long time no see. as one may assume, i’ve been very busy and burnt out as all hell. i’m behind at work and behind with my patreon because i’m so tired from being behind at work.
we got our reviews and as expected i did exceptionally, 5 stars no notes employee. unfortunately the shop owner decided that he felt bad enough about being so late on reviews and raises that he “retroactively implemented them”, meaning they’re already applied to this pay period and not the next one as every other raise/review period has done. and with that… there was no discussion of how much the raises should be, or what was decided. i asked my manager at the end of the review and she said they’ve already been applied and didn’t offer an amount, which i’m taking to mean she doesn’t know what was decided either. which is just great. and i’m also not going to really find out what the number is through the math either cuz i got overtime this pay period. i’ll have to check the stupid hr website and see if it lists my hourly rate.
fuck i have to do my taxes still…
set myself up an altar and honestly it’s been great to use. i know this is not the final form or anything but it’s functional for now. had a very fruitful thrift store run to get some essentials, including an old abused night stand to be the surface for my altar which was the bulk of the cost of my purchase at a whopping $17. it’s a little small but has great storage space underneath. and i don’t really need it to be big. i like it small, encourages me to keep it more utilitarian i suppose. i don’t want to fall into the trap of “fill this big beautiful surface with things” when those things ultimately aren’t serving me. and hell i’m probably already thinking of a way to rework it cuz my damn pillar candles keep dripping down on to my cloth.
i do sometimes feel like i’m faking it, somehow, even though i’m doing this entirely for me and not sharing most of it with anyone else. i’ve never been religious so i feel like i don’t know what i’m doing most of the time. i read peoples experiences on their blogs and i wonder who’s weirder; them for having these seemingly complex visual and auditory experiences where they directly talk to and see lucifer who responds to them in real time, or me, a person who doesn’t hear his voice or see him in my room. faith is strange and a thing that i don’t have a great deal of experience with. because if i want to continue and believe that i’m speaking to something that i’m not seeing physically, it requires faith. and as a facts and logic (tm) kind of person, that’s a little difficult for me.
i’ve been using a website to draw a tarot card in the morning and when i get home from work during what i like to call “my quiet time with the devil” to ask what i need to focus on that day and then for the evening. and again this may be confirmation bias at play but a lot of the time it makes sense. that’s probably exactly how it’s supposed to work and i guess it’s doing that. found an old notebook that i’ve decided is technically a journal that i only ever write in one or two times every two years at most, like taking snap shots of my life instead of proper journaling, and made that a place to put the card pulls and what i think of them. decided that literally this morning. also ordered a tarot deck online from an artist i really love but i wont be getting it for like two weeks cuz they ship all their shit independently. the shipping email said they ship every friday and i had just ordered in the morning on saturday ugh. so it wont ship for another week and then it’ll be however long after that for the post office to send it to me.
i promise that patience is in fact one of my few virtues.
maybe when i feel more settled and i have my tarot deck and get some more personal pieces up there to make it feel a little more me i’ll take a picture. not super likely but it’s a possibility. feels a little private to share on the internet but also this isn’t social media so maybe. and maybe i’ll share my painting i made for him. not sure about that either. that might be more likely cuz it’s still art at the end of the day.
anyway, my bud lucifer said that i’m not using my time effectively lately and it’s true but he didn’t have to say that so i’ve gotta go do some fucking art for my lovely patrons that i agreed to draw for ugh
this is going to be very long, it got longer and longer the more time i spent on it. i had a lot of thoughts this time. the first section is work troubles, the second is an update to my patreon, the third is somehow a turn towards religion. enjoy.
been very busy at work and it’s tiring as fuck. i’m running behind on things cuz people keep shoving their projects into my already full workload and saying this is due insert close deadline before all my other projects can you do that? and it’s not a question really. it’s one of those “i need you to do this by this date at the expense of your other work but i’m phrasing it as a question so you feel like you have agency over the decision” types of things. and it’s been a minimum of three this week which is so fucking fun.
also they still haven’t given us our reviews which are normally done in november. instead they fired people lol. the charitable answer is that with the rash of firing and hiring they didn’t have time or forgot to schedule reviews and by the time they did the end of the year conventions and shows needed attention. the uncharitable answer is that i feel like they were hoping we wouldn’t notice so they wouldn’t have to give us raises. guys we live in a high cost state we need at minimum some decent cost of living raises every year or we’re going to get priced out of the area. i personally should, in theory, be expecting a decent raise for my position change in april of last year. i was promised a raise “when i’m trained” and i assumed that would probably mean i would just receive a higher raise in november with the normal review schedule. but we see how that’s gone.
i have some figures in my head where i’m going to have to tell them i’m not actually going to get good at this other skill if you don’t hit this number. i’ve already taken on the skills of three other departments i can’t add that other thing also without a good raise and time to actually practice. though having time to practice would mean they stop shoving shit into my workload, which i don’t see happening tbh. or pay me overtime to come in for a few hours on saturdays, which i don’t want to do cuz i’m already not rested well enough from two days off let alone only one, but i’d be more willing if i was paid for time that was outside of the time i’m already dedicating to keeping on schedule and if i got that actually worthwhile raise. i’ve heard whispers that they’re going to be trying to schedule reviews and raises soon so i’ll keep my fingers crossed i guess.
in other news, i made an executive decision for my patreon and they supported me which is very heartening. i have no reason to think this but i always worry that if i change shit or do things i prefer over a group decision that they’ll all hate me and leave lol. which i guess isn’t the end of the world cuz i for sure don’t rely on my patreon money for anything other than expanding the coffee consumption budget, but still. i was a bit tired of doing pinup drawings. we’d been doing those for like two years and there’s really only so many ways to draw someone sexy but not scandalous (we collectively decided they would be sensual and provocative, not out right erotic and explicit to justify them being available to every tier).
but the new thing for the foreseeable future, or at least until the end of the year, is that the patrons suggest and then vote on a character to draw in a randomly chosen au. i’m hoping that the variety and the theme will help me feel more inspired when making my piece. bit more direction other than “draw this character sexy but not too sexy.”
soft promo to become a patron if you like there’s a couple tiers and the monthly themed drawing is available to the $1 tier click click right here you want to be a patron they get all the art early also
and a third, even more unrelated thing, and probably a sign that i’m burnt out in some way; i’ve been reading up on paganism again, more specifically luciferianism. i went through what i’ll call the early twenties depressed girl witchcraft phase nearly a decade ago and it didn’t really end up working out for a number of reasons, one of them being that i kinda straight up don’t believe in magic in the literal sense. i just don’t believe that lighting a candle and burning some herbs while saying a prayer is going to do anything physically in the real world. but i recently got into ghost… which is cringe i guess that a glam metal satirical satanism band got me back into reading about paganism. but listening to the music and reading posts from the fans and listening to interviews got me interested again what can i say.
and one of the things that seems to separate some luciferians from others is their acknowledgment that the magic is for the mind. strangely a concept i’d never come across in regular paganism. most pagans operate, or at least talk about operating under the assumption that their ritual action and spell work and energy does literal tangible change on the outside world, which is just not a thing i could get behind. more philosophical luciferians are of the mind that magic and ritual are more of a mindset, that a ritual is a thing you do to put yourself in the right state to achieve the things you want. and that, the sort of self aware psychology of it all, that i can kinda get behind.
a lot of articles i read on the topic reiterated over and over that luciferianism is about self sovereignty, personal power and responsibility, seeking knowledge and enlightenment, respect for nature and science, and the betterment of the self. there’s also a lot less “the god is better than me therefore i worship them and their power” and more “this is a figure to walk with and learn from” which is more appealing to me. there’s a lot less reverence for the higher power and more conversation, and i value that measure of equality. some don’t even see lucifer as an entity and more completely as a symbol of freedom and empowerment, which as a long lived atheist (or at the very least agnostic) i can also appreciate.
i’ll admit, from the bit of reading i’ve done the more atheistic or philosophical tilts to luciferianism seems less like the worship of lucifer the morning star lord of hell but rather a lovingly made cult of the self with lucifer as the symbol of your own power. and as a recovering self loather turned well intentioned narcissist, i can get down with the cult of the self.
so i’m considering doing some reorganizing and setting up an altar of sorts with the knowledge that it’s partly a space for lucifer, who may or may not be real, and a space for me, who most certainly is. probably just going to be some candles and the crystals i got from a long time ago and maybe over time some art i enjoy of lucifer and things that make me feel happy. it’ll probably end up being a place for self care and affirmation, which i suppose it probably closer to a vanity than an altar but it’s my house and i can do what i want with my new friend lucifer.
also, total confirmation bias moment, yesterday morning i was about to leave for work and was opening my driveway gate when i found a peacock feather on the ground inside my driveway. an honest to god real feather from a bird not a fake one. now, that might not sound too weird other than the fact that it’s odd to find peacocks in (undisclosed city). but over the past few days i’d been reading peoples posts on their experiences and their interpretations of history and mythology when i briefly read that lucifer can on rare occasion be associated with peacocks. the connection is with another religion the yezidis where their chief holy figure is associated with peacocks, but that the dominant culture around them regards them as devil worshipers (incorrectly). and i had only read that association briefly from one person and then not again. but i did read it and considering who i am as a person which is someone who loves to read tangentially related histories and be a repository of fun facts, it felt pointed. felt like “i see you seeing me”.
i don’t know, felt like the first tangible sign from any “higher power” that i’ve ever experienced. maybe it’s fake, maybe i’m just burnt out and looking for meaning in clouds, but maybe it’ll help and i’ll get something out of it and that can be real.
congrats if you finished reading this, you just read nearly 1,600 words, and uh, hail lucifer?