Goals

Forgive me, friends in the Southern hemisphere. enjoy your longest day while we shiver over here! 💙

It’s the longest night, the shortest day, and now is the time to go to ground, huddle in blankets, tend the fires and look to the stars. This is when I think about what’s to come, a seed sleeping in the dark dreaming of the time when I’ll sprout, then burst forth, ready to reach for the sun.

This is when I reassess who I’ve been and want to become, and make plans for the future. I don’t do “resolutions” but I feel that mapping out the solid, informed steps to the things I’d like to have happen in my life is a smart way to make sure I don’t drift aimlessly through the year to come.

Plus, it’s fun! I love the feeling of possibility.

I mentioned this over at my Ko-fi, but I use a printable planner that I put together a while back in order to get a handle on my planning and to enact it throughout the year, The Magickal Life Planner. I used to sell it but after printable planners fell out of fashion over digital ones, I backburnered it. I prefer paper, though, so I still use it and find it extremely helpful!

So I’ll be putting mine together for the New Year and I decided I’d invite some folks along to do it and share our insights if we want. You can join me live in Zoom to do yours, or watch me fill mine out then do yours later. I’ll provide the link for downloading the Planner plus a few extras for you that I’ll talk about in our chat as well, when you register.

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Dec 30, 2024 02:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpcuivpzojE9BEQctHl5OaaEZ34gQ20Mtb

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. If you don’t receive a second email from me [Christiane] shortly after with your downloadable planner, let me know and I’ll get it to you!

Are you ready to fight, Turn the wrong back to right?

Things are ready to get much more unpleasant here in the US, come January. That will shape much of my planning for 2025, and likely your planning as well. Having a solid, thoughtful, and most importantly flexible roadmap laid out will help a lot; it’s a useful distraction, a way to stay focused on the things we [mostly] can control. It’s empowering in a time that will be ruled by people who want to take away our power. It’s not at all revolutionary to plan for the future…or is it?

Planning is making a powerful statement of confidence. We are here. We’re not going anywhere, dammit. We are actively fighting for a beautiful future.

It’s exhausting to think of the fighting we may have to do in the future, even before that fight has started. In part that’s because we’ve already been fighting. Rising fascism, the strengthening of patriarchy and the rolling back of protections and advancements for those who need them and deserve them the most, late stage capitalism, the efforts by the rich to crush the general population firmly back into the role of serfs. Those things have always been there but they have begun to gain even more power, and it’s not hard to see the direction that not just the US but the world is tilting toward.

We need to stand together even more than ever. We need to use what privileges we’re lucky enough to still possess to protect those of us with less than ourselves. As Vali would say: we’re stronger together. My planning will include more mutual support, more donations of whatever I have to give, more kindness and righteous anger when needed and even more speaking out and standing beside those who need my strength. I’m older, I’m chronically ill, I’m poor. Still, I’ll do these things to the best of my ability because that’s what my personal moral code demands.

The ideas in my stories come directly from my own beliefs and morals. I write what I want to see in the world. I want equity and compassion and community, so that’s what I talk about and what my characters represent and defend. It’s that simple.

It’s going to be hard, friends, but we’ll get through this if we take care of each other. We’re all we have right now.

I’m grateful for you.