Update on not so much writing

It has been a while since I posted an update on the witching novel or an writing in general.
I originally started this blog to document myself researching, writing, exploring the life of a woman ending up as a witch in the 17th century in Europe, remember? Oh, you do? Great, because lately I tend to forget.

Lately, I often forget to talk to my witch. The poor girl has become lonely while I forgot to put on candles and neither chocolate nor wine leave a taste on my tongue, because my mind is occupied.

Occupied? Oh, that‘s good, right? For me, who began a Dystopia dairy 18 months ago and has been missing her old life ever since.
Well, most of my life is still weirdly messed up, so no „Bye-Bye-Dystopia“- Party, yet. But I have to admit that more is happening by now. I have gotten more visitors, I have more tasks for my job to do (which also only take place at home…). But most importantly, instead of writing for my witching novel and blog, I decided to finally finish my degree in special education. All the energy that was put into my witching writing now goes into understanding growing up with hearing loss and it is fascinating! No question. I enjoy researching and writing this and I like to think in my old patterns that I have not had to access really ever since the pandemic started, but it is risky. Risky, because sometimes it still feels wrong doing all of this alone at home. In those moments, I still miss the library and lecture halls, seeing my friends and hanging out and making up drinking games around our excel sheets and not being alone with a bad exam result.

So yes, I can be annoyingly nostalgic and writing my thesis can have me fall deep into all my negative emotions.
But this does not make me write anything witching.

Instead I forget to even light my candles, curl up on my bed and so very often sink into self doubt.

Would I talk to my witch, it would take time away from my thesis writing. Time, I think I do not deserve to take away from it in order not to fail, and so I spend it with having a panic attack instead.
No this, does not make sense, not even in my witching head.

Would I talk to my witch, the conversation would go like this:

„I am very certain that I am going to fail last minute.“
„Why would you?“
„I can feel it. My stomach says so.“
„Your stomach just decided to mix a bottle of wine with cookies‘n‘cream ice cream after having had a whole pizza at 4 AM. I question its judgment and say you are going to be fine.“

What I really want to explore with this blog post is why I am always stuck between two extremes.
I started this blog to survive and to process emotions when I thought my former self did not fit into this world anymore and I could not feel myself anymore. I also had the sudden urge to do this publicly, while after having once had published smaller things in Germany and also having worked at the theater, I had originally decided to only be creative privately and had began to study something to pursuit a job in education. Finishing my degree, gathering knowledge and probably becoming a teacher had suddenly meant more to me than being creative. Once the life I had built up around that had collapsed, I fell back into my old interests and this blog became my most important thing.

The question I keep asking myself at the moment is: „Why not both?“
Why does studying and actually doing the research I had always wanted to do mean that I cannot write or allow myself to spend an evening with one of my witching books?
Why does writing and dressing up a bit more like the witching goth I was at the age of 17 mean that I will fail my studies to me?

I will have to figure out how to accept both parts of me.
I do not ever want to stop writing and being read, but I also want to finish my studies and get interesting job based on that.

With this blog post, I promise myself to keep doing my witching research once a week and to keep writing my first draft.
I also thought about taking trips to the witching relics here where I live and document them on my blog. That could be really interesting!

I just have to allow myself to do this.