The last few weeks have been a bit stressful, the world has been just a lot. Being at home was unexpected and led to having rest I wasn’t expecting. Leaving me to be in my head a lot. Thinking about myself, the past, and just the stuff I tend to tuck away because I have so much going on. Without the rush of my trying to balance my busy life. I have taken the time to check in with the person who needed it most. Me.

In my daily life, I put so much before myself. That with one change, being that I actually have more time to myself. I find that there are places inside me I haven’t tending to in a while. For me, I found they broke down into three places that I had been neglecting. A reminder that self-care covers so much more than just outward appearances.

Pleasure

I found myself in about the first few weeks, starting to break down. While I had the time to masturbate. I didn’t want to. Sometimes I pushed myself through the motions. But it was only performative and when I realized that. I stopped. When I was trying to fit everything into a tight schedule to balance three jobs, I was skipping the most important part of masturbation. Enjoying myself. I caught it because a lot of the feelings I had were recognizable as stress holding me back. A feeling I had after the fire a few years back. But I had the tools now to help myself navigate through the trauma responses I was having.

I realized what I needed to do was actually change things up. I did things like using my clitoral balm. I pulled out old toys I had not used a while. I grabbed toys I had not yet had a chance to try! I even got a few of my favorite erotica books off the shelf. Finding porn that showed more people with my body shape and size. I made my time enjoying myself and my body. Which actually kick-started my sex drive and kicked me out of a slump I was having. It was almost like something that had been blocking me mentally had gone away.

Writing

One of the reasons I am writing this, is because of how caught up I got in the sudden frenzy to ‘stay productive’. I tried to plow through my reviews to play catch up. Before the pandemic I was healing an injured hand. I still am healing them technically. But I saw the stay at home as a time to make sure I was making up for lost time at my other job. Nearly burning myself out here. I felt like I was starting to lose my voice and just churn out content because I should. Seeing my worth as only what I write that makes me money.

So I stepped back, took some time to write in my personal journal. Unwind a lot of thoughts in my head. Things I wanted to be writing about that was more than reviews or centered around a sponsor. I looked back on old posts writing about writing more about my life. I wanted to find more of my voice and where my thoughts might be headed with such a change in my life.

Spirituality

This is a place where things have gotten interesting because I am finding just a little more free time in my life. I am finding that I am able to take some more time to spend thinking about my own spirituality. From reading more tarot, not just for myself but for others. I have been diving into books I have had sitting in my to-read pile for a few months now. My current read is a lot of Raven Kaldera’s books that cover alternative relationships and spirituality. Finding where the line between submission, kink, and my own personal spiritual gnosis lies.

I have also been doing a lot of research into queer witchcraft. When I search sites I am finding that so much of the language is strictly binary. Which can be tough to slog through when one isn’t, so I have been hunting down as many LGBTQ resources as I can. My newest being books like Queering the Tarot and The Queer Witch podcast. It is giving me a lot of fresh looks at things through a lens that fits me better than a lot of my past resources.

What areas of your life are you taking care of during this time? Are you making sure to get the self-care that you need? Make sure you remember that your health of all kinds is important during a time like this.