Year: 2023

It’s been extremely challenging to find my way to this page today. I’m in the middle of a newspaper deadline and the last thing that I want to do is spend more time in front of the screen.

Eventually I plan to have a handful of drafts that I can clean up and share when I’m dragging like this. I’m still writing even though I’m not feeling it because I made a commitment to do so.

And sometimes when I least feel like it is when I have the best writing experiences and or new and powerful ideas are born.

23

It has been good to post here daily. I’ve found my way to some new words and have been able to expose upon them. As I continue to process M & M, which is becoming extremely rich with meaning, I break from commentary  to observe the most immediate impact of removing social media from my daily existence.

First, the majority of time on my phone was spent on social media. With the apps deleted, my muscle memory still has me picking up my phone and looking for them. It is more noticeable when I’m first waking and when I am tired. I pick up my phone to see what’s happening and there’s nothing there.

While this blatant addictive behavior is embarrassing, the fact that I’m tuning into it more by going cold turkey is also a nod toward liberation and evolution. There is a potential that realizing how hooked you are can turn you off. I’m attempting to ride that one here. It does feel liberating to have moments that typically would be broadcast out to many remain private and personal, special and sacred.

Yesterday brought The Midwife and the Mortician and I’m exploring some thoughts on its meaning and my intention with the flow.

The Midwife and the Mortician

I am the sun,
you are the moon.

Together we’ve made a world
touching only in brief moments
across vast amounts of time.

You shape form, you wain, you wax,
I invoke the Solstice and Equinox.

Together we set the stage,
the lights, inform the scenes
in which our progeny play.

I am the death of the old way,
you are the birth of the new.

The midwife and mortician, together alone
uprooted everything to plant seeds,
not crosses, with these bones.

©Eden Bloom, Eschaton Life

I’m uncertain how to determine if death has been more present for me than others. The patriarch of my childhood family, my grandfather,  worked in a funeral home I frequented. I’ve written at length about both of my grandparents roles as psychopomps. This is an extension of that expression.

I was born on the winter solstice. The reference and energy here points toward order, wheel of the year. The solstice and equinox  establish the parameters of the playing field and denote the boundaries of my mental and physical geography/time/space.

There is that old SWANS song Goddamn the Sun that resonates here. Leather-clad, whiskey-drenched and sun cursing, the blazing sun as oppressive owner/all-father. While I resist attributing male/female energy to nature, here the sun is phallic and weaponized as both the seed and the sword.

Back up the tree tmrw.

Moving back into everyday life.
Normalization, if that is what this is.
Re-indoctrination is more like it.

On the 3rd day it became a challenge to find my way to the page here. I write in my handwritten journal everyday, but that is for a different purpose than the words here. That writing counts immensely, but it does not count for this project.

As part of this project I’ve been meditating on gratitude. Specifically over the last day, I’ve been thinking about how a stance of gratitude can be used to gloss over issues and carry forward selfishly without concern for others. Thank you can be weirded as a machete to cut through any resistance.

There is a deeper gratitude, one that also exudes care and concern. It is a place I want to be able to go with more people, but its so beyond transactional, it seems a major shift. At least that’s how it is for me.

This post really captures that live journal feel I was going for here. LOL.

 

Today, I successfully removed Facebook, Instagram and Twitter from my phone. Deactivating and deleting my accounts. I’ll maintain the EL Facebook page for a while as that seems to be where I am connected to those I am most interested in sharing with.

It is interesting to be reduced to one channel for communication. As noted, this is part of my motion toward my immediate and intentional communications and relationship building.

Social media has created a false surrogate for community and based upon my history of personal loss I have to admit that I fell for it and into it. While many of my old friends are connected through these platforms I am looking forward to seeing how many of them I can connect with in real life.

There is an aspect of passive vs active attention at play in my decision as well. Social media “friendship” can be a very passive act, a like or a comment on an algorithm fronted post and we are connected.

I’m more interested in sharing with those of like mind who seek myself and others out based upon the work and themes rather than an AI generated audience who may or may not vibe.

 

 

All our best to you and yours in the coming year. While I deplore the Gregorian calendar, I do thoroughly enjoy numeric correspondence, recognize synchronicity and embrace emergent opportunities for transformation. There’s a huge shift between 22 and 23 and there are worse devices to hitch our dreams upon these days.

This year our recognition of the solstice expanded to include our family joining a vision boarding session with Lottie Spady hosted by Earthseed Detroit and Healing By Choice. This awesome virtual workshop challenged us to do a ‘free write’ as part of our process. This 2023 Missive is a formalized expansion on the workshop free write. Thank you so much to Lottie for providing this space. 

2023 New Year’s Day Missive

Write Daily – My intention is for this New Year’s Day missive to be the first of disciplined daily output throughout 2023 and beyond. I feel as though my retreat from the fray to raise up these kids is coming to a close. It is time once again to reconsolidate and more adequately integrate my creative and artistic pursuits, my identity, with my day to day existence. I do not know the form that this expression will take, though I’m going for a level of exposition above and beyond social media.

Bail on Social Media – My intention is that this will be one of the last messages posted to social media in 2023. I will attempt to maintain Eschaton Life’s presence here as this is my sole connectio to some people and projects I hold dear. I have ceaselessly threatened to leave these platforms for years. The pulleys of my mental well-being have become too intertwined with those of algorithms and apps. After failed efforts to balance or manage theme their removal now seems the path of least resistance. This extraction will support the requisite realignment of priorities.

Get Our House in Order – Taking back the time and emotional energy that these platforms vamp, I intend to establish new connections and address foundational issues I have perpetuated on the mundane plane. The last 13 years have been about basic survival. The resources we have slowly accumulated while struggling to get out from under poverty have been pieced together haphazardly. They need to be reworked to be compatible with dominant systems if we are going to make it out of survival mode.

Family First – To survive without overtly endorsing the occupation of Detroit I monetized my talents to support deep community organizing. While this work matters to me and has impacted perceptions of power through some circles of influence, my personal power and relationships have been left behind. I intend to reprioritize what I expend my energy upon. My kids and partner need me more than I anticipated they would at this stage, and that is OK.  I believe that we can provide what they need to eventually live their lives on their own terms.

For the Old Gods – Part of meeting those needs will be actually working to live my life on my own terms. While that is extremely easy for me to surf community as a CISWHT guy, I have experienced difficultly as a heathen.  I struggle to bring myself and my relationship with the divine into the public sphere. If one of the reasons I strive toward liberation for all beings is my own unique manifestation and I have struggle so hard to keep that identity, I intend to and must represent that identity in community. 

In 2023, I intend to refocus to write daily, bail on social media, work on foundations, put family first, foster new relationships, and advocate for the divine as I experience it in the communities I share in.