yule blessings & rambles (Patreon)

Greetings to you from my super cute Yule altar where earlier today I did a little blessing ritual for all of you guys to be safe, fed and warm (or cool) over the holidays and for all positive forces to align for you. 

Wow, long sentence to start with. 

I wanted to start off this month by dropping a thank you right here (of course, after completing the monthly spam and errands) for being the pillars that hold up this channel. I feel like things are finally progressing on damned YouTube despite the algorithm and that my hard work is starting to pay off. And you (yes, you!) have enabled me to focus on making the kinds of videos I want to make, among many other things. 

This post might be a little life update. Maybe. 

I was able to get a good Black Friday deal on a new external drive which will hold all of the videos I will be creating next year. (It had better with all of 8TB!) My current one is almost full. Man, those 4k videos are .... thicccccc. Yeah, I said it. What are you gonna do about that? 

Even though things are not going the way I wish right now, I'm motivated to start on this month's videos. I'm not gonna try to compete with anyone, just want to help you out as much as possible during the holiday stress. We've still ought to hear back from Copenhagen and I can't figure out for the life of me what's taking so long. Six weeks ago, they said it would take two weeks! And I'm upset because we've done everything and there's nothing more we can do. I realized a while ago that I can't hold out for a future that might not come very soon. We've waited 3 years for the USCIS and now with Copenhagen taking longer than expected, it triggers all the same feelings of hopelessness and futility. I've put my entire life on hold and nothing appears to be happening. So last week I started taking my life off hold. Which means that I'm slowly making some changes to progress my work and be as comfortable as possible while I'm stuck here. I purchased things that I've been putting off getting so as to not waste money on stuff I'm not gonna bring with me, like a knife sharpener and a heated blanket for those miserable Bavarian winters. Soon it'll be cold enough that a hair dryer under the covers just won't do. And then I treated myself to a new bathing suit. It's more ... uhh... modest... than the ones I have and I hope it fits because I'm dying to go swimming in something that doesn't look like a porn bikini. Don't get me wrong, I'm very comfortable wearing a porn bikini when I'm out with Jack... But I'm just trying to pick up an activity I know I used to enjoy but hardly ever got to do growing up. I don't wanna be gawked at more than I inevitably am for looking the way I do. I call that self-care. Swimming to me is one of the most relaxing things in the world. I can exhaust my whole body without hurting my joints and it doesn't matter if I sweat cause I'm already soaked. (Who else hates breaking a sweat?! Raise your hand! ... No, comment below.) 

So effectively I can't do much planning until we know more. So I'm back to living my life as if none of this was happening and relying on my brain to create breaks for me so that the weight of reality doesn't crush me. You know, the usual. That means all I can do is work and in my defiant stubbornness, that's all I want. It's my way of telling life "I'm mad at you because you're not giving me what I want so I'm gonna ignore you until you're sorry" - I want nothing to do with anything until it's something I would want to live for. 

In the meantime, I find that the clutter I've accumulated tends to come in handy. I didn't think it would because I feel like I've outgrown most things I have. My surroundings don't serve nor represent me anymore. But occasionally, I find things to repurpose and reuse, like the little gold colored jingle bells and the horned god pendant I never wore that I decorated my altar with. That's only because I'm slowly sorting out my stuff, though. I've neglected so many things and I'm tired of being bored all the time. It's like a vicious cycle. I'm tired so I don't do much and then I'm restless because I don't do much and then I don't sleep so I'm tired. I'm sure you know what this is like. I started fighting back (violently) with supplements and daily activity. Some days it works, other days I just wanna go straight to sleep after a 15 minute workout. Something about never seeing daylight anymore and it being too cold to go on long walks makes me feel like I'm sleepwalking until about 4AM when I'm supposed to be getting ready for bed. This is why I'm not a fan of winter. But at least nature is reliable enough that I know it'll have an ending. After December 21st, there will be increasingly more daylight. I can look forward to that turning point so it feels like I won't suffer forever (unlike some government matters...)

The one mistake I've been making is that while giving so much to my videos and to spell casting and to building a life with Jack that I'm not even gonna get to enjoy for a long time, I haven't been taking enough to make all the work worth it for myself. It's not even the amount of time I have for myself, it's the quality of the time I spend alone. Approaching 30, I'm only now figuring out what I need and what's important to me so I can give it to myself. Due to my tragic upbringing I've become estranged with all my needs and wants and it took me a long time to even figure out why I'm so unhappy. I don't know how to have a good time because I don't know what I enjoy (because no one ever asked or wanted to give it to me). But I know that I don't want to have to wait to live my best life. And since working less is not the answer, I just have to have something else going for me in life. Because for so long I've had nothing and now it seems that the government won't be that thing for me so I'm finding other things that make life enjoyable. Like, I didn't have to give my best friend a present but I did. She loves it and I'm happy I got to share the joys of my favorite espresso. I didn't have to get poked half to death by this stingy ass shrubby tree thing I framed my altar in, but I wanted a seasonal altar, so I made one. I didn't have to buy a heated blanket, but I like not freezing, so I did. It's those things you don't have to do that make life full and rich. Without those things, all we have left is slaving away at work with no end in sight. I haven't been doing things like that just because I always had things to do and the jobs are coming in faster than I can perform. That and I wanted to save every penny I made for our future. But now my own frustration got the better of me and I figured out what the problem was all along. It's not that I didn't have enough energy to do more, it's that everything I've been trying to do has been so overwhelming that it was pulling me down and killing my spirit. I don't remember when, but at some point there was a shift from living the dream to everything feeling like a chore. Constantly running into problems that had me wondering how I'm ever going to accomplish what I set out. I imagine it one way and it turns out nothing like what I had in mind. Refilming everything 3 or more times to get it barely passable. Things that were supposed to make my life easier, inadvertently making it harder (I'm looking at you, blue screen). And work became too much to manage just for one person and since then I've been hanging in there and doing what I could. The epitome of biting off more than I can chew. I still don't get why everything ends up being so much more difficult than I assumed it would be, especially because all the other creators make it look so easy. And I was so jealous because they seemed to be enjoying every minute of it and I've fallen in a rut where everything was just too difficult to enjoy. It seemed like I spent more time trouble shooting and problem solving than actually creating, and that's what made me feel strangely limited and weighed down. It made me not want to bother with anything. I grew tired and bored and unbearably perfectionistic. And at the same time I had nothing to balance my work frustrations because my entire life revolved around making videos. Eventually I snapped and decided to start living for myself, only to find I had no idea how and here we are now. All I have is this clarity and it's all I need to create something worthwhile, while waiting on what I actually want. 

And next time Jack visits, he said he'd bring the 3dio so I can work with it. We will see if the white noise problem persists because I'm not sure if it's the capsules or the recorder itself that are doing that. I get so many complaints about the white noise in my videos and suggestions to use a noise remover and I want to just shout at everyone that if I could fix the noise with a noise remover, I would. I've tried everything and it's not worth it. Any amount of noticeable noise removal results in distorted voice and triggers to the point where they don't sound natural and definitely not tingly. Yet another problem I don't know how to fix. So far I don't think it's bad enough that I can't make any videos ever again, but a surprising number of people seem to think so. So until I find a good solution that doesn't make me sound like a glitchy alien cyborg, I have another word to put on my blacklist. Also wtf is up with all those people telling me I look sick or like I'm doing drugs?! I swear sometimes reading comments is more infuriating than anything. Idk whether people don't know that eye shadow exists or they're just so used to seeing airbrushed, polished influencers that all look like copies of each other everywhere you turn that my everyday makeup just stands out that much... But I look exactly like how I want to and it's annoying. I call it: accentuating my natural beauty. (Get it? Because I naturally look like a zombie so I put makeup on to look like an attractive zombie) I know everyone's projecting and I learned that everyone just sees whatever the fuck they want to see the hard way but I wasn't prepared for everyone making me out to be something I'm not - and so loudly at that. For now it's only a minor annoyance but... Blacklist, just in case. Soon all that's left will be nice comments saying thanks for the hard work and that I look like a pretty Nosferatu. 

Other than that I've been doing well and making the most out of life. A few days ago I thought the most positive thought I ever thought about myself: "I guess I'm not the worst." Taking care of myself is paying off, guys. I've also started taking myself more seriously and consequently feel like other people are taking me more seriously, too. It made me realize how much I had internalized the branding of the "stupid unworthy kid" (how I was treated all life. Like I couldn't possibly have anything valuable to say and was never as important as literally anyone else). So you could say I'm healing from my childhood conditioning. Finally. At almost 30. Though some people never heal from it so I consider myself fortunate. I already have avoided making every single mistake my mother made (and blamed me for) so I've got that going for me. I'm not a teen mom and make significantly better financial and romantic decisions. Consider my life goal accomplished. 

I'm bursting with creative energy that is almost tearing me apart to be channeled into witchcraft and new videos and the toughest part is A) knowing where to start and B) avoiding burning out too quickly. Don't want to end up completely beaten down like *cough* last December *cough*

And with that I sincerely hope all my blessings reach you and make the universe align for you. For how much you've held me up and supported me, may you be held up and supported equally. Stay safe, stay warm, stay fed, stay comfortable this holiday season. 

Blessed be