Fri. June 28, 2024: A Day of Alignment

image courtesy of Deborah Bates via pixabay.com

Friday, June 28, 2024

Waning Moon

Pluto Retrograde

Saturn goes retrograde TOMORROW

Sunny and pleasant

I can’t believe another week has flown past!

Saturn goes retrograde tomorrow. It’s the planet of life lessons. If you didn’t learn and adjust from last year’s Saturn retrograde, Saturn will smack you upside the head again until you pay attention, learn, and grow. It’s retrograde until mid-November. (This is different than the Saturn Return, which happens once every 28 years).

I’ve loved having so much of the early part of the year retrograde free, but (except for Mercury), I’ve felt like I’ve had a lot of forward motion without respite (which is both good and exhausting), and I’m grateful for the slowing down of these retrogrades in this part of the year.

Meditation was good. Charlotte was delighted. She will miss the Thursday sessions even more than I will!

I know we keep getting reassured that it will start up again in September, but my gut feeling is that this is it. Which is fine, although I will miss it. I am grateful for the four years of time with the group, especially beginning during the first September of the pandemic.

I adapted a bunch of DD episodes into three chapters of “A Stylish Death” and made some tweaks. Multiple chapters per day keeps the flow stronger, because I can work with the way the chapters relate to each other.

Early lunch, and then I had my ZOOM meeting with Daniel Callahan, which was terrific. He’d gone over the materials I sent ahead of time, and he just got me from the first minute. Totally understood where I was coming from and what I’m trying to do. And how I’m trying to come out of fear/survival mode and not make choices based on that.

We had a fantastic hour together, and came up with positive actions I can take to fulfill my vision of more financial stability working within my field. So many other people, throughout, told me that I had to take any job and be miserable just to get by (I did some of that in my previous location and I was miserable). Daniel’s encouragement was, “These are your strengths; let’s find good matches.”

I have a list of actions to take, including some research on a few places with whom I already have connections to see how to make better use of them professionally, and I’m working on pitches for both more teaching work and more article assignments. There’s already a book festival only a few hours away next summer that I would like to attend as a presenter. They open for pitches later this autumn, and I will send one. I missed the call this year, because I wasn’t paying attention. I will also follow up with an organization with whom I was in touch last year, and they expressed interest “in the future” but neither of us followed up, so I will follow up. So far this year, I’ve only pitched a single article, and I need to be more diligent about that. Even though that works over a longer time frame, it’s work I enjoy, and, when I find the right publications, the pay is reasonable.

We talked about the Fearless Ink postcards. I’ve kind of missed the boat on that for the summer, so I will get cards printed once I return from NY and do a mailing in autumn.

I’m still considering seeking a part-time (20-30 hours if it meets my rate) remote writing whatever in a more corporate setting from November to February, but I’m not as frantic about it as I was, say, yesterday.

We also talked about going after more grants and residencies. I do that regularly, but we agreed on a quarterly goal. He pointed out how it was about the numbers; I have to write a whole lot of them to get a few of them. I’ve been spoiled these past months, in landing all but one of the grants to which I applied.

We also talked about tapping into the Llewellyn audience. We bounced around various ideas and how the different names have become established and entrenched. What we came up with was only doing a single new social media presence under the Cerridwen Iris Shea name, which will be on Instagram. That platform makes the most sense. I can handle two Insta accounts, along with the other social media accounts under the DE name. I can’t handle another half a dozen CIS accounts. We talked about the aesthetic for the account (since he is a visual artist, among other disciplines, that was very helpful). I had started that with the website updating and creating a logo for the articles I’m organizing and repurposing into eBooks, which should be ready to go early next year.

We talked about ways to get back on track marketing the Topic Workbooks. When they’re marketed, they sell steadily. So let’s get back on track with the marketing.

Even though there’s a nice big list of Stuff To Do, it doesn’t feel like piling way more on my plate; just making choices on what to build around the daily writing that will continue (because if you don’t write it, you can’t market it). His position was that I already have the answers; he’s just helping me pull them out and shape them.

We talked about the sense of burnout on the script coverage front.

I’m figuring there are about two years where I have to pile a lot on my plate with all these different things in order to see where I can then cut back. But all of these things align with work I enjoy, so it makes sense.

I started creating posts for the Cerridwen Iris Shea account. I will launch that with the new moon on July 5th and have a month’s worth of posts ready to go initially, and then see how to find a more natural flow for it. It is much more curated/styled than the Devon account, which I’m very clear is my “fun” account about anything that catches my interest.

I did, however, also do a “re-introduction” Insta post for the Devon account.

By starting the CIS account now, it gives it a chance to build before the 2025 Spell-A-Day books drop in August. And then I can leverage that. That timing works.

I will work on LOI materials next week, and start sending them out a few days after the long holiday weekend. This way, they are out the door before I go to NY for my reading, and I’m not fretting about them, because I have other things to focus on. And it positions things for autumn into winter.

I have a lot of the bits for proposals and grants and LOIS: bio info, work samples, etc. It’s using the techniques I talk about in SETTING UP YOUR SUBMISSION SYSTEM, but using it for work that’s not necessarily fiction.

So that was all good.

Cooked dinner, got changed, and headed out the door for the Midsummer Ritual led by Wild Soul River at the Clark. It was in the meadow on the hill above the museum, and just gorgeous. There were over 60 people there (and great to see so many happy faces from tarot circle). It was a wonderful ritual, and for it to happen right after such a good session about aligning the work was again, great timing. I’m so glad I could participate.

Because of the unpredictable winds, we did not burn the effigy; that will happen at some other point.

Walking back down to the parking lot through the darkening woods was like entering an enchanted forest. They had lanterns with large, battery-operated candles lighting the path, which was lovely.

It took awhile to get settled again when I got home. Once I got to sleep, though, I slept well.

On today’s agenda: work on a short story, do some more adaptation for “A Stylish Death”, do some LOI research, and a library run. I have a bunch of scripts in the queue, and may get more for the weekend. Since I didn’t read some days earlier in the week, it’s fine. I still won’t be where I wanted to be for the pay period, but I’ll be better than I am now!

Hopefully, there will be plenty of work the next two weeks, before I head to NY.

Looking ahead to the weekend, I have script coverage, writing, and two books to read for review. I’m also going to an herbal workshop tomorrow morning at the Clark.

Next week, I’m taking a workshop, through the cohort, about artist finances, which I think will align nicely with the other work.

Have a good one, and I’ll catch you on the other side!