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I haven’t forgotten myself or y’all!
If you haven’t noticed my absence here lately… you’re right! I haven’t been absent, I’ve in fact been totally consistent and very interesting/compelling.
If you have noticed my absence here lately, I have noticed it too! It’s frustrating, because this project is one of the things that I was most proud of when we the world rolled into 2025. I’m still proud of it, of course, but the consistency with which I thought, researched, wrote, and sent last year was something that took a good bit of work and commitment which I don’t always feel naturally very good at. It’s hard to work and it’s not my strong suit.
I know all about the disagreements and pushback that usually comes after you say something like that, as though you’re fishing for compliments, but I really mean it and I don’t even mean it all that self-deprecatingly. A friend recently asked the group how many days per week we’d like to work in a utopian situation. My honest answer was zero, but I acknowledged I’d probably feel the most purpose working at least three days per week. My friend’s honest answer was seven, but she acknowledged she probably needed to pull that back to four. There really are people out there who love to work and I’m just not one of them.
I’m not one of them, but this fall I’m still taking three courses for my theology degree, am in a medical herbalism course (for fun lol), am doing as much freelance work as I can find, and want to be writing meaningful and interesting pieces here (and, because of rent, have a 9-5 job).
This makes it seem like I’m someone who likes to work, but really I’m just someone who likes being in charge of things. I like getting to say “Yes!” to something and then showing up to it and participating. I really like learning. I like my little hobbies and my curiosities. In college, this led to a never ending stream of high-anxiety due dates that I just barely met, but now I’m thirty and have an ADHD diagnosis and medication. Now I feel a lot less social pressure and if I’m not able to go to something I’m a lot less likely to say I can and then skip on sleep to make it happen. Not perfect! But improving.
As part of that improving, I’ve scheduled in my newsletters this fall as part of my schoolwork, with the same kinds of deadlines and same earnest expectation of meeting them. I’m planning to meet January 1, 2026 with the satisfaction of knowing that since making this commitment today I wrote roughly seventeen more newsletters (about 25k total more words) and, hopefully, am also continuing to get to engage with y’all. I love the thinking and the writing, but the discussion has been the most exciting part and that tends to come most frequently when the writing happens and happens consistently.
Because there’s only so much time in the day, there’s a good chance that my writing here will have more to do with what I’m reading and writing about in my theology classes, but I will do my best to stick to the central goals I set for this blog in the first place: asking questions that entertain/engage/provoke me and exploring answers that do the same. Here’s what I’ve got planned so far:
My friend Margaret asked if cats can have birth charts. I said, “Yes, everything does.” What’s that really mean?
Why did I want to get a masters and why am I getting it at a Catholic university? Is that weird?
What do the early Christian writers say about astrology? Does it matter now?
A book review/reflection about Sarah Coakley’s book God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ -- because I picked it up and it’s interesting!
What’s the birth chart say about purpose? How can you consider this? (this is sort of a revisit, but I’m selfish and want to do this because I’m in grad school and trying not to flail lol)
Interesting astrological charts from the history of Christianity and what they mean.
More other things! Send your questions/musings/rants!
That’s all for today. Thanks again for sticking around when I’ve gotten off track and thanks for sticking around as I get back on track.
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.