure).  So I’m actually hoping that getting on the T will help get a lot of the other things in my life in order, with more energy, better sleep, and if there actually is a bit of depression going on, helping to mitigate that.

As far as what I’ve been doing on my own to improve my health and fitness, there’s exercise.  I have had the same issues with starting up workout programs only to crash a few weeks in like everyone else. For the past three years though, I’ve done a lot more working out than I ever did before in my life.  My exercise consists pretty much of weight lifting.  I usually can stick with a program for several months before I end up stopping for one reason or another.  Last year I actually had stuck with working out consistently for 6 month.  By my birthday last year, I was lifting more weight than I ever had before.  I did a 1 rep max test in mid August of last year, and my Squat was 365, my Deadlift was 405, and my Bench Press was 265.  I miss those days, and I want to get back to them again.

The problem for me with working out is that I know I need to do more than just weight lifting to meet my goals.  Cardio has to come into it too.  The cardio will help with altering my body composition, as well as helping strengthen my lungs to help deal with my asthma.  But every time I try to add the cardio into my workouts, the whole thing falls apart and I stop exercising altogether.  I haven’t been able to figure out how to deal with this yet.

As far as my diet, I was doing really well for a while.  I was eating 6 small meals per day, evenly spaced out, lots of protein and vegetables, and an appropriate amount of fat.  And for a while It was helping.  I wasn’t hungry all the time, because I kept topping up the tank with healthy foods.  But ever since I moved up here things have been a problem.

For the first six months that I was living in Detroit, my partner and I were living with our other boyfriends.  Four grown men sharing one refrigerator does not work well when you are trying to prepare lots of small meals in advance.  There just isn’t enough room to store everything.  So my eating habits started to just completely fall apart.  My job as a server also doesn’t accomodate eating on a regular fixed schedule, because I’m constantly running around at my job, and can’t just stop what I’m doing to go eat.

My partner and I have been living in our own place again since May, but I haven’t been able to get fully back into the rhythm of preparing all of my meals for the week on my day off.  I manage to get the groceries bought that day, but I don’t get everything prepared, and often things go bad before I have a chance to actually chop, cook, and portion everything.  A few of the changes have been made pretty permanent, so at least there’s a little progress I can say I’ve made.  my breakfast is still consistently one whole egg and five egg whites scrambled, but I often skip the whole grain that I should be having with breakfast, because I get incredibly sick of oatmeal very quickly.

So this is where I stand with my body.  I’m meeting with my doctor again next week, and we will be discussing the medications that I’m on, and what I’m going to be taking in the future.  I just started working out again last week, so hopefully I’ll start making strength gains, and working on my body composition going forward.

Here’s to a reforged body.

Reforging my Career

I talked in my introduction post about several of the areas of my life that I would like to change.  A big one for me is my work life.

As I said earlier, I graduated Cum Laude from Kent State University in 2008 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology.  I also have minors in LGBT Studies and Jewelry/Metalsmithing.  At the time, I had planned to go on to become a professional activist, working for organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, or the American Civil Liberties Union.  What I soon found out was there really weren’t any opportunities for me there.

Part of this was because I was living in Akron, Ohio at the time, and there’s not really anything going on in that area.  While I was willing to relocate, I didn’t really have the means to do so.  Another part was that they positions I saw all seemed to want experience working directly with the organizations as a volunteer, which I didn’t have. I had plenty of experience working with student organizations, having risen to leadership positions in several of them during my college tenure, but none with local or national political organizations.  And then of course there was the matter of pretty low, or even nonexistent pay through internships.

I wasn’t really able to leave my decent-paying (at the time) college job to take a significant pay cut and work in the field I studied.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve kicked myself for making that mistake.  Here it is six years later, and I still am working at that college job.

Foodservice is a great college job.  It is a reasonable pay, and a flexible schedule.  But there’s not really much of a future in it.  I certainly have gone as far as I want to go down this particular path.  I’ve been asked a few times why I don’t go into management, and the simple answer is I really don’t want to.  I want out of the industry entirely, but haven’t been able to make that leap.

Partly this is because I’ve done a poor job of trying to get a replacement.  I have a resume, and I’ve submitted some applications, but nothing like the systematic full press that it takes to get things moving.  I’ve actually gotten some callbacks, and a few interviews (a higher ratio than I expected, really) but I never seem to be able to move past the first interview.  I already have a lot of anxiety around the whole job search process, and each rejection is just a little more demoralizing.

Another part of the problem is that at this point, I don’t really know what I would want to do.  I know I don’t want to work in sales.  I don’t want to spend my career convincing people to buy things that they don’t want or need.  Whether that’s a bottle of wine in a restaurant, or a piece of candy at the checkout counter, or a new car.  That sort of job isn’t in alignment with my values.  But knowing what I don’t want to do doesn’t tell me what I do want to do, or how to get there.

I have considered going back to school to get a master’s degree, but I do not want to make the mistake of getting yet another degree that gets me nowhere.  I do want to go back to school at some point, but I want to do it when I’ve entered a field that I enjoy and know I want to persue that path for a long time.

Back at the end of 2013, I met with a career counselor to talk about what I should do.  We went over my resume, and my experience, what I had studied and what my interests were.  When we talked about my small jewelry business, he said that we had landed where my passions lie.  He told me that I light up and become animated when I talk about my jewelry work.  And it’s true, I do love my jewelry work.  But I honestly don’t know if it’s the best idea to make it my career.

There is a big part of me that wants to move forward with it.  I love the time that I spend in my studio space, designing, creating.  I love being at Art Shows and interacting with my customers.  It’s a totally different experience from working as a server.  The people who come into my booth by and large respect what I do.  They see me as a real person, and not as some servant to order around.  As the owner, I have the ability to set boundaries around what I will and won’t do.  I also get the experience of collaborating with a customer to create something unique for them that they get to feel like they had a hand in designing.

But there are significant downsides to become a full-time Jewelry Artist.  I have to develop the discipline to keep working on pieces even when inspiration leaves me.  I have to learn so many more aspects of the business than just the simple creation of the jewelry, because I am responsible for everything.  And there’s no steady paycheck.  I only get paid when pieces sell, no matter how many hours I may put in.

While I do want the Jewelry business to continue to grow, I don’t really know what the stopping point for that growth is going to be.  And I am miserable in my foodservice job right now.  Even if I end up becoming a full-time Jewelry Artist eventually, I need a bridge to get me out of my current position and give me a steady paycheck while I build the business.

I had thought that I had found that bridge, but it isn’t working out that way.  Back in February, I took a second part-time job in the frame shop of a craft store.  My food service job has been giving me fewer and fewer hours over the past two years, and I’m not really making ends meet.  When I started the framing job, I was working three days a week in the evenings.  The pay was only minimum wage, but I enjoyed the work, and I thought it would get my foot in the door and be a path to a management position.

I love the framing job.  I get to create, to design, to work with my hands. It hits so many of the things that I love about the jewelry business, but includes a steady, if small, paycheck.  But I don’t make enough money there to leave the serving job.  I’ve already been asked about a management position, but while they would be offering me full time hours, they only want to pay $10 per hour.  I just don’t think I can live on that wage.

So this is where my career stands now.  I’m not happy where I am, and I’m not sure where I’m going, or how to get there.  This is the start of me reforging my career path.

An introduction

So here I sit, an empty text box before me, a new blog project begun.  I feel like I should say something profound here, but that is also keeping me from just sitting down and writing something and getting this show on the road. And so this is where I begin.

My name is Drake.  I am just over a month shy of my 35th birthday, and I feel like a failure as an adult.  I am desperately unhappy with so many parts of my life, I don’t even know where to start.

I graduated from College in 2008 with a degree in Sociology.  But I am still working in my college job as a server in the foodservice industry.  I have a small jewelry-making business which while I sort of have a dream of making it my career, I’m afraid of all that would have to be done to do so.

While I am by all accounts a fairly attractive person, I am unhappy with my body.  It’s not so much that I think of myself as fat or extremely unhealthy, it’s just that I know I could be in much better physical condition if I could only develop a little discipline.

My spiritual practice has been stagnant for a while now.  In some ways I could say that beyond the annual punctuation of a spiritual gathering I attend, it’s been fairly stagnant for a few years.  I have a sort of general faith, but my actual practice is incredibly sporadic.

My relationships, well, they are complicated.  I am queer and polyamorous.  I have a partner and two boyfriends.  My partner and I recently relocated to a new state to be closer to our boyfriends, and I have left what few friends I had behind.  I’ve had little contact with my family, and am not really sure what I want those relationships to be going forward.  I haven’t made any new friends here beyond casual acquaintances, and I’m not sure I really want to.

I have a sort of philosophical embrace of the concepts of minimalism and simplicity, but I haven’t been able to make a lot of headway in getting there.  While I did move to a much smaller apartment when I came here, and I did get rid of a lot of unnecessary things when I moved, I still have an attic full of things that should really be sorted through and evaluated for their worth.

So this is where I am right now.  Not really a beginning, since so many changes in my life have been happening over the past year.  But certainly not the end, either.  This is a blog about transformation.  About my life being reforged into something stronger, better than it has been up to this point.  I am inviting you to follow me as I take this journey to a life reforged.