I’ve spent the last couple of years on a really complicated spiritual and physical journey which has had a really huge impact on this public-facing side of my spiritual and magical practice. I’ll explain in full here, but first, for those who don’t want to get into all the details, the ultra-short version is this:

Burnout. Menopause. Capitalism sucks. Why the hell have I turned my spiritual and creative pursuits into demanding side gigs? Aging sucks. Social media sucks. Fuck it, I’m going old school. I’m just gonna write my thoughts on paper and photocopy them and hand them to people now. Zines! I’ll be posting them here and to my Tumblr. Yay!

Long version:

I had a lot of fun doing the podcast and working on my book, at least for a while. I did have a lot of ambitious ideas about getting a workbook, coloring book, audio book, and oracle deck done to go with the book – things that are still on the “to do at some point” list. I was on TikTok and having fun making content about my book, my practice, etc. But there was an undercurrent to all that which I didn’t talk about much, but which had a really huge effect on it all.

When the Covid lockdowns started in 2020, I was working for an online business coach as a virtual assistant. At that point it was just me and her, and I was kind of her sidekick in efforts to figure out how to organize and market her practice effectively. Well, lockdowns turned everything around for us in a huge, huge way. She’d gone through some stuff personally and professionally which put her in a particularly good place to capitalize on the surge of people trying to take their own businesses online at the time. Things grew rapidly. I learned a lot, and I am really thankful I had that job through the subsequent few years. At one point I had become a salaried employee in her coaching company, handling operations for a team of 12 employees.

All the stuff I was doing for the business got applied to my own ambitions as well. I never wanted to be a spiritual coach, per se, but I did have this book in the works and a lot of ideas I wanted to put out into the aether for others to interact with. So as we figured out how to get my boss’s podcast going, I started one too. Social media strategies got applied to my own projects. I met a potential client of the company who had a small publishing outfit, and I hired them to help me publish. Between what I did for my boss and what I did for my own projects, nearly my whole life got wrapped up in the hustle.

Thanks to lockdowns and this huge presence in my life, my other hobbies got pushed aside. Work on house projects ground to a halt. We weren’t going out anyway, but even virtual friendships got neglected. I put all my energy into work for my boss and work for myself.

It all became a lot of work.

By mid-2022, things were starting to shift. When my wife and I got married in 2012 I had so much fun planning and executing our wedding that I proposed that we have a vow renewal every 10 years so we could do another big, fancy party with our friends. So as businesses were opening again and vaccines were available and allowing things to loosen back up again, I sat down to plan our first 10-year vow renewal party…

…and realized we didn’t really have friends anymore.

Other than our framily and two or three other very close friends, we’d fallen out of touch with all the people who had been at our wedding a decade ago. I think that was the point where I started looking at my life and, as happens periodically, realized I’d ended up on a path I didn’t want to keep following. Wasn’t I anti-capitalist? Wasn’t the goal to connect with people? Like, actually connect with them and not just gather strangers into a parasocial collective I can market myself to? What the hell was I doing with my life?

At that point, everything started kind of collapsing under its own weight. I’d sort of forgotten how to just relax and do things for my own enjoyment without feeling guilty for neglecting the grind. I was proud of my book, but also a little bit regretful that I’d not really gone fully in with the witchcraft angle in an attempt to make it palatable for people who were spiritual but not witchy. I wanted to do the audiobook, but that meant doing a ton of work on my house to set up a proper place to record, and that was a daunting mountain of to-do’s. TikTok started to feel less fun as the algorithm changed and every other post was trying to sell things, and my presence there began to feel smarmy and gross. I started just posting random crafty things and stopped trying to stick to a niche or build an audience. My boss’s practice was going through a huge upheaval as well, and soon we were downsizing and considering closing big chunks of the business down.

Then, while I was trying to figure out what I wanted and how to move forward, my wife and I finally caught Covid in late 2023. We weren’t very sick during the infection itself, but it absolutely decimated my stamina. I couldn’t even assemble and decorate a small Christmas tree without having to sit down to rest several times along the way. Everything became really difficult. Shortly after that I finally got in to see the new doctor I’d been waiting months for an appointment with so that I could hopefully get on hormones for menopause and address my high blood pressure (which apparently had been going on for a while and I just didn’t know it).

I kind of resigned myself to the reality that the universe was all but forcing me to just sit down and take it easy for a while, to stop trying to push myself to do things and to actually, really, be the radical anti-capitalist I thought I was. Fuck the grind, fuck the exploitative nature of algorithmic social media, accept my physical limitations as reality and stop chasing the empty promises of the neverending grind. Pay the bills, take care of myself, and do the things that are good for me. Enjoy the life I have.

I started doing art again. Got to work again on the very long list of house projects that need to be done, including turning one of our bedrooms into a library/practice space for witchcraft. I started focusing on being an active part of the local pagan community and making more friends. I put my attention on my personal practice and NOT turning it into projects to promote. I started a little coven with a few friends. My wife and I started cosplaying again. I deleted my Insta and Twitter, stopped logging into FB except to RSVP to local pagan events, and instead joined Tumblr. I began working with a couple of deities. Picked up archery as a new hobby.

It’s taken a while, but I’ve pretty much recovered physically to where I was before catching Covid, and archery is actually quite the workout for an obese almost 50-year-old so I’m getting stronger every week. I’ve got new witchy friends and a coven and a thriving spiritual practice.

But I still hate the state of social media, and I miss what it used to be. I do still have thoughts and ideas that I want to put out into the world for those who are interested. I just don’t want to do it as part of some contrived side-hustle. I’ve been down that path before, and all of this was a big reminder that it just doesn’t work (for me) to turn the things that are really important to me into ways to make a living. My magical practice needs to happen in its own space, even the parts that extend out to the public.

Recently its come to my attention that zine making is experiencing a resurgence, and for my own purposes I feel like it’s exactly the right time to get into it. I’ve made four so far – hand drawn and lettered in pencil in dollar store sketchbooks, inked over, photocopied, and hand bound – and several more are partially done. I’ve got a huge list of topics and ideas – notes I’ve made in the middle of the night on my phone, revisits of podcast and blog topics, things that I intended to talk about on TikTok, stuff from the meetup I’ve organized for over a decade now… And my intention is to keep making them, carry them with me, offer them to the local community whenever I’m out and about. Maybe start a local zine collective. And if there’s interest, offer them through something like Patreon for enough to cover printing and postage for anyone who isn’t local.

I like doing them by hand, being able to make them without wading into the mess of forced AI use and unnecessary subscription fees and all of that bullshit. I bought a refurbished laser printer so I can make them completely at home. But I will be posting them here on this blog and on my Tumblr to share with anyone who wants to see them.

And maybe at some point I’ll revive the podcast in some format. I’m contemplating a complete rewrite of Deep Self Magic to make it fully a witchcraft book. Back to doing all these projects because I want to, and doing them in the way I want to, even if that means not reaching a ton of people with them or making a living as an author and artist. I trust that they’ll reach the right people when the time is right.

But in the meantime, ZINES! 🙂