I’ve never been good at public speaking. In fact, I hate it. Which sucks, given the path I chose within my Grove. I have to over-come my issues because I’ll soon be teaching more, and leading rituals. Today, I had to teach a class on ritual. I was barely prepared due to the nervousness, and thinking that I would remember the gaps on my notes during my discussion. I spent a lot of time back-tracking, due to forgetting stuff. But it was a good class, my brothers and sisters understand that I have this difficulty. Today was good. My face didn’t flush, even though it was obvious I was having issues. My mentor didn’t interject with me, as he did with everyone else, which was a positive sign. My brothers and sisters helped me out, given that everyone else’s class had outlines already given to them and Ritual is something that never gets written down. I’m happy with how I did, even though I still think I wasn’t up to par.

With that said, I’ve decided to start checking out schools and at least enrolling at a Jr College, to get my undergrad Psych credits. I’m going back to school to get my Master’s in psychology so I can get certified to be a councellor. I think it’ll make a great addition to the work I’m already doing. It’ll also give me another avenue of exploration within myself.

Scorpio for this week:

Happy Valentine Daze, Scorpio! To begin our meditation on love, let’s turn our attention to Abhishek Parikh, an Indian man who claims to be the reincarnation of a very special woman. In his present life as well as in his last one, he believes he has served as the wife of the snake god Naagraaj. To perform his wifely duties, he sometimes transforms into a female snake himself, though he always returns to his male human form. I bring this up, Scorpio, because I think that you yourself have the potential of getting intimate with a snake god or snake goddess in the coming weeks. My gut instinct tells me so, and so does my analysis of the astrological omens. You don’t have to become the deity’s full-time wife or husband; being a part-time companion or apprentice will be just fine.

FreeWill Astrology

Oh boy. More later.

Alright, I haven’t talked about the Boy Toy in a while, because I was hoping he’d just go away like the disposable boy he is… So anyway, we all know that when I stop talking to someone, it’s not always because I’m pissed, but because I usually don’t feel they’re worth my time. In this case, he is a source of amusement, because he’s trying to make out my lack of response as being bitter or some such boyish nonsense (heaven forbid I actually don’t give a constipated shit about him). Anyway, I get this in my mailbox, with the subject of “Cutie pie”: Alright sweetie – when you are ready to talk just lemme know. You have no reason to feel embarassed – u tried your best.

Now, first thing, it’s next to impossible to embarass me, especially in regards to something I went into just for the sheer fun of it. The fight wasn’t some proving ground to me, it wasn’t some “dominate the male” bullshit. It was sheer amusement, in fact, I laughed hysterically the entire way home and I have 2 people I was talking to who can back me up on that.

So anyway, Boy Toy, you’re making an ass of yourself, and every email you send will promptly be placed here so that the rest of the world can see it. Get over it. You’re nothing to me, you never will be anything other than “that guy I hopped on the mat with.” Of course, I could post the pics of you getting your ass kicked by someone smaller than me (which, nice omission of fact on that fight, I guess if you don’t mention it, you can’t really be called out on a lie).

Have a nice life, enjoy being in backyard movies of girls beating you up, and I’m glad someone out there is willing to pay you to get off. I, however, will not be one of them. I have guys more worth my while to spend my mat time with.

Oh yeah, have I mentioned you come off as desperate? Seriously.

Things are going well, lately. I’m happy. Went to see Underworld: Evolution last night. Definite cool date movie – blood, violence, vampire sex…. I found it amusing that they avoided the Whitewolf issue this time by calling the “abomination” a hybrid. Kinda amusing how someone could launch a lawsuit based on a definition, hell, the screenwriters even used the word correctly. Anyway, I’m sure someone is gonna come up with some justification, so let me just say that I found the lawsuit stupid and no one’s going to change that opinion.

Now, onto other things, the commercials for the Winter Olympics are bloody cool! My bedroom kicks ass! Lots o’ purple!!!!!! hehehehehe.

Scorpio for this week:

This isn’t always the case, Scorpio, but right now you have a certain resemblance to that type of wild iris known as blue-eyed grass. Its stem isn’t hardy enough to hold up more than one flower blossom at a time; before a new bloom sprouts, therefore, the old one has to wither. Similarly, you can’t and shouldn’t try to work on more than a single labor of love, at least for the next week. Devote all your concentration and care to it, ignoring the other possibilities. And don’t worry: This narrowing of your focus is a good thing.

FreeWill Astrology

Heh, well, at least one is down. No kickboxing for this week, and possibly no BJJ for next week. A heavy weight knocked my elbow out of commission.

Other than that, things on the homefront are improving, and I’m starting to balance out. A decent paycheck was helpful, as it’s UFC ticket purchasing time this weekend. *sigh* It is nice to pare down what I need to focus on.

It dawned on me today, I’ve isolated myself from myself. The inner bitch that protects me from others, also protected me from my true nature. I’m a very giving person, she kept me from giving too much, even though she came off as extremely selfish. I don’t know why I alienated her, she never deserved it, and she stood her ground pretty well when someone else tried to evict her from my conscious. But I’m the one that betrayed her. I stopped talking to her, in an effort to grow into the person I figured I was to be. I started giving to everyone, except myself. Least, in the emotional sense, not the material sense.

In coming to work today, I realized that I wanted to do nothing but break down in tears. But again, I had clients who needed me, my priorities were again, outside of me. It’s a bad habit I’ve developed, in effort to keep myself alive, literally. Many a time, have my starts at suicide been broken by the fact that my cats are dependent upon me, not anyone else. I think if they were removed from me, it would break me because they are the one thing that I really consider when I’m in those dark spaces of myself.

But along that, I’m also becoming numb again. It’s an endless cycle for me, mainly due to it’s easy nature as a catch-all for dealing with emotions. I’m a bit overwhelmed by everything, ready to cast aside any relationship, including those I seek for greater than their current existence. I find it easier to just cast them aside and let them slide down into the mud pit of non-existence. It’s easier than having to decide if what I see there is what is actually there, or if there’s some hidden meaning attached to it. When I take things at face value, I tend to find later, that I missed a clue that I was supposed to get. When I take things at a literary value, I find that those are the times when it’s only what I see, that I am supposed to see.

I live my life in my heart. One of my clients pointed that out to me the other day. And it’s very true. My downfall is that I care too much. I feel too much, and I don’t know how to deal with it. I know all the emotions, especially anger – and probably more than most of my friends know it. I know love, I know when it hits me, and I know when it hits me hard. Which is one of the boots that kicked me into the abyss this time around. The things we do for love. It’s maddening because it makes us do things that are complete antithesis to who we are as an individual. It makes us stupid and it gives us our greatest fears. It turns us to blubbering fools when we should be concrete against an invading body. But, on the other-hand, it also sparks us to go beyond who we are and what we are capable of. It pushes us to be better, to put our lives in the hand of s/he who has also placed their life in our hands.

But is that really all there is?

Scorpio for this week:

“At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self,” wrote Irish playwright Brendan Francis Behan. Let these words serve as your guiding light in the coming weeks, Scorpio. They should inspire you to be brave enough to confront the feelings of isolation that fester in your depths. That will in turn motivate you to reconnect with the parts of your psyche you were cut off from during times of trauma and unconsciousness in the past.

FreeWill Astrology

The boy is on time for once, and I concur. I have a week of nothing but me and a mat to begin my search.

I sit here, waiting to hit up the Doc. Posted to my spiritual blog this morning, the ritual set-up I’m going to put into place at the office. Had a long conversation with my mum about expectations in relationships, having to sit down with myself and decide where my priorities lie in having one. It hurt, I still tear up about it. But it was nice to finally have her understand that somethings that require a relationship (e.g. marriage and kids) are not a high priority on my to-do list, and find out that I’m not the only female in our family to run into that issue. Having a relationship, to me, is a nice thing to have. It is a want, not a need. I want certain people in my life, in certain capacities, they are the whipcream topping on a nice piece of pumpkin pie. They are there to bring greater meaning to my life, and hopefully I can provide that for them, as well. They are there for me to lean-on, and for me to support when the need requires it. I see it more as a give and take role, not a 50-50 partnership where everyone pulls their own weight 100% of the time. This is why relationships require so much communication and understanding. Its a language in its own, separate from the different languages spoken by each individual within it and each person needs to put forth the effort to speak this new language. It can’t be a case where only one is learning a new language. That makes things one-sided and makes it an individual relationship, instead of a inter-personal relationship.

I have to ask these questions of myself right now, between my focus on my training, and the care I have to put forth towards my clients, I have to decide what I need. I can’t spend my entire day with my focus outside of myself, right now, the only time that I can focus on myself is when I’m on the mat. Even with my training partner, my growth as a fighter is all within me and how I act and react towards my training partner, to help each other grow. I’d like to be able to have a couple of hours, where I can place my care in the hands of someone else, but I can’t trust that happening, unless I’m seeing my therapist, or setting aside a pamper day where I go and have a spa day. But again, that’s me doing all that. I’ve talked of the desire to just collapse, and being the weak one, but I can’t. I never can, because then I have to rely on my own strength to get me through it. There is no one outside of myself that I can fully depend on to be there, not that I’d fully want that either, because that’s not something I want to burden someone with, nor do I believe I can find someone who’d truly be willing to shoulder that voluntarily.

But where do I go from here? I guess that is up to the winds, should I allow them to carry me as they see fit. Or maybe, the answer lies in the questioning of my mentor…..”Which is more important to you, work, or magic?” As I turn that question around in my head, it’s quite clear that magic is more important, because when I look at it, everything I do is magic. Down to the bodywork I do on people, to the strength I seek on the mat.