…has it really been six months?

No, actually. It’s been seven since I moved. Wow.

I’ve been blogging, actually, just not on this particular site (forgive me). There are ruminations about Vodou over at imamou.org, and then I have been posting about the various things that I do in my Kemetic practice on the official website for that. It seems that Twitter fits the way my brain works a little bit better than a blog right now, probably because life jumped into high gear after the move, and has not slowed to a comfortable idle. If you want to know what I’m doing every day, that’s the best place to catch me.

What’s happened? Well, let’s see…

Less than a month after I moved, Eddy died. This was utterly unexpected; so much so, that I got angry at the person who called to tell me, because I thought he was making a very bad, and very inappropriate joke. I met Eddy at a PantheaCon some years ago and we immediately hit it off, maybe because of our mutual backgrounds (and similar histories) in African Traditional Religions, and I expect also because of the similar life goals, odd sense of humor, and personal integrity/honesty that we both hold so dear.

Very quickly, Eddy went from being just another one of my awesome friends to something more than that. I came to consider him family, my other little brother. The last time I saw him alive, he and his partner Clayton were helping me move into my new apartment and then taking me out to dinner afterward, so we could talk about all the great things we were going to do now that I’m in the area. That never got to happen. Even six months in, I’m having a hard time writing about this. I miss him so much.

The day after Eddy died, I started my transfer coursework at CGU to finish up my credits before I get on the doctoral dissertation. That was a very difficult day. I had to keep telling everyone that I wasn’t looking upset because of anything they did, but because of what was on my mind. It was not easy even for weeks after, but I fell into some sort of rhythm, and by the time I left for England in April, I was starting to feel like I live here and that it’s not all some strange but nice dream.

England was extraordinary. Due to the generosity of my hosts, I was not only able to attend the first Kemetic Orthodox Retreat in Europe, but I was able to take a week to travel the country and see it, for the very first time. Not only did I get a good dose of history, I got to meet up with some of my father’s ancestors and at least one descendant from those ancestors – who turned out to be one of my hosts! I also got to (gasp) relax a little bit and enjoy traveling. I want very much to return and see the rest of the island, so that’s a future goal.

This past weekend, I was the keynote speaker at the first Polytheist Leadership Conference. You can read what I said here. This is shaping up to be an exciting new adventure, with some intelligent, thoughtful, and just all-around awesome people. This evening, I followed up by being a guest on a radio show about the conference (Wyrd Ways Radio, the second show on this recording, starting about an hour in). Things are definitely happening for the polytheist community.

The rest of the year has been filled with finishing the Ancient Egyptian Daybook so it can be published. You can keep up with my progress here. Some of this has been an exercise both in frustration and in guilt. Because of the move and the funeral and school and everything else that happened, followed on by much travel, I had to delay the release, more than once. This makes me feel like a failure on some level. On another, I realize that while it’s not coming out when I wanted it to, I also didn’t know how much work was going to go into this project – it’s far, far bigger than the Prayerbook was in all ways, not even counting the Kickstarter campaign.

I also have to be fair to myself and live up to my integrity. I could have put out a subpar effort, and corrected it in a future edition or something. Because so many people believe in this project and have been willing to put money into it against that belief, however, I would rather delay the release until it can be the best book I can deliver. This is more important to me than a deadline, though by now, I am ready to be done with it, so the next projects (plural!) banging on my head already will shut up and let me sleep at night. This has certainly been a full seven months of learning and growing. Will be interesting to see what the rest of 2014 brings.

Comments

2 responses to “…has it really been six months?”

  1. Alex Avatar
    Alex

    Are one of those projects banging on your head something to do with the Sau class? Hehe.. 🙂

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