Changing Gears for the Holidays

Well, even though it is Thursday and my vacation was supposed to start on Monday, I am only today starting my vacation from work. Yes, that means that I was having to focus intently on solving some last minute problems with the project that I had been working on since March through yesterday. However, after a 30 minute phone conversation with my boss today, all of the outstanding issues have been resolved. I am now free to pivot from a mostly work related mind-set to one of being a free-soul able to indulge and engage with everything that was put on a back-burner, especially my article writing tasks for this blog. I have been remiss in posting regular articles because I have been putting in long days trying to solve problems at my job that are quite beyond my official technical role. I performed far above and beyond the call of duty, but we shall see what that gets me after the annual evaluations are completed in February.

More than anything, I need a bit of time to catch my breath, change from being the ardent professional to the experimental occultist and ritual magician. It is the kind of pivot that usually gives me a great deal of pleasure, but this time I just feel a bit worn out and exhausted. I really need some time to unwind and disengage from work-related issues. While I might briefly envy those magicians who don’t have a day job to interfere with their occult activities, on the other hand, I am happy that I don’t have a lot of worries about how to pay the bills, supply my larder with foodstuffs or put a roof over my head. My day job takes care of all of these basic concerns, but the price is that I sometimes will be quite busily engaged with work and not with any of my spiritual and magical activities. That will change starting today, but first I need to chill out, and most definitely, clean up my house and perform a lot of untended domestic tasks. My household needs a couple of days of cleaning and squaring away, so that’s what I will be doing over the next few days.

Additionally, my lady, Grace, is graduating tomorrow from her long three year slog at getting a master’s degree. I get to attend her graduation ceremony and see her in cap and gown, noting the moment when the cap tassel is switched from one side to the other indicating a successful completion to her scholastic endeavors. She then has six months of clinical training to undergo, and then she has to study for her board exams in the summer, so it won’t too long before she will have successfully transitioned herself to a new career. I am glad that I was able to help her in this endeavor.

So, there’s a lot going on right now, and that’s why it’s going to be a little while before I get back to producing the usual number of articles a month. One wonderful thing that has happened is that I got two initial copies of my book “Magical Qabalah for Beginners” and I have been looking over the finished and now published copy of this book with a great deal of joy and admiration. It took me nearly two years to get this book into print, but the final results are very much worth it. This is probably the very best book that I have ever written, and the editing was quite excellent as well. It is a very accessible book to readers at a high school level, but it also has enough interesting lore to make it a worth-while buy for knowledgeable students as well. Anyway, the book is now available on Amazon dot com, and it should be in book stores and also available from Llewellyn Worldwide directly in the next few weeks. While I would prefer that my readers order this book from Llewellyn or from their favorite bookstore, it is also available from online booksellers, too.

Next year I am planning some book signing/mini workshop ventures at two local book stores in the Twin Cities area. Other venues will also be added as time goes on. I am planning (so far) to attend Pantheacon next year, but all four of my workshop proposals were sadly rejected, for various reasons beyond my speculation. Supposedly, Pcon staff received vastly more proposals this year than at any time in the past, so that might explain why none of my classes were deemed of sufficient interest to be chosen for this coming year’s schedule. That would also mean that the number of attendees is also at a level beyond any that I have experienced previously. This will likely make it a very crowded convention that will challenge the staff and the hotel where it is to be held. We shall see if that is the case, and it might be a good reason not to attend this venue in the future. I suspect that Pcon may have gotten too large to be sustainable.

Anyway, that’s all I got to say at this time. I am looking forward to the holidays and I will post some articles during that period as well. Have a safe and great weekend, and if you can, go and see the first installment of the movie version of Tolkein’s the Hobbit.

Frater Barrabbas