Nimue Brown's Blog, page 155

The darkest hours and the dawn

The hardest thing today seems to be concentrating. Gathering my thoughts takes effort. I’m used to relying on my brain and my ability to work quickly. This is exhaustion in action, and hopefully having a few days off will improve things.

I need some space in order to think. I need to think about how not to mostly be in a run-down state of exhaustion and despair. 2020 hasn’t helped of course, but I’ve spent too many years too close to the edges, and it takes a toll.

There are things in the ether that might change a great deal for me. I might be back in a week or so with good news and ways forward. This might be the proverbial darkest hour before the dawn. Only that’s rubbish – I’ve sat up enough nights. You can see the dawn coming for ages, in the hour before the dawn the sky gets lighter. The darkest hour is some time in the middle of the night when you have no idea when the light will return and it starts to feel like the answer is ‘never’.

My thanks to everyone who piled in with support in recent weeks. It’s made a lot of difference. There is rest in my destiny, there is time to ponder, and there may be ways forward. I am at least at a point where I can imagine there could be ways forward, even if I can’t imagine much that is specifically good. It is progress on a few days ago – which really was the darkest hour by the looks of it. I hope so, at any rate.

Sacred Space

A rowan tree spirit, on rowan wood, created by Keith Healing. Now part of the family altar space.

Beyond Burnout

At the weekend it dawned on me that I couldn’t imagine anything good. I couldn’t think of anything restorative that I wanted to do, or that might make me feel better. Nor could I imagine ever feeling good or happy again. I can’t carry on like this.

I’m not even sure when I burned out this time, except that it was months ago. Instead of resting and recovering – my normal burnout response- I kept slogging on. There were reasons and I know what they were. I’ve never been to the land beyond burnout before, but it is not a pretty place. There’s very little aside from distress that I can actually feel and I’m stumbling around like some kind of half dead zombie thing, and have been for a while.

This is not a place from which it is easy to plan an escape. I have no idea what would make me feel better, so I’m going for the most reliable responses to mental health setbacks – more time outside and more rest. My energy levels are very low and have been so for months. Aside from weekends, I’ve only had a couple of days off this year because I couldn’t get on top of things. So I’m going to push myself over the next couple of days so that I can have some days off, and maybe some rest will help me plan things a bit.

Everything feels like pushing a rock up a hill. The hill is steep. My boots are made of lead. The rock is angry and hates me. There’s no joy in anything, and I am perpetually exhausted, and it is pretty obvious at this point that pushing the angry rock is not getting me anywhere better. Helpfully there is a guest blog coming up and I’ve planned some smaller blogs, so, this continues as does the Hopeless Maine blog – thanks to contributions from others. I’m going to take a break from social media, and from news, and I’m going to try not to feel totally responsible for looking after other people. So if I am quiet other places, this will be why.

Green Hazel

Earlier in the autumn I wrote about seeing hazel trees with green leaves and catkins on. I don’t think it’s something I’d seen before. Usually the hazel leaves have gone by the time the catkins are obvious. It is December. In my childhood, December meant bare branches on anything deciduous. Many of the trees round here have now shed their leaves, but from my window I can see the distinctive copper of a beach still wearing autumn colours.

There are two hazels near here, one of which has yellow leaves and one of which is still largely in leaf, and mostly green. I’ve not been very far in the daylight lately, so I’m not up to date on other trees in my area, but these two have not really got to autumn yet, and it is December.

The idea of the wheel of the year is crucial to many Pagans. That wheel was never accurate for everyone, and the 8 festivals favoured by twentieth century Paganism didn’t always make sense in different contexts around the world. What happens to the wheel of the year as climate chaos impacts on our landscapes? What new seasons will emerge, if any? What will we celebrate? What will seem significant as part of our journeys through the year?

Self esteem and pain

Ongoing pain can really undermine a person. It takes a toll in wellbeing, it eats away at your confidence, and it can undermine you feelings of self worth and self esteem. This can be especially bad if you need to hide your pain for the benefit of the comfortable people around you. Having to do everything a well person would do, but while hurting and pretending not to hurt is a course of action that may easily leave you feeling like you’re not a real person.

I’m heartily sick of seeing people who are suffering getting told off on social media for talking about their discomfort. I’m weary of people who are ‘depressed’ by other people’s difficulties and feel the right answer is to make the person who is suffering feel guilty and ashamed for talking about it, so as to shut them up. This adds more layers of suffering for a person who is already in trouble. We need to stop sacrificing people who are in distress just to maintain the ease of people who are already having a better time of it.

I wish we had the support in place that meant people who are ill could reliably afford to rest. I wish illness did not radically increase your risks of living in poverty. I wish we did not measure people so much by their economic activity. I wish there was more scope for people to heal and recover when they need to. I imagine a society in which no one was expected to push relentlessly through pain and suffering, and where we were not so quick to assume that someone struggling is lazy, or not trying hard enough.

Living with pain will eat away at your sense of self if there is no scope for that pain to even matter. If your life does not allow you to take care of yourself, if there is no one to help you, give you breaks or take care of you, suffering is inevitable. When your self esteem is constantly undermined in this way, it is that bit harder to hold boundaries, protect yourself or ask for what you need. And so you trudge on, hurting and exhausted, because trudging on seems to be the only option.

What would it take to change that? The answer isn’t about personal changes, and it should not be the responsibility of people who are suffering to find individual solutions to systemic problems. We need a kinder society where taking care of people matters, where there is economic support for whoever needs it, and medical care free at the point of delivery. We need a work culture that won’t punish you for being ill, and won’t break you with needless stress in the first place. We need the time and energy to take care of ourselves. It would be revolutionary to start treating quality of life like it matters, and not as a perk for those who enjoy the accident of being born into the most privilege.

Ghosts Of Wit: A Grimoire For The Apocalypse

Penny Blake books are always well worth a read…

Blake And Wight . com

Happy holidays my lovelies! Well – I’m about to start mine anyway and I hope you all have splendiferously spectacular things planned as well!

Knowledge should be free – and so should fun! – so I’ve made my Grimoire For The Apocalypse available as a free PDF just in time for Crimbo.

It’s a rainy day activity book for bored magicians in lockdown full of playful stuff that works but is also fun and subversive.

And it includes a bonus short story: a tongue- in – cheek Magician’s Journey crammed full of Easter eggs which, if you find them all, give a lil potted history of magic (well, westish magic anyway!)

It’s licenced under Creative Commons so it’s fine to share as well. Or if you prefer paperback I’ve set the price at print-cost. (Which imho is still horrendously expensive!)

Happy festive wishes however you celebrate the season, and if…

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Seasonal Exhaustion

It is mid December and as usual for this time of year, I’m exhausted. The reasons are different from other years, but the outcomes are much the same. In previous years I’ve been out working Christmas markets, having had to work extra hard in the days leading up to it, to clear my regular online work so as to make the time. In recent years I’ve also worked evening events – often other people’s seasonal parties. Late nights, then up early to do the markets. One year I did a market day and an evening event until 3 in the morning.

Usually I’m trying to figure out how and when the festive gift shopping and wrapping is going to happen. Trying to cut down on seasonal waste, I’ve made gift bags for several years running, and home-made gifts. Last year I made crackers and re-usable fabric hats. Which all takes time and planning and work and effort.

Some years I’ve managed to take time off between Christmas and New Year and often this is my one week off in the year and I can’t always manage it. I’m doing a lot less festive work this year, but the extra push to get time off may be beyond me. Perhaps I’ll be able to have a long weekend.

Christmas always means exhaustion. This year, between covid, and Tom having had a stroke, I’ve made it very clear that I’m just not doing the things. I’m not making anything for anyone else at the moment. I’m not shopping, or making bags. There’s an economic impact to not doing the markets but I’m so glad covid-caution persuaded us not to because Tom recovering from a stroke really can’t work that way this year and I cannot do it on my own. There’s too much to carry around.

Most years, I don’t really have time or energy to do much for midwinter – which is my festival, because of what I end up doing for Christmas. Perhaps this year I will be able to do something other than work.  

Arrogance, entitlement and ignorance

As a trio, they’re entirely unpleasant. These are human qualities that often show up together. People with strong feelings of entitlement expect everyone else to smooth the way for them. They underestimate the scale and value of work other people do, tending to only see their own role, or their entitlement to have that done for them. Often they do not understand what’s involved in getting a job done and they do not care to find out, leaving it to others to work out how to round up their unicorns for them.

There’s a great deal of this visible in British politics at the moment. Especially around Brexit. Little things like not really grasping we’re an island, or the importance of lorries bringing food from abroad. But when you’re rich enough not to have to worry whether you can afford to eat, why would that matter? Being ignorant of the harm done to people doesn’t worry those who consider themselves more important and entitled to better than average.

What can we do? Most of us can only consider such issues on the personal scale. Check yourself first – because that’s always the right place to start. Are you properly aware of who is working on your behalf? Especially unpaid work in the domestic sphere. How do you treat the people who work for you? The waiting staff, the bus drivers, the receptionists and all the other working people you might encounter regularly? Do you treat them with respect? Do you trust them to know what’s possible and what isn’t? Do you hide behind ignorance when that’s convenient to you or do you square up to learning from other people?

If you’re dealing with someone who is arrogant, entitled and ignorant, what do you do? It may be worth trying to educate them – they won’t thank you for it and they may become hostile but if you’ve got the resources, it is worth a go. In some situations a work to rule approach is best. Do exactly what’s in your job description and contract, and nothing more. Do exactly what they tell you to do – but get it in writing first. If they ask you to work longer, tell them you are expecting overtime. It isn’t always easy to resist being used and bullied, but it is worth a go, and entitled people will use you remorselessly if they can get away with it. It can be helpful to remember that if something isn’t ethical, it isn’t ethical having it done to you, and that saying no is about more than protecting your own wellbeing. If you are the kind of person who finds it hard to hold boundaries and protect yourself, doing it as an ethical choice to also try and protect others can feel easier.

And don’t vote them back into positions of power come election time.

Do your own research!

There’s nothing like someone telling you to do your own research to flag up that they don’t understand science. Or research. Or the internet. Research is something that takes time, evidence and scrutiny. It might be fairer to say ‘educate yourself’ if you’re trying to challenge someone – that’s often the response of weary activists faced with people who want stuff explaining to them. ‘Educate yourself’ is a good idea. ‘Do your own research’ is usually the expression of someone who is buying into drivel.

It is true that historically, people doing the cutting edge thinking were often reviled by their peers. You can find it in many different disciplines. However, there has been some learning from all of this – which is why we have peer review, why results are tested, why we question assumptions as much as we can. It is not the case that being a lone maverick, rejected by the wider community means that you must be right.

It doesn’t help that conspiracies certainly do exist – and in our recent history that’s meant covering up the harmful impact of sugar, smoking, and fossil fuels amongst other things. It is always worth asking who benefits, and where the money goes. Science, research and thinking all exist within a market economy and so much depends on what you can sell, and for how much, and who thinks it might be worth funding.

If you want to educate yourself, here are some things I can recommend.  Be wary of anyone making very confident claims about ‘facts’ – this is not the language of science and research. More cautious sites are more plausible. ‘The evidence suggests’ is the tone to look for. Ideally, any site offering you conclusions about research will offer links to the studies it refers to. They might be beyond your reading capacity, but often will have a summery that a non-expert (like me) can make some sense of.

It’s also worth checking out ‘experts’ by sticking their names in search engines. An actual expert will likely have a publishing record, and a bunch of people who agree and disagree with them, and you can quickly get a sense of how they are perceived. It is easy to announce that you are a professor at a leading university – I could tell you that I am. I’d be lying, and you could easily find that out, but only if you looked. If my argument was the one you wanted to hear, you might not feel like you had to check out my credentials.

We’re likely to be more persuaded by theories that fit our existing beliefs, and likely to reject ideas that don’t sit well in all of that. Pushing past that is hard. If you want to be on top of an issue, it might not mean you have to listen to all sides of the ‘argument’ especially if some of that is coming from unqualified people, based on misinterpretation or wilfully misleading. There aren’t always two real sides to a thing. Asserting that there should be a debate is not proof that there should be a debate. It is possible to be open minded, and able to change your mind, without having to be swayed by every ill-formed opinion. If you find you need to form an opinion on something important, don’t ‘do your research’, educate yourself about what’s going on.

Midwinter trees

At this time of year, the view from my living room window is of bare branches. The sun sets behind them, late in the afternoon. Most days, I sit somewhere I can watch the changing light. It’s often one of the most colour rich moments of the day. Sometimes, the winter sky is a dramatic blue as we shift towards night time.

I’ve tried to capture something of this with these small pen drawings. I’m also trying to be more relaxed about letting the pens look like pens. I’m trying to figure out how to work with the things that pens do, rather than pushing against it, but I’ve a way to go…