Witchcraft and Video games

So last week was my birthday! I turned 28! Hence the post title lol.

Since my last post, I made it to day 20 of Inktober before I fizzled out. Which from what I understand is pretty impressive for someone doing it the first time. So I’m like, crazy proud of myself for that! I haven’t been drawing consistently since then, but I’m working on getting back into a proper groove.

I didn’t do much for my birthday, but I did get a little bit of money. I bought myself a cute pencil case, it’s shaped like a milk carton! I also finally bought a magatama for Amaterasu-omikami. For those who don’t know, a magatama is a curved stone that has special significance in Japanese mythology, and in Shinto. One of the Three Imperial Regalia of Japan is the Yasakani no Magatama, one of the gifts given by Amaterasu-omikami to Ninigi-no-mikoto when he was sent to earth to found Japan.

I’ve been putting off getting one because quality ones tend to be expensive, and well, I have two kids, their needs always trump my wants. But I did a tarot reading to see if Amaterasu-omikami had any message for me that I wasn’t getting. And I asked for help interpreting it from the Shinto discord chat group I’m in, and everyone was incredibly helpful. We figured out that I needed to be more open about communicating with and relying on the kami, as they’re a pillar of support, as well as building other bonds I have for support as well. And one person asked if there was a way to actively incorporate Amaterasu-omikami’s energy and presence into my day to day, which got me thinking about magatama. And the funny part is, when the person sent that message, I was in the process of falling to sleep (different timezones), but in my dozing state, I saw myself holding a magatama and a small mirror, and felt like someone was tapping my shoulder. The shoulder tap was what woke me up in time to see the message. Even more startling, the person almost didn’t send the message, except her spirit guide kept saying to her, ‘oh you aren’t going to say that? Don’t you think you should?’

And this all happened the day after my birthday. So a lot of spooky level synchronicity happened. But wait! There’s actually more. A couple days later I asked one of my friends who lives in Japan (and is a priestess!) to help me order the magatama I’ve had my eye on for months. Figure now is as good a time as any right? My friend agrees, and so I send her the money through paypal, and it should clear the next day, and then an additional day or two to clear with her bank since the website didn’t accept paypal. Well she sends me the receipt and then tells me that she checked her bank before she ordered the magatama to see if it had cleared, but it hadn’t. She figured it would clear by the next day, and ordered the magatama anyway. She went back to check her bank again, and literally the moment after she’d ordered the magatama, the money had cleared. She felt like Amaterasu-omikami had a hand in it, and so do I, because in my experience, things don’t usually run that smoothly unless there’s something nudging it that way.

So yeah, that was my wild birthday week, full of spiritual shenanigans. Once I get the magatama, I’ll definitely post about it here, cause I’m just, so stinking excited about it!

So I was writing that last post about drawing and like, how I was really glad that I was comfortable enough to lean into my Shinto faith when dealing with the anxiety and remembering the shitty treatment by professors that made me stop in the first place and I like. Realized that like, that’s how faith is supposed to feel?

Like when people talk about getting through rough times through prayer and faith and feeling supported enough by a deity to keep pushing, like “so and so has my back and won’t let me fail”, like that’s real? It’s actually real. I don’t think I really grasped how much I didn’t think it was real because I never remember feeling it, even as a kid in christianity. Like I had more faith in my grandfather than I did in the Christian god, and…..

Holy crap I have the same faith in Amaterasu-omikami as I did in my grandfather. Maybe even more so. holy shit.

Thus is huge for me.

Like, you have to understand how much my grandfather was a big influence on my life growing up. When I asked my mom what god was like as a kid, the example she gave was “it’s like how PopPop loves you and treats you but even better, more unconditional, more vested in your life being well and seeing you succeed” and like, that was probably the best example ever. My PopPop wanted me to be amazing and succeed and loved me (andmy twin sister) to the ends of the earth. And god wants that more than he does?

But I couldn’t reconcile it with the bullshit I went through as a kid, like why would someone who loves me more than my POPPOP let these kids and adults bully me like this?

But then with Shinto it’s like, the paradigm is different and makes more sense, like, the kami are not omnipotent or omnipresent and sometimes shit just happens, but they are there! And they will help! And like wow. Wowoowowowow

So I’ve started drawing again. Overcome my anxiety of just sitting down with a pencil and paper. Not completely obviously, but enough that it’s not actually hindering me from drawing. And gosh, I cannot tell you guys how amazing that feels. I was that kid who drew everyday, the one that everybody thought of first when the question “okay, who can draw?” came up.

I have some official schooling but to be honest, going to school for art might have been the worst decision I ever made in my life. No one warns young black artists that a lot of the art institutions are super fucking racist and classist. I literally had exactly three good professors in two years. Everyone else graded me more harshly and unfairly than my white classmates, would go out of their way to humiliate me in front of the class, to the point that my classmates would actually step in to defend me and would ask me if I had history with them because they could not fathom why I was being treated the way I was.

That kind of treatment buried my love for art under cruel words and anxiety and combined with depression from my twin going out of state for school, it was fucking awful. And then because my graphic design professor, who was the absolute worst of the bunch, failed me I ended up with two failed classes (the other was a writing class that I just couldn’t get into at all), and so I lost my scholarships and grants and that was the last straw for me. So I dropped out and then later in the year got pregnant with my first kid and I never tried drawing again.

At least up until the last few months. I don’t know why I felt so pushed by Amaterasu-omikami to start drawing again. But I’m glad I listened and kept staring my pain and anxiety in the face every time I pulled out a pencil and paper. I’m glad I prayed about it every time. I’m glad I gave myself permission to buy a couple of fancy mechanical pencils as motivation.

Because now, I’m starting to feel that joy again. And the desire to draw all the time, even though I don’t actually have that much time to draw lol. Small children are not that conducive to keeping hobbies! Not that it’s their fault of course, but it’s hard to draw when little fingers are trying to steal your pencils and run off with your erasers! I’m trying to crowdfund a tablet to use, but for now I’m just stealing moments during naptime.

Because today is my 10th anniversary! But it’s also just another regular day, because to be honest, my fiance and I have never been big on flashy celebrations. Actually, we both have a bad habit of simply forgetting the date! That happens sometimes chasing two kids around lol. He’s in Chicago this weekend for a tournament (he plays Vanguard competitively), so the kids and I are chilling at my grandmother’s for the weekend.

Big Pup starts school on monday as well, so we probably won’t be doing anything special this week, although I’m sure Fiance is going to start asking me if I want to do anything. But for right now it’s just another quiet saturday. I pray Amaterasu-omikami grants us another ten years of quiet Saturdays at least. She’s given us so many other blessings as it is.

Okay, this is like my fourth attempt to write this post, because brains are stupid, words are stupid, and blank pages are stupid and so are feelings, so please bear with me while I try to get all of these stupid things lined up to make something coherent.

I am feeling disconnected. I don’t really know what I want, or what to do about it, or what to do with myself in general. It is difficult for me to really express when I want or need something, and I tend to get really wildly different reactions when I do, so it’s often less stressful to just, not say anything. I tend to ignore it anyway because my kids come first as well, and making sure they have what they need is always my priority. All that in addition to being chronically ill leads pretty easily to me feeling disconnected to my own body, feelings and thoughts, but it’s usually not so obvious and forefront as it is today. Maybe because I’ve been struggling with getting enough sleep the past two weeks and I woke up in a lot of pain this morning is why I’m feeling the disconnect so strongly today.

I wrote a short post awhile ago about how I felt Amaterasu-omikami was pushing me to start drawing again. But I’m struggling with it for various reasons. I haven’t drawn in almost ten years. So my past skill is pretty much gone. It’s frustrating. I wanna be on the same level as some of the artists I follow on social media. I’m not jealous, all my frustration is internal, wishing I’d kept up with it, wishing I hadn’t had such an awful professor when I was in school (that mess is it’s own post, ugh), wishing I could just magically be at the level of skill I want immediately. Which I know is completely unrealistic of course.

I sat in prayer to Amaterasu-omikami this morning, apologizing for not being able to make offerings yesterday and trying to express to her all the things I was feeling about drawing and feeling disconnected and being in pain today. And I felt her listening. Then this question popped into my head: what do you want out of it? If you only want the enjoyment of drawing, does your skill really even matter? If it matters, why? You sing even though you’ve never taken a class because you enjoy it. Treat drawing the same way. You must do it for yourself, not solely for me. It only means anything to me if you truly want to make art and enjoy it. Only then would your sincerity be clear in its creation.

I didn’t really know how to answer her questions because I don’t really know what I want out of it. I used to love drawing with my whole being. To the point that it was part of my introduction sometimes. This is Fae, she’s a twin and she loves to draw. Everyone who knew me knew that I always kept pencils and paper in my bookbag, had three pencil sharpeners (one was only for my colored pencils), and like five erasers. My grandfather would buy a ream of printer paper and put my name on it so I would stop stealing from the printer lol. My teachers would ask me to design fliers and programs for class or to draw examples on the chalkboard. I miss that. I miss enjoying it instead of feeling dread and anxiety.

I guess what I want out of drawing is to feel like I did as a kid again.

What up chicken nuggets, today’s post is brought to you by the Letter S for sleepy. Forgive me if there’s a lot of typos or if I’m not making sense today. The kids were up until 2am, and for whatever reason the last two weeks I’ve been waking up at 5am regardless of how long or little I slept and not being able to get back to sleep. So I’m running on only three hours sleep and my brain is mildly sauteed with a side of lemon and butter.

I’m usually very diligent about morning prayers and offerings for Amaterasu-omikami, but being the way my health is, somedays I just can’t manage it no matter how much I may want ot. Today is definitely one of those days, and tbh, I’m not actually sure if what I’m thinking is what I’m typing out on the page. My brain does weird things when sleep deprived and aggravated by the weather, so it’s not really prioritizing reading lol. My synesthesia always jumps out when I’m tired, so my vision is awash in color from the slightest of noises, which as you can probably imagine makes reading even harder, on top of my brain just not focusing on the words in general.

Amaterasu-omikami doesn’t seem to mind the days when my health dictates my routine, which is a huge weight off my shoulders, but like, ya know, I still lowkey feel bad about it. I’m getting better at going easy on myself though.

Man I’m tired. And there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to take a nap today either. Which is wild because like, you would think I’d clock out as soon as my head hit a pillow being as I’ve been up all day on so little sleep, but no, you’d be wrong.

I do need to post the pop culture magic stuff I did last week up here don’t I? That’s going to have to be for another day unfortunately.