A Question of Inks and Politics

 The other day I was surprised to find a post or a tweet or something like that from Goulet Pens, an online fountainpen & ink store, that stated that due that it has been brought to their attention that the name and imagery of the Bernanke Red ink was racist, they where going to stop selling Noodler's products until they've got a satisfying answer from the owner, Nathan Tardif. I found that strange, and went to check my bottle (I have a bottle of Bernanke Red in my collection, along with Rome Burning, Atlantic Salmon, Firefly, Aurora Borealis, Apache Sunset, and 54th Massachusetts), and checked the lable. 

Source: Reddit

Bernanke Red is, evidently a red color ink, and depicts Ben Bernanke with horns and the hammer and sickle of the Soviet flag.

Now, for context, I'd like to point out that there is a Bernanke Black ink and in it Ben Bernanke has no horns nor Soviet symbology. I don't know the whole of Noodler's inks and the different names, but I do remember an interview with Brian Goulet from Goulet Pens, where Nathan Tardif said he tended to give controversial names to his inks or some of them. I do remember, for instance, that I've got Atlantic Salmon, a pink ink when there was no more Hellfire, the original pink ink I wanted. 54th Massachussets was a name selected after a Regiment of the Union, from the American Civil War, which had African Americans join and which failed to pay them, even though they had a hard time in the war, according to Nathan Tardif. So yes, the controversial names and topics it has chosen are part of the brand.

Source: Amazon

I admit that I am not all that well educated about the Hebrew religion nor have a deeper knowledge of Judaism and the issues Jewish people have gone through other than what we learn in school, so maybe the deeper layers of hurt created by this picture are invisible to me. I read comments that say that Jews have been molested and told to "show their horns", something communist and witches and Pagans have also been told. Personally, I never understood the image to be a matter of "jews are bad" but more of a reference to how people can see the actions of the Federal Reserve (the Fed) as good (black ink) or bad (red ink). Hurt, however, needs to be addressed, which I believe Mr Tardif did. This apology is not mine to accept, and I have not heard of anyone from the Jewish community accepting it or not.

I came to know Noodler's inks some years ago, through a sample set I bought from Goulet Pens, and fell in love with 54th Massachusetts, even though I am not a person who likes blue or blue inks. 54th Massachusetts was the ink that made me make peace with blue ink after... well, after highschool, though I believe I stopped using blue ink when I was 15, and retook it when I was... 40? I ordered my first bottle of 54th Massachusetts from Goulet Pens, and I think I'm still using that one. As soon as things get back to... "sort of normal", I plan to restock and order some more inks, just to make sure I have all I need, and that means more 54th Massachusetts. I may even order a bottle of Bernanke Black, who knows?

I like the inks and I like their colors, their quality, and the amount I get for the money I pay. I like that the bottle is very simple and the lables have interesting art (on some of them). I don't know enough of the company or the owner in order to join a boicot campaing, and I have seen from him a swifter action in the face of controversy than I have seen from bigger brands or influencers. So, in the measure of my means, I will probably continue supporting this brand, while I'll also purchase inks from other brands as well. It's not a matter of exclusivity, and I am buying the ink, not the ideology. For me, clearly the names and the art are a way of marketing, not to promote his libertarian views, but to create buzz, amek people talk and get morbid interest reaching for his products. Maybe one day Noodler's will be able to break free from the controversy to sell his inks, and until that day, if this has been working for him, he will keep doing it. Why not?

Art Journaling

Property of Stormberry

Journaling has many reasons and fulfills many purposes for different people. It's not only a record keeping system to collect things that happened, but also a way to record emotions, thoughts and all sorts of memories, expressions, desires, fantasies and so on. One could say that journaling is the free-for-all place where you do whatever you want and/or need to do. Anything goes.

I started journaling at the age of 10, though maybe even earlier, as I always loved to write and always loved to store my thoughts and secrets in written form. From this time on, journaling formed for me as a way to record the many thoughts and conversations I had in my head. (Much like this blog, but holding back nothing). My journals were always worn and battered, with broken spines much like paperback books, but usually closed well. I was never a daily writer, though in my first journal I think I tried that, and as it didn't work, I moved to the system I currently have: "Write whenever I feel like it".

With time, I started adding here and there a newspaper clipping, or a recipe or a nice napkin, though I do have had a "junk box" where I stored all the pretty napkins, postcards, pieces of paper, and stuff I collected through life. You know, the kind of treasures that are usually called "ephemera". My journals still closed and more and more they were packed with words to the very edge of the page. My thoughts got more complex and here and there I added graphs and ideas for formulas on economic issues I wanted to solve.

It took decades and journaling sessions with a friend in Germany for me to start adding more, to paste things, decorate and going to the point where my journals couldn't close, but the pages fanned out and the spines started to rip, the covers slowly bending and detaching from the body. And yet, I still keep mainly writing.

A couple of years ago, through YouTube, I found out about sketch journals and art journaling, and I was astonished. I love watching videos of people art journaling or taking their sketch journals to some place and draw or paing in them and do art, but I often wonder how one looks back at an art journal. Do people fix memories to the art created? How? What kind of memories? Or are they emotions? And can one recall them exactly or that's not even the point?

Maybe I will art journal at one point in my life, but I need words and prose so much for my journaling, that even if I ever get to art journal, I will probably still keep a prose-journal too.

Drawing and painting is something that has interested me for a long time. I used to draw quite a lot back in the day and enjoyed it very much, but then I stopped and decided to give all my time and all my effort to writing, and then to studying. Maybe an art journal would be a way for me, to start getting back into my old, rusted hobbies. We shall see, but in the meanwhile and for the foreseeable future, I will continue putting pen to paper and writing away my thoughts.

Study Blogging

Property of Stormberry

 On the 19th of this month, while celebrating the Quinquatria with the girls of the informal coven, one of them asked me to take a picture of her bubble tea. She's a booktuber/bookstagrammer, and she took the chance to vlog the process, and as she pointed her camera at me, she called me a "studygrammer". My reaction was "What?????". 

Am I a studygrammer?

As most people in the planet, I have a wide range of interests, but maybe, the most prominent of my interests are books, comfort and the aesthetics related to writing, reading and researching. As such - and since I spend a large chunk of my life studying - I search and share a lot of pictures labeled as #studygram, mostly because these include handwriting, notebooks, books and all sorts of stationery. But am I a studygrammer? I would have thought I'm not, and rather I would say, that if anything, I'm more a foodstagrammer, if I'm any kind of -stagrammer. 

Property of Stormberry

The curious thing about lables is that they often not match. One thing is how you see yourself and another is how other people see you. And it's not even a matter of your view of yourself against the collective view of the rest of the world. Take this snapshot of my IG feed: what do you see there? Maybe you see the coffee, or your eyes go to the cocktail, or to the journals, or you interpret the journals as books and notebooks and think these are study stuff. Or you see the witch-haul. Like interpreting a Tarot spread, different people with see different things and if asked to lable it something, there will be different lables including the all-catching "lifestyle".

I see my feed and I think that this is but a fraction of who I am and what I do, and even from this I can interpret something that might be entirely different than what others see.

So, who is right?

Property of Stormberry

Nobody and everybody. Factually, physically speaking, there is only one me, but at the same time there are millions and millions of me, and I'm not talking of the multiverse, but the millions of me that live in the minds of the people who know me (that includes you, dear reader), and all those me-s are real, even if they are different from al the other me-s and the me that I know. There is no "right" about that, there is just "there is". So, my "me", the one I know and live with, is not a studygrammer, but someone who enjoys studygram and studyblr, but the me in my friend's head is indeed a studygrammer. And we both can coexist, even if in different planes.

The point of this is, if you are you in your head, and someone else sees the facts of you, but in their head you exist with a different form, should you  try and be like the you in that person's head, or should you try to reshape the you in that person's head to match the you you see? Unifying the image of you in the minds of everybody must be a very exhausting exercise and quite futile, as it is impossible they would mach. Besides, what's the real benefit of having everybody seeing you in the exact same way? Why would that be better than how things are with different versions of you running around the world?

Think about that, and when you do, when the answer starts to clear in your head, take a moment to also think why the opinion of others could hold any power over you.

Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe you could reclaim your freedom, be you, an independent, strong and wonderful you, and let all the other you-s live out there, freely.

What is really adding to your life?

Property of Stormberry

It is a common place to value and desire the truth above all, and despise lies, but inspite of that, we are surrounded by lies. The fact is, everybody lies. When someone says that they never lie, they are right then lying. You may not outright lie (all the time), but you may be lying by omission, which is when you leave out a piece of the truth and you let others get to wrong conclusions. That's also a form of lying.

It's also lying when you affirm something you are not 100% sure of, and you don't clarify that you are not 100% sure it is so, or you say it in a way - to save yourself in case it turns out false - that still gives the idea that this thing you say it's true. So, as you can see, we all lie, and we are all told lies, all the time. However, in the face of all these lies swirling around us, we take different attitudes. Some decide to "ration" their lies and tell them only when they feel it's needed - needed to protect, for instance, someone else or themselves -, and other may choose to use lies to joke, entertain or make things more interesting. Yet others may choose to benefit themselves or someone/something, often disregarding the damage they may be causing to the people who believe they are being truthful.

It also happens that we tell lies to others, but also to ourselves. We tell lies to ourselves about ourselves, about our situation, our environment, and also about others. Relationships are a fertile ground where we tell ourselves a lot of lies. We justify the behavior of someone towards us because we don't want to face what's really happening, we don't want to break illusions we've built (positive or negative) and we wish to remain in the safe world we have created, even if it's all built up upon the lies we ourselves have concocted.

I believe I have lied for a lont time to myself about someone. I may have been trying to believe that there was a connection, and though there might be a connection, it may not be of the type, the depth and the nature I have imagined it to be. It doesn't matter how perceptive you otherwise are, these lies to yourself are hard to pinpoint because you purposefully don’t want to see them. I'm still in the fence about this situation, but as I was talking to a friend of mine about it, she told me: "this person is so toxic. Really, what are they adding to your life?", and that got me thinking.

What are they adding to your life?

I would have jumped immediatelly to explain how we have many shared experiences, and how this person is the one person I currently know and understand my background for many of my ways of seeing the world. I would have said that this person shares so many of my building experiences and knowledge, that they are the best qualified in my life to get how and why I see things. But before I could answer my friend's text, I stopped to think, and I questioned myself "Do they?".

And here is the tricky thing, because it doesn't matter that we are contempporaneous, that we grew up in the same neighbourhood, that our parents belonged to the same party and they worked for the same sector/company, or that they and I studied the same career in the same university at the same time. We are not equall, and shared memories do not mean that understanding is automatic. I had to go through old journals, check my records (because my memory is very bad), and a patterns seems to emerge: I am the one trying to make our connection and our conversartions deep, while they trade in gossip and unfounded conspiratorial misinformation. We may have walked down the same path, side by side, but we are not in the same page.

It's a lie I've told myself and I keep telling myself, because I do want this connection to my past, I don't want to lose it, but I must prepare myself to face the music: this person is a stranger to me and has nothing to add to my life. And it doesn't matter the value of what I can give them,  they are not prepared to see it for what it is. What I could give them would be wasted on them.

Love, love, love

 

Source: Hola!

One of the most complicated journeys I'm embarking in this year, is a journey of love. This journey is more about making connections and allowing myself to get in a relationship with someone, extend trust to someone else and get out of my shell, try not to be so judgy, and give it a chance. Yes, I mean exactly that: give a chance to love.

This year I started seeing a psychologist with the intention of working on my shadow, as you know (I think I wrote about this last year), and as part of my process, I want to understand the way I develop relationships with others, and also, learn to learn from them, be more tolerant (and not just cast out every single partner I have under the umbrella lable of "gods! they are just so stupid!"), and also learn to be participant in a relationship in a way that really adds to the relationship.

With my psychologist I'm learning that is also part of working on yourself, to work on your relationships with others. Yes, it would be so much easier if I could do all my work solo - because I am such a delight to work with! - but then there's what I do and who I am and how I react when I'm with others. And I think I can be really mean to people in my romantic relationships. 

Yesterday I went for an extended coffee with a friend who has recently married their partner of 10 years. Their relationship has been very traditional, and so, now that they are living together, a lot of issues surface that seem quite astonishing to me. Astonishing mostly because these are things that are usually ironed out slowly, in time, in today's relationships, where people start living together slowly, spending a night, then a weekend, then a couple of days, a couple of weeks together, until they finally decide to move in together for good, and then, after some years of this, decide whether they want to get married.

In their relationship and their new troubles I found an interesting window on also how relationships work when there are changes and how love can or can't carry you over them. This has also inspired me to pack my travelbag for this journey of love, to remember that sometimes it might be worth remaining on a given path even if I find little annoyances that can be worked over. It's not going to be a short journey, I'm sure of it, but it will be one worth making.

New Laptop

Property of Stormberry

It has come the time (ok, it came over two weeks ago), when I had to replace my laptop for a new one. The last time I replaced my laptop was on... 2014 or 2015, I believe. It was when I was in the middle of my Accounting thesis and my laptop of back then (a 10.5 inch ACER) just... gave up. Then I bought my 11 inch Toshiba, who has been my faithful companion since that day, under the name of Björn. 

Up to this day, all my computers - which have been laptops since 2001, when I bought myself my first laptop, a used IBM Think Pad, Lain - have been... how shall I call them? "Windows" laptops. Or PC laptops. Well, this time around I knew I needed something else, something that would give me the chance to remain fast more than 12 months, reliable and durable. I wanted a long term, long relationship laptop. And so I planned and invested in a MacBook. I asked more about it, consulted with friends, at the store, checked prices, and finally, on my brother's birthday, this year, I've got my Mac. His name isn't Mac, he's Virgil. I had to pick a name quite quickly, on the store (later on I realized I could have just given it my name, but... Virgil isn't me, just as my car, Nathaniel isn't me), and Virgil was what came to my mind. I certainly liked the Aeneid, and right then I wasn't thinking whether I should call it after one of my Gods (Mercury, Neptune or Odin). Yes, it could have been Minerva, but this laptop doesn't feel like a "she", but a "he". (Only my first two laptops have been "she", Lain and Iria. Both were IBM Think Pads).

I'm still learning how to use it, and there are like a gozillian things I still don't get, but I'm getting there. So far, I like it.

This year I started going to therapy with a psychologist a friend recommended me. Actually, I heard her talk about her, mostly for being a Pagan-friendly shrink. I have decided to start working on my shadow in order to start getting over and moving past recurring themes in my life and maybe also getting off the hamster wheel I feel I am in with certain people. There is so much my lovely mind can figure out, but then there are other parts I need professional help to figure out and to know how to start solving. Hope all that works well. I have been in therapy before, but now I expect something different. I want to work on issues I have found I may have rooted in unsolved family dynamics, that may not be helping me move entirely forward with my life, or that make me more sensitive to certain things than what I would like to be. And yes, I want to be able to let go of the deep, burning hatred I have felt at time at some people. Sure, feeling hatred is something I encourage in order to know your hating self, but I know plenty of my hating self, I don't need more, and hatred doesn't bring me any joy or any satisfaction.

That sounded strange, right? Well, think about it: some people seem to thrive when they are in a situation where they can gang on someone or something, when they can unite in hate, be in an "us vs. them" scenario. People who thrive in conflict and fight. I am not one of them. First of all, I am a Moonchild, a Cancer-born, and as such, I avoid conflict. Second, I actually find joy in emotions like love, happiness, mellow, harmony, soft, comfort, cozy and so on. I would fight if I have to, as I have proven time and again when I have faced situations and given voice to concerns and doubts while others cowered, but I rather cocoon, put on a record of jazz, were soft socks and read, knit or do something like that, in my blue couch, with a comfy beverage.

And so, I want to work out to reach my blanket-and-blue-couch-with-knitting state of mind.

Studies are going well. This is the last quarter of the Master's program, and... I feel expanded. (Ok, maybe that is Mr Jack Daniels talking through me ;) I had a night cap). Each day I try to pull two oracle cards and today I've got Jupiter. And yes, I feel less like I'm moving nowhere, and more like "I get it" with my thesis. I see the big picture, I see the point of it. I see the prospect and the promise. Last time my thesis tutor said: "I feel like I can expect more from you", as in, more as what he can expect from others, and that felt to me like my topic is going to take more time, BUT it will reach into something important. How exciting is that!?

My house of seven gables is also doing well, and I may be on the verge of adopting a new cat. Goodness Gracious, a decision I can make by myself! My house, my rules! I can become the cat lady! I love having my own house.

Slowly but surely, my life is rolling out, taking form. I see my sister-in-law getting into all sorts of fights with some neighbours, my brother trying to manage his life and family, my nephews and niece finding their path in life, my parents getting by... and I have a life that feels like all that cushy, fluffy, warm, nice comfy and cozy comfort, peppered with heaps of witchy, the kind of music I like and the kind of food and cooking I want. More than free and independent, I feel... whole. I feel me. I just want to feel more me, more... how can I say this? More unlimitedly me.

2022 is here

Property of Stormberry

A new year has arrived, like so many others before it, and again we see the same things around us. There's the people bitching about how "it's just another day, like any other, nothing special about it", and then also the people giving advise about making New Year Resolutions, or not making New Year Resolutions, and then the lots of people making all sorts of old jokes, and those who take this moment to remember things that happened. In general, people either try to share the experience with others or just try to get attention for whatever means.

The New Year means for me lots of planning. I spent the last days of 2021 preparing my calendars and planners for the new year, penciling in birthdays, appointments, Pagan Sabbaths, Roman Celebrations (those related to my Gods), and so on. I managed all of my calendars and planners (only five in total), but I still had the digital stuff to take care of. For years I have been using an Excel sheet to track my finances - mostly my spending - and each year I tweek it a little bit, to improve the system I use, in order to make sure it ends up working better and better for my purposes. It's not a perfect system yet, but each time I adjust it, it gets better.

In this particular case I'm quite proud because though I've been using this tracker since 2013, last year was the first year I actually followed it quite regularly. 2020 was the second year I filled the whole year, I believe, and with less backlog than in previous years. This year I will try to record more than just my expenses, and I'm still thinking about how to make a dynamic Budget Tracker, where I can check effectively which of my planned expenses have I completed and when. My idea is to make an easy tracker where I can keep track of which bills I've paid and which are still to be paid.

Property of Stormberry

Last year, for several months, I kept a cycle tracker, where I recorded my weight, body fat, water, muscle weight and bone weight daily based on my menstrual cycle and the Moon cycles. Eventually this tracker was making me anxious and turned out to be counterproductive for my health, so I stopped. In this same line I took out of my planner more than six different trackers for water, food habits, exercise, journaling, blogging... and something else. These I just couldn't really follow. I have used these trackers for years, since I was using the bullet journal system, but I never really used the infomation for anything. No matter how I grouped it or what I tried, it just wasn't adding any value to my life.

I celebrate the New Year, not only because I like celebrating things (I'm a Witch and I choose to celebrate the eight Sabbaths because, hey! they are celebrations!), but New Years mark a defined point in time to make a review of the last period, what has worked, what hasn't, and so I can keep on improving. Sure, the New Year is "just another day", but it's a day globally chosen to mark a given period. A year is a convenient chunk of time to have tried something, and to review the results of it. Using it is also convenient, because this day we start also new calendars, which is mostly important for those of us who still use paper planners, but also because many legal, fiscal and financial programs and paperwork - to call it somehow - finish a cycle on this date.

This is not the case for everybody, but it is the case for me. Is it your case? Be it as it may, it's good to have a moment, a marker of period for you to evaluate and review your progress in time, to decide what works, what doesn't, what can be adjusted, improved, and what needs to go.

Back to the Filofax Inserts (kinda)

Property of Stormberry

 It's that time of the year again, or not exactly, but yes, it's that "time of the year" when you go on thiking about how and where are you going to plan all you need to plan the comming year. Well, unless you do all your planning elecronically, in which case... do you have "that time of the year"?

Most of my planner journey is somewhat documented in this blog, so I won't bore you with the recount of all the details of what I've tried and how did all that went, but suffice to say, that I believe I'm gettng to the end of my bullet journalling days. It was fun while it lasted, but I realized that this system doesn't work for me as well, as the Week on Two Pages (W2P) insert system.

Since mid August of this year, I decided to go back to a W2P style, and so took my dotted pages, draw the divisions, dated the boxes and have been planning on it. I even brought back my old chronodex stamp, and I'm getting the hang of it back again. It doesn't work 100% as expected, but I'm getting there.

Property of Stormberry

As the year was progressing to the end, I noticed I needed space to start planning the next year and pencil in the new due-dates and appointments. And my bullet journal style wasn't giving me much of the kind of space I needed for that. (Filofaxes are, actually, marvelous for that). Yes, I had post its and notes on a page at the end of the caledar, to migrate them into the next planner, but I wanted more. And I didn't want to draw all the calendars just yet.

I spent a couple of days thinking on this matter, and then decided to throw a couple of inserts into my Amazon cart. But I didn't buy it (there where $500 work of books, so...). Eventually time went on, and the inserts wouldn't have arrived on time, so I thought "And if I print them out?". And I tried it. Made a couple of templates, printed out a couple of samples, punched them, tried them in my planner, tested my pens in them, selected my fave one, tweeked it and then printed out the calendar and the trackers I really want and use.

Contrary to popular custom, I decided to go with just one calendar, a weekly one, and see how it goes. I have noticed that two calendars is quite a hassle for me, having to copy everything in two places, checking everything in two places... It made sense with the bullet journal, but not with the inserts. Truth to be told, when I have a weekly, I hardly used the monthly, no matter where I put it.

If I find that I need it, I'll print it, but I will try to have only one calendar (in my filofax) and work with it.

This is how I prepare for 2022.

"Intelligent"

 

Property of Stormberry

I found a publication on some social platform (Instagram? Tumblr? One of those, I guess) about how people saw you. The point of the publication was to show that no matter what you do, people won't see you the same way. Some see you as nice, others as mean. The point was also to raise awareness about how you see yourself, and how you must build your self image based on your how you see yourself, and not on how others perceive you.

This got me thinking, and I quickly realized that most people see me the same way, or would describe me with the same word: "intelligent". Does this mean I'm intelligent?

No, not at all. As a matter of fact, I'm sure that most people who would lable me with that word don't even know whether I'm intelligent or not, but this is an easy way to define someone that seems to fall out of the norm (what they consider the norm) and act in a way that doesn't follow what they are used to. From my perspective, "intelligent" is what most people say of those they can't understand, seem strange, but not so strange as to lable them "crazy". I'm a curious person, and long ago I've learned not to take compliments on their face value (except when there's more to gain from leaving people to be, than from researching the mind of the person), and rather question them.

If you are called "beautiful", or "good", mont people find it easy to tell you why they call you so. Your eyes are pretty, your smile is pretty, your hair is so pretty... those are the usual ones. Or, you are so good to children, you are so helpful, you are so selfless... and so on. But what do they say when asked why they think you are "intelligent"? The usual answers show that they don't really kow if you are really intelligent, but you seem to check the boxes of an intelligent person. "Intelligent" can be fulfilled with having lots of books (even if you haven't read them, or if all of them are collections of jokes... for instance), or if you are seen reading (regardless of the kind of book you are reading or whether you understand what you are reading), if you have at least one college degree, if you have a good job or if you are perceived as successful. But those that mean that you are intelligent?

Not at all.

Many people - at least in Latin America - describe corrupt, manipulative people as "intelligent" because they perceive these people of "being able to get away with it". Does that mean that they are intelligent?No necesarily.

I think being intelligent means being able to absorb knowledge and apply it. In this sense, most people are intelligent, though not everybody is intelligent the same way or in the same area. However, I also think that intelligence is a long run process, not a sort of flawed knowledge that depends on chance, but the sort of knowledge that has a solid ground, and can adapt in a sure way. Thus, I find intelligent a crafts-person or farmer who learns their job, can do it with knowledge, and if something changes, they can find where the change happened, and work towards adapting their knowledge to it, and add that new information to it. A manipulative person or a corrupt person depend on certain conditions to remain stable in order to keep their schemes. If these fall, they find it harder to get back on their previous position. Their "cunning" has a shaky basis, so, it's a gamble, not real intelligence.

At the same time, the external signs upon which intelligence is judged (by those who do not have the tools to really gauge intelligence, or don't hav the disposition to do so), ca be copied by anyone, even people who are not intelligent, but want to look intelligent (like, say, a con artist). Often, people think someone is intelligent if they speak with self confidence about something don't understand well, or say a lot of things that make no sense clearly, but have a confident attitude while speaking. It doesn't mean they are intelligent, but they seem to be.

The word "intelligent" and the true value behind it has lost lots of its meaning, and has become a blank lable used both to compliment those you have nothing evident to compliment them about, to pretend your compliment is "deeper", but also the perception of intelligence is used to misguide people. And the reason is that people has stopped really seeing intelligence, and no longer care to really know what intelligence is. Intelligence takes time to gather, and it doesn't mean it will make you wealthy, successful, happy or able to always right. Intelligent means you will be able both to understand, to see, and to recognize when you don't know something.

No, I'm not intelligent in that regard. I ignore a lot of things I don't know. I may think I know something, but in truth I may not know it. But I am learning. I am a curious person, I like to study, that's what I am.

Shadow Work

 

Property of Stormberry

To be perfectly honest, shadow work scares me. I just... rather not do it, but I start to think that the world around me is slowly pushing me to face my wounds and my shadows and start solving them. And who likes to poke the places that hurt? Not me, I can tell you.

Ever since I'm living alone (even though close to my family), I have been able to take distance, take place and see the things that have been harming me, the things I react to, the things that make me feel vulnerable and chip away from my sense of security, my sense of safety and even my own capabilities. By actually spending more time alone, with myself (another blessing in disguise from the pandemic and the enforced work-from-home), I have been able to start unravelling why I do some things or why I can't stop doing, saying, feeling or thinking about certain stuff.

One such thing, that has taken a lot of time for me to accept, is the fact that my relationship with my dad isn't a good one. My dad is a very toxic person, and with age his toxicity only gets worse. He doesn't like to be wrong, and he doesn't like to admit that other people might know things better than him. With age, he has lost his ability to admire people, and so, when the feeling arises in him, it turns onto bitter envy. Along with all this, he has lost his ability to be humble. Understanding this for me has taken a while, but has been inportant, so that I can learn to question the things he does and says, instead of taking them as "the only right way to do things", which is how he presents them. And it's not easy.

I'm sure a lot of people out there know people like that: only what they say is right, even when you know it's not, but they insist and fight, and go as low as insult those who question them or prove them wrong, up to the point of making you doubt what you know and probably know better than them. Why is it important to recognize this? Because interacting with people with this behavior can chip away your sense of self-worth, self-respect and even your self-trust. It puts you  in an edge, when you try to do something for yourself, the way you think it should be done, because if there is one single mistake, one single flaw, or even if your attempt fails, you will feel the failure far bigger than it even is.

I'll give you an example: my house - which I LOVE - has a "complicated" roof because I wanted gables, which is not common in this part of the world. Because of it, it is prone to have leaks. And it has leaks. A lot of them have been fixed, but some appear here and there, and some are stubborn. The "original" building crew couldn't fix it, and abandoned the house, and my dad declared that "it can never be fixed and it will always leak". Oh, and he blamed my architect, basically because she's a woman and not the architect he picked. Well, I wasn't going to have that, so I hired some workers recommended by a friend, who actually did the job really well, and guaranteed the job. Of course, my dad still found faults, and all of those faults were false. Like, he said they were so expensive, whene he doesn't know how much they charge me. Or say they work really poorly, when they have fixed the things they have been hired to do.

Now, fixing leaks isn't all that easy, and so, as part of the guarantee, when the leaks appear again, they come and fix them free of charge. However, each time a leak reappears or a new one appears, I feel so anxious because it has been hammered in my head that I can't fix it, that my decisions are wrong, and only my dad knows how to fix them (after he said it was impossible to fix). I've grown anxious with rain, when I used to love rain and rain storms, because of that, because a single little drop makes me feel like I can't do things, that I need help. And it's stupid, and rationally I know that, because I already have the solution for it, and I also know that leaks take time and many tries to fix.

Now, I finally getting to the point where I know that, I understand that, but now I have to work on fixing that, in accepting in my head and in my spirit, that I am capable, knowing my true limitations and how can I overcome them or accept them. Recently I also understood why I had such a hard time letting a person go, why I couldn't stop thinking about them even though I had nothing positive to say. I realized this was so because I was repeating the same toxic pattern I have with my dad, because this person has the same toxic nature, in the same manner as him. I saw the danger I was in.

Shadow work is important, so you can live a fuller, happier life. And sometimes, like with my roof, you must do your shadow work with the aid of a professional.

October is Here with Mercury Retrograde

Property of Snowberry

I don't want to use the word "hectic" to describe anything about my day or how I feel things going on. It'sthe word that keeps popping up in my head, and it seems like an easy word to describe things, but I want to free myself from it and find the underlying rhythm in everything. Things happen for a purpose and in a long line of cause-consequence chain.

It's not late, but I soon must be turning to sleep, which I love, because - really - my bed is amazing. It is. It's soft, comfy, spacious (for one person), warm but also deliciously chill. I finished my dinner with a glass of Merlot from a Chilean winehouse, I live in my own house, started decorating for Halloween, it's October and I had an amazing idea to present tomorrow for my thesis tutor. And - unlike it happens with other of my classmates, I have regular meetings with my tutor and I totally love him.

Today I made myself a Hungarian dish for lunch, and I still had some chicken soup left over, so I had a two course meal (no desert as I already ate all my apple pie). As I prepared the dish, I found myself so happy, and specially so happy to be me. Have you ever felt like that? I was happy I am me, and I was making myself a dish I love and that each day I eat food I love, and I don't have to conform. I can have my full meal, with an entry soup and a main course, and sometimes also a desert (not always because even though I may have desert, I'm too full to keep eating), and I can have food made in the oven!

I had some groceries delievered, and I had oranges and Granny Smith apples. Granny Smith! Nobody else likes green apples and I don't have to compromise! What a wonderful sensation! I even thought about making another apple pie, which I may or may not do. The sky is the limit.

I wore rings today on my fingers, and my hair loose. And it felt great! There is something in this thing, of me finding myself, giving into my desires, that makes me happy, liberates me and so I find myself being more inspired. I did great advances at one of my projects at my job, and I didn't cover for a lazy coworker. I remained honest and did my best, and my best was acually quite good.

And I had an idea that might be a breakthrough for my Master's Thesis! Oh, I hope it works out.

Money is a bit tight now, as I strive to save and I had some of my household stock running low, but I'm still keeping an eye on the goal. I might end up going to the beach with my Honduran classmates, but one way or the other, I intend to take some vacations in the beginning of November.

October is not only my witchy month. but also my creative month. And I feel it. Even with the Mercury Retrograde, I feel the inspiration and the great ideas coming.

Thoughts on a Wedding from outside

Source: Google Images

 I don't know what was I thinking, but I agreed to be a bride's maid for a friend. Yes, I know. A bride's maid, when I don't believe in the institution of marriage and I advocate for independence and freedom, and also the freedom in the relationships, open and free, where - if anything keeps you together then it should be waking up each day and each day deciding to stay or leave the person or persons you are with.

Anyway, this friend is getting married with her boyfriend from ten years, and she asked me. I did tell her, I can't be very involved, I have a lots of commitments with my job and my studies. so yes, I can't participate in a lot of things and she accepted it. So, so far so good. Things have been light and all, but then, bills started to build in. On one hand there was the bride's maid dress, which - fortunatelly - can actually be transformed, and not like the silver one I still have hanging in my closet.

The thing is that some things have changed for me, and I decided to start saving in earnest, so I'm looking closely at every penny I spend. This is how I started to pay closer attention to the money I was being expected to spend on someone else's wedding and all the partying and activities around it. The dress, the gift for the wedding, the gift for the bachelorette's party, the fee for the bridal's shower, the gift for the bridal's shower... The bill is quickly raising above $300 or even more, and that's in a country where the average incomes sits at about $400.

Honestly, being called and "invited" to the bridal's shower, after the bride had floated the idea of a bachelorette party in a hotel room where all the bride's maids and the bride would stay over (and pay $255 each... plus the gift), alreeady started to ring some alarm bells in my head.

I know she want's a grand wedding, and she lives in the kind of group where all her friends are getting married and they all compete for who makes the biggest production out of the wedding and the surrounding parties and... "cash/gift grabbing" occasions? As if there was no pandemic going on, and as if we were not in a country were death and infection statistics weren't going through the roof, with hospitals already collapsing, sending back sick people because there are no more beds. I know she was affected at first, at the idea of only having a religious ceremony, because she wanted her reception, but the way this is ballooning into - at least - five different events (all of them demanding gifts and at least two of them demanding a fee), it's beyond crazy for me.

Are they not concerned about the health of people? What makes them think people can't get sick by meeting so many times? Are they so easily swayed by the fake promise made from the renting locations that "they keep the protocols", when protocols must be kept on all sides?

And then, the money. Why the need to squeeze their guests for so much money? Sure, I keep the dress, but it's not a dress I actually need. I'm working from home, I don't need that dress, nor the transformed version I'll pay for it later in order to be closer to being able to use it more than once. And why the fees? People isn't swimming in money right now, so why can't they only do the activities they can pay for by themselves, and also consider which are actually sensible to organize given the current situation.

I have always considered activities that demand a fee from the guests as a distasteful thing. Your guests are not asking you to organize them, so if you decide to do them, do them within your budget. Don't make your guests pay for your ideas. And demanding a gift... how tacky is that?

Weddings always make me pity the couple: all this need for attention, this grand production only to receede later on into a life that's not a reflection of the grand production they put on, an aftermath only to be shadowed by the next big production. Why people who get married can't simply get married and be done with it? Why the production and the implicit lie?

Again on Journaling

Property of Stormberry

 It wasn't until moments ago that I found the old posts I have written here about journaling, and up until that moment I knew I had written about the subject - because duh! - but I didn't know what have I written and whether I would repeat myself. Well, I have the pictures and I have some ideas, so I might as well share them, right? Right.

This has been prompted because I have started watching videos about journaling again. Most of what you can find, though, either it's about art journaling or junk journaling, or doing a sort of journaling that's more like smashbooking or scrapbooking than the basic concept of journaling people get from reading or hearing about famous diaries, such as Anne Frank's, Anaïs Nin's, Benjamin Franklin's and so on and so forth. But then, there's also the journaling that functions also as a planner or a time/task organizer. So yes, it can become quite a confusing thing, though it doesn't need to be so.

So, when someone thinks "I would like to journal", or maybe someone who has been journaling wonder if they are doing it well, I believe the more voices with can give to guide and assure people on this subject, the better. In this post I'll mainly concentrate on the process of starting, so let's dive into that.

Right or Wrong Way

First things first, to the question of "Is there a right way to journal?" the answer is "Yes and No". There's not really ANY particular way, format, aesthetic, periodicity or medium that makes it right or wrong. So, whatever format you pick or if you give it up or have no consistency, or switch from one way to another, it's all good.

The only way to do it wrong is doing it without liking it. If you don't enjoy it, stop. When you stop liking it, that's when it's wrong. But as long as you like it, it's absolutely right.

What to Write About

Property of Stormberry

Well, before looking for prompts and consuming five TB of Pinterest pictures, and invest 100 hours on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram researching the subject, be clear about why you would even want to journal. Maybe you saw some pics and felt like you want to try it, or you heard someone did it and you want to do it as well.Or you saw the aesthetics and liked them, and you want to create something like that.

Now, usually one would say, "well, there you go: copy that". And yes, you are right: it's not that easy, specially if you are inspired by artistic journals and you feel like you don't have the same talent. Or if you are inspired by travelling journals, but you can't really travel, and don't feel like writing a journal about where you would like to go.

In those cases, my advise would be to write about that, or if you want to create a more art-journal or collage-journal, then start by simply clipping and collecting pictures you like. You don't even have to paste them in, just collect them, stash them between the pages, let them accumulate there and try out a couple of ideas as you feel like.

If you felt inspired and are more into "words", it's much easier  - or at least for me because I am into words and writing - because instead of jumping right off into the thick of it, you can start by writing about your motivation or how did you get there.

Now, if it wasn't your idea but it's a assignment, or you were advised to write a journal for whatever reason, a couple of ideas until you warm up are:

1. Write about the news headlines. What catches your attention and what do you think about it.

2. Write about the gossip you have heard.

3. Write about what you have seen on social media lately, that catches your attention.

4. Pick a person, an animal, a plant, a thing... anything that catches your attention, and write about what you think of them or it.

5. Write about anything interesting (for you) that has happened or is about to happen.

Last year a lot of people found inspiration to journal in the events that have changed the world, deciding to record their experience with the pandemic. Those journals got to be known as the quarantine diaries. Whether they keep up or not, those people and those journals came from a moment of global life change and came to life to record a shift like no other. But then again, you don't need a global shift to journal. A personal shift is enough. And yes, you can still pick up a pen and paper and start right now writing your quarantine diaries or your climate change diaries or the "oh-hell-what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-people" diaries.

Entries can be short or long and don't even have to be dated. I date them because I have a bad memory and my journals actually help me remember, but if you don't care about the dates or what you decide to journal about isn't time sensitive, skip it. Hey, you may even date some entries and some others don't.

How to Start an Entry

Well, dating it is the easiest way, if you choose that way. For a while now I've been adding the location and also giving a sort of title to my entries, but you do anything you want. If you want to follow an epistolary style, with "Dear Diary,", that's a way to do it. If you feel blocked, and you want to write, but have no idea how to write that first sentence, make a title with the general topic you want to write about. 

For instance, let's say that you had a hard day at work because there was too much traffic and meetings got cancelled and pushed to other days and you wasted hours trying to reschedule them. So how to start? You could say:

1. Today was a very hard day. ... and go on explaining why.

2. Make a title: "Hard Day" or "Wasted Hours" or "Rescheduling". Here go with the first idea. Then go on explaining what happened.

3. Pretend you are talking to a friend. Start with "People need to be more reliable. I can't have another day like this. Today I had a busy day..." and go on.

Sometimes it happens that you are very tired but would like to journal because you want to keep a fresh memory of the events, but really, you are too tired. Well, you can either make a short entry in list format or with just a few words or sentences to jug your memory, and leave it for some other day. If you have the chance, record it on a voice note. Deal with it later.

I have a couple of entries I have written through many days in order to record the particular events of a given day. It not only works, but oftentimes, taking more time to record certain things becomes cathartic and also gives you a new perspective.

Oh, and it's always ok to add stuff. Recipes, photos, clippings, notes. And no, it doesn't have to be artistic, just meaningful for you.

How to Start Journaling - the First Page Question

Property of Stormberry

Yes, it can be intimidating. The last two photos are actual pictures of the first pages of my journals. Sometimes I have added a printed out article I liked, and used it to write my first entry as a omment to it. Another first entry said something about my journaling habits, specifically how I choose to write the date and how that holds throughout the journal.

Other times that first entry reads as what it is: a continuation of the journaling process that comes from a long line of journals written through many years now.

This page doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't need a cover or a design or a grand opening. Just write. You don't even have to worry about reading it in the future, because unless you are like mee and have a bad memory, journaling is about recording, writing it down, recording, filming something for the very pleasure of doing so.

I don't really like it when people talk about "making a habit of journaling" or advise people to "keep doing it, even if you don't like it because it will eventually come naturally to you". You should make journaling anything you want it to be, and if it naturally becomes a habit, well, great. If not, if you write only once a year or every other month or god-knows-when, that's ok too. Write when you feel like it, and about what you feel like it.

The only person your journaling has to satisfy is you.

Now, something I would like to mention here is that journaling doesn't have to be strictly writing or writing by hand. You can type if you want, do it on a document on your computer, on your phone, or an app, or some online journal or even a blog. But it can also be audio recordings or videos, or any other way you find to express yourself in a way that satisfies you.

A New Story

 

Property of Stormberry

Another post with "that clump of trees". These are actually trees I can see from my office window, from home, and when it's not foggy you can see that they are in a simple plot of land, and there's a road and some small buildings behind. But when the rain and the fog come, it looks like some sort of spooky forest. I guess that's why I like it.

This time around, however, this picture has a particular meaning for me, as today I finally opened a new document and started typing the first line for a new novel. No, I have not published any novel, and no, I have not finished the one I was writing about that friend of mine. Not like that has ever stopped me in the past (I'm fairly capable of writing 100 + pages of a story and then leave the project behind), but this particular story has been rolling around in my head for a while.

I'm kind of "nervous" because I'm setting my story in a time and place I don't know very well, but I really feel called to. I guess I will have to research more about that topic - which is no hardship, as I love that time and place... in a way of speaking (it's little after the Salem witch trials and in that general area, though I make sure not to mention the place), and I plan on taking as many creative licenses as possible (I'll work with made up characters, not any real person from that time), but still. Why is it that people usually expect writers to write about their time and geographical location? No, really, think about it. You her stuff like "write about what you know" and stuff like that. Of course, nobody expects Sci-Fi writers or dystopian writers to do so, but there tends to be a reserve about a writer from X place to write a story located in Z place.

Or maybe I have been around the wrong kind of people.

Not like I would object to several research-trips to Salem, Massachusetts to fully investigate those times, and roam the streets until I know them by heart and locate the exact place of Gallows Hills (Was it Gallows Hills? See? Evidently I need to go to research), but I still have this nag in my head, that I should write about what's connected to me and pretty much evident to anyone. Like that novel about that friend which is so close to reality it will probably be terribly uncomfortable for him (and other people)... even though I make him look soo much better than what he is in real life (and the characters still comes off as a jerk, mind you).

Will I publish? I think the first question is "will I finish it?". And honestly, I don't know. Back when I wrote fanfics, we called these ideas "plotbunnies". They are like these fluffy-tailed, cute little ideas for a story that live in your head and jump around and you can't not think about them. So I write them out, park them somewhere. Then they stop jumping around and eventually fade into oblivion.

We shall see what will happen with this one.

As for the picture, it's the rain and the forest, the first two elements of this story that had ever come to my mind. So that's what I typed, that firts half scene. And so the picture, so I don't forget about this one.

Always make sure you can leave

Source: Amazon.com

 I want a set of scrabble. It's not so much that I want to have people over and play scrabble with them, but more like I want to have a set, use the tiles for pictures, or just to play all by myself. Truth to be told, I don't really like or particularly enjoy playing these sort of board games, though the ones I like all revolve around words and knowledge.

This thought came to me as I was thinking about a picture to put in here for this post, for this topic, and I looked around me and thought that there was nothing really of my own I could use, and then thought, "wouldn't it be handy to make a picture spelling out the word with scrabble tiles?". So yes, some thoughts just go on like that.

The topic that has prompted this post, though, goes a bit with the last one, and it's on relationships.

I was talking to someone yesterday, and the topic of complicated relationships came up. Toxic friends, toxic family members, toxic relationships and so on. This is something I've been processing as of late - well, all of my life, actually, but am more aware of it and working more consciously on as of late - so from this conversation, and my notes in my personal journal, and the thoughts coursing through my head, I've come to the conclusion that one should avoid the type of relationships that are like... the Amazon Prime Membership. Let me explain.

For many years I had Amazon Prime Membership, and though I didn't have all the perks, because I'm not in the US, but still, there were many good things that made the membership worthwhile for me. However, with time, the perks started to wane away, were reduced and the yearly membership's price went up. At one point, I was left without any perk that I could take advantage off, and the membership was becoming too expensive, in the light of this. So, the rational thing for me was to cancel the membership. However, this took me DAYS to do. There was no way for me to contact with anyone or find the button or the form or any way to cancel. I didn't give up though, and after several days looking for the way to leave until I finally found it.

Yay! Awesome! The way out! Except it had like a million gates trying to make me stay. So I had to click "No" over and over and over and over and find the way to say no until I was finally out of there. The experience was so horrible, that even though I thought I would leave only for a while, come back when the perks improve again or something, in the end I decided to leave for good. I mean, what if the next time I'm trapped in the Membership for ever and ever and all eterenity? I wouldn't want that!

Well, though a lot of people can see why this is an undesirable practice in commerce, they don't see this as a bad thing in relationships, or don't even question this, and perhaps this is because oftentimes people walk into a relationship not thinking that this will be a "temporal thing" but a permanent one. A lot of people who get in a relationship, are looking for their "forever after", so why would they look for the exit?

As it is, when you get a membership, usually you are not looking for it to end soon, but rather to enjoy the perks and hope for the new, exciting things that are to come in the future. Pretty much like in a relationship. However, as with memberships, things can change with time, and things might come to the point where it's best to cancel teh membership or dissolve the relationship, or part ways. Getting to this point can be hard as well, specially when you are still thinking of those remaining few good things, or you are thinking that maybe soon things will change and you don't want to miss the new good things to come, whether you are certain of them to come, or you only hope for them to come. So, in memberships and relationships, coming to the point where you decide that leaving is the best course of action can be hard in itself. So, why face more trouble? And I don't mean the natural pain of leaving or breaking up, or telling a boss you are resigning, or a family member that you won't be visiting them anymore and you wish them not to call you anymore. I mean of those cases where - like in those memberships - the people or the organization you are in this relationship with turn out to be toxic or so impossible you start feeling trapped, that you have no way out.

Those relationships (be it friends, family, romantic partners, or so) that refuse to let you go, guilty trip you, start spreading rumors about you in order to close doors for you, threaten your safety or that of others in order to force you to remain in the relationship, clearly against your will. In some cases it's complicated because you haven't chosen the relationship, and opting out isn't clear - such as in the case with family - or you may be in a very delicate situation where your livelihood depends on that relationship, such as a job, for instance. No, I won't tell you that there's always a way out, and sometimes you have to do work little by little and find ways to carve a little space where you can feel better, or build some kind of distance of some sort either to make the situation livable, or until a chance appears that allows you to leave.

Memberships might be easier to terminate, but when we get into a relationship, or about to, before we jump in, lets look for red flags, lets state clear our hard limits and stick to them firmly. Let's be watchful and be ready to leave. And when we can't leave, let's work hard to become stronger and build those barriers, those limits and reinforce them, have them respected over and over until we carve for ourselves the space to be happy and free.

The Fixings

Property of Stormberry

The leaks in my roof have been fixed, and I hope they stay so for a while. What a relief! The people making the fixing had to come out three times to finally get all the leaks dealt with. Now only the windows need sealing. I actually messaged them today and got a swift reply after they have been silent for almost twenty days, while the rains poured and the water filtered and ruined the paint on my walls. Oh, on that note, it's worth noting that my chocolate brown walls get very marked with water, which I don't really get. The outside dark grey walls hold well their color, and so the medium grey ones. If it were because "the rain washes them equally" it wouldn't be so as the rain doesn't always falls the same way, and some parts are not touched while others are. So why are the brown walls getting so damaged with the rain water?

But anyway, we are moving ahead and my house is standing strong and lovely, and we are both growing more and more into who we are. I'm so happy with my house!

I'm not out of the woods yet, as I had a lot of expenses, and I had to make decisions about how to finance them. Nothing I can't manage, rest assured, but I decided to use my credit card again while I get over the current bump. Some things, after all, have to be dealt with switfly, and some instruments can be used to such matters, as long as we keep them well watched. Yes, it makes me uneasy, mostly because it was not part of my plans to use my card again, but one needs to deal with the cards one is dealt.

On that same line, as I was going through dealing with uncomfortable situations and things that prick at my sense of order and comfort, this friend was brought back into my memory. I have written or alluded to him here several times, and has been quite a fixture. Though I want to think of him as a good person, truth to be told, if I want to be impartial, I believe I don't have enough elements to call him so. Maybe it is the way he is around me - because, honestly, I am a menacing person for him -, but be it as it is, I'm more inclined to say that he is a toxic sort of person.

Now, as you know, I believe in magick, signs, cosmic connections, spiritual phenomenons and the such, so for a while now I have tried to understand why had this person been so mingled with my life, and have always stirred such strong emotions. Emotions that I shall clarify, are not always positive. I mean, I like him - I do like him - but I also can't stand him. So why the push-&-pull? Did I want him in my life? Did I not? Did I want him as friend, as partner, as occasional fuck or as a distant memory of the past? Why did I find it so hard to let him go? Why did I go to such extents as I did for him? What has happening there?

I'm a Cancer Sun, Gemini rising and Leo Moon. Yes, it may not make sense to many, but I'll say this: for years he has been playing my Cancer (as in playing my emotions), and my Gemini (my communicative and knowledge thirsty part), by a very bizarre game of choosing words to keep me hooked like a writer of a cliffhangery pulp fiction, but also by not telling me ever much of the information. Then again, though it has been hard to come to terms with my Gemini (a lot of people I don't like are Gemini), my twins are quite a resourceful and twisted pair, and so... we did LOTS of research. Yes, that also kept me hooked, but also started opening my eyes to the fact that there were things there that were not kosher. I paid attention, I started to see the cracks, and I believe that's what kept me (in part) from falling into his game.

But I still was hooked for quite a while. It was one of those messy tangles where you know that it's not what you want, there's nothing really there that you could want in your life, but "something" keeps you there and you can't quite figure out why.

He was here at my home visiting in the begining of June and brought me an early birthday present (even though I am positive I had told him that I am picky about my birthday and I celebrate it only the day it is). The present was a book and a bottle of wine. Thoughtful, yes, and exactly what I have gifted him the last two birthdays of him. And then he was nice and all, but also made sure to include just a hint of insulting or - at least, derogatory. I know well that he takes to heart each time I have pointed out to the flaws on his thinking, work or skills, and I also know this is his pety way to try and get back to me, even though at times he has to invent an alternative reality just to point out a flaw in me. (Like the time he told me that one doesn't "eat different kinds of meat for one meal", just because I offered him chicken stock before a main course consisting of beef. Yeah... I believe he hasn't heard of paella, or burgers with bacon... or just about any meal with more than one course.)

So far, though his petiness annoys me, I just booked it as "him being stupid because he doesn't know better and has lived so far trying to be someone he's not, that he can't turn back and try to be himself". However, this month something happened, a shifting.

As I was working and dealing with the last of the second quarter of the Master's program, and dealing with the leaks on the roof, and the leaking windows, solving the financial situation and so on, he came to my mind, and just as I was solving all my issues and finding out that I can solve these things without having to run to my dad or my brother, it kind of landed on me: this friend has the bad habits of my father and my brother. The lying, the gaslighting, forcing his ideas on others like they are truth, unwilling to learn from others, or accept that others might be right, unwilling to accept that they are wrong, and when proven wrong going pety, bringing up over and over uncomfortable events of the past which they twist to fit their narrative, going as far as turning a happy memory or even a moment of confusion into something to be mocked of.

Through the days I have found that this person had all these qualities, and I understood: he was put in my life so that I can see that and work on my shadow. And let all that go. That was why I couldn't let him go, because I wanted to fix or defeat in him what I find so disturbing in my own family. And the lesson, I'm finding is, that their qualities are not my problem, and I can walk away or call them out if I like.

I had read the book he gave me, and found it awful. Then I also saw the book in the big scheme of things: he had been for a while trying to copy the main character of that book, which was particularly sad.

As I think about him, I feel no tendrils of attachment anymore, but rather a neutral void, like standing on an edge where a bridge used to stand, where there is no longer a bridge, but which lack you can't see because it's all drowned in a fog. I don't eeven miss it.

I think I am finally over.