(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

Working Woo Practitioner—The Next Steps in a Great Journey

I’m going to pause in the sto­ry of my being called by The Mor­ri­g­an three years ago to talk about some­thing with Her that’s going on right NOW in my spir­i­tu­al prac­tice and life.

Recently—through dreams mostly—Herself has been call­ing me to change the entire shape and nature of the work I do in my day-to-day life, the devo­tions I take and make for her, and the way I serve my com­mu­ni­ty. My phys­i­cal and men­tal and emo­tion­al pres­ence as I move through the world. It’s this whole….package of new tasks she wants me to under­take to serve my com­mu­ni­ty. Every­thing from hold­ing space for griev­ing folks to learn­ing Irish pagan lore to a deep pro­fi­cien­cy in mar­tial arts train­ing to get­ting cer­ti­fied to do mar­riages. There is some ques­tion about how I’m going to do all this new work and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice and still get the rent paid, but I think most of these skills—if not all of them—can con­tribute in some way to an income. I also don’t plan on stop­ping my cur­rent writ­ing, although I’m learn­ing the hard way that I’m not sure I can stay with it as intense­ly as I have before.

So I’ve got this whole break­down for learn­ing times for the new work and how I can con­tin­ue to sur­vive cap­i­tal­ism while devel­op­ing these skills and then lat­er serv­ing my com­mu­ni­ty in all the ways that have been com­ing up for me. I have this infor­ma­tion on a spread­sheet, but I’m post­ing it here to kind of use y’all as an account­abil­i­ty bud­dy and to let you know how much is going on. 

Things that are going to take years:

Music (5–10 years): 

Yeah, I’m still on my bull­shit with this one. (For those who’ve been fol­low­ing me for a while, I’ve been try­ing to get some sort of instru­ment study going for years. I might even want to try to find an Irish harp some day. I almost bought one right before I met Rhap­sody, but I was in the mid­dle of fig­ur­ing out exact­ly how many strings I want­ed and what mak­ers made for a qual­i­ty instru­ment when I met her and got side­lined for a cou­ple of years with every­thing from mis­car­riages to mar­riages to can­cer to a death in my imme­di­ate cir­cles.) I need to get back to mak­ing a steady income that does a lit­tle more than bare­ly pay­ing the bills before I’m will­ing to drop the front end cost on even a starter instrument—they are SPENDY!— but I’m kind of seri­ous about get­ting back into music (I’ve missed hav­ing it in my life), and I real­ly want it to be the harp. In the mean­time, I have an elec­tric key­board with piano sized keys and piano flu­en­cy tends to trans­late pret­ty well to a lot of oth­er instru­ments. I don’t know that this’ll ever be a part of my “sur­vive cap­i­tal­ism” strat­e­gy. I don’t have any ludi­crous fan­tasies of rock­ing the elec­tric harp on stage or any­thing. Also, mas­tery takes a long long time. Harps are noto­ri­ous­ly hard—their pro­fi­cien­cy used to be a sign of the kind of years of study only nobil­i­ty could real­ly invest in. But it’s a way to return dis­ci­pline, rou­tine, focus, and music to my life.

Martial Arts (2–4 years): 

There are lots of schools around me. I’ll decide when I’m on bet­ter finan­cial foot­ing. My rec­ol­lec­tion from my 20s (when I had years of train­ing from mul­ti­ple schools) is that with­in about 3–5 years, one can start to teach. In most schools, that teach­ing lets you either get free tuition and/or some pit­tance pay for teach­ing the new recruits.

Fitness Training/Fitness Instruction (2 years): 

This was the first thing I knocked out because it trans­lates the most direct­ly to income. (Even though I offer a slid­ing scale and try my very best to I took the class­es.

Things that are going to take months:

Irish Pagan Lore (6 months x 2): 

The work I’m going to be doing is going to car­ry me deep­er and deep­er into a high­er-pro­file com­mu­ni­ty role and place me right in the mid­dle of at least a few ques­tions. Ques­tions about who The Mor­ri­g­an is, what She wants, and how some­one who wants to work with Her can start that jour­ney. Right now I can deflect ques­tions like that to author­i­ties I trust—and I can still do that for the most arcane high-speed curve balls—but I’ll need to be able to han­dle a few of the basics on my own.

I’ve tak­ing the Mor­ri­g­an Intensive—a six month rig­or­ous course in The Mor­ri­g­an lore, mod­ern prac­tice, priest­hood, and devotionals—so that I can nav­i­gate, and per­haps speak to a few more things with com­pre­hen­sion. (I won’t go so far as to say with “author­i­ty,” but I know more than even most casu­al devo­tees.) I don’t know that this will nec­es­sar­i­ly turn into any­thing spe­cif­ic to help me keep the rent paid so much as sim­ply direct the focus and direc­tion of my work, but I think that every­thing else I’m about to under­take will be served by a rock-sol­id under­stand­ing of the lore and a deep ground­ing with­in the the­ol­o­gy that I mean to car­ry into those acts of ser­vice.

This is an inten­sive, six-month course, and I am already plan­ning on tak­ing it again (although with a one or two year break in between) to max­i­mize what I get out of both runs.

Tarot/Ogham/Divination (2 months [Tarot]/6 months [Ogham]):

Tarot took a long time and does­n’t make me much yet, but I have been offer­ing my ser­vices and a few peo­ple have tak­en me up on it.

Ogham is a much more com­pli­cat­ed sub­ject. I don’t real­ly know or under­stand it at all…particularly how it gets used in div­ina­tion, so I’d be start­ing from square one with that one. Maybe even square zero. What I can prob­a­bly be pro­fi­cient in in a cou­ple of months of ded­i­cat­ing myself to Tarot is like­ly to take me at least six months (longer) with Ogham.

Death Doula (7 weeks?): 

Going through the grief process with Rhap­sody on the out­side of the grief itself was prob­a­bly one of the hard­est things I’ve done that I had a choice about. (Can­cer was cer­tain­ly worse, but I could­n’t exact­ly opt out.) But being there to hold space for grief was also deeply and pro­found­ly reward­ing work. I could real­ly feel the dif­fer­ence I made from day to day. Dur­ing a moment of reflec­tion and med­i­ta­tion, I had a very pow­er­ful sense that this was some of the work The Mor­ri­g­an want­ed me to do. This was a call­ing. 

All these things on this list have involved a sim­i­lar sense of work I’m being called to do, but this one was par­tic­u­lar­ly strange since I had nev­er even heard of any­thing like it before. In fact, I was describ­ing what it was that I want­ed to do—just help peo­ple through the process of their end of life and/or fam­i­lies with grief—and some­one said to me: “That sounds a lot like a death doula.” I looked it up, and that’s pret­ty spot on what I was envi­sion­ing. 

This is anoth­er one I’m not sure on the tim­ing. I’m see­ing every­thing from a three day inten­sive to a sev­en week course. I have some­one I’m going to talk to, and try to get some answers about where to start a reli­able and cred­i­ble pro­gram.

Things that will be instant, very fast, or I’m already doing:

Officiant:

It does­n’t take long to be able to offi­ci­ate wed­dings. A few hours in an after­noon can get you going in Cal­i­for­nia. It’s more about bureau­crat­ic paper­work than any­thing. Cross a few T’s. Dot a few I’s. Start mar­ry­ing peo­ple. I don’t real­ly expect this to be a cash cow (or even a side gig), but I do know that the offi­ciant usu­al­ly gets some kind of gra­tu­ity for their time. 

Writing:

Writ­ing. Writ­ing more. And writ­ing more on cer­tain top­ics. 

While I have no inten­tion of stop­ping Writ­ing About Writ­ing, the kind of writ­ing I do will prob­a­bly shift focus as well. As I’ve men­tioned, I plan on writ­ing more about my woo-woo adven­tures, the things I’m learn­ing, and how I am incor­po­rat­ing stuff in my life. And for those of you who have enjoyed my social jus­tice posts in the past, I’m being tasked with get­ting back to that work as well. All this and of course the same writ­ing that I’ve been doing on process and craft…and more.

It’s an excit­ing time. I have spent my life being excit­ed about how to bet­ter to build and serve com­mu­ni­ty. How­ev­er I need to fig­ure out how to mon­e­tize all these acts of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. Not because I par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­ish the idea of being a mer­ce­nary about what should be giv­en freely. I don’t mind pass­ing the hat or using slid­ing scales or even giv­ing peo­ple ser­vices they can’t oth­er­wise afford, but I will need to keep the lights on as well. 

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