The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

It's my slow season at work. (No one wants to go into the office and order a blog post during the holidays, for some reason.) And it's been far too cold to go outside, with temperatures hovering around 0 F, and a hellacious windchill off Lake Mendota (right outside my house). Most everybody in my house is gone for the holidays, so feeding's been awfully scanty.

So I've been spinning my wheels a lot. I mean, that's not entirely true: I've been trying to enter a dark, reflective period, of study and focus. And I've done great, in some ways: I've gotten a lot of reading and memorization work done.

But things are a little rough. My bedroom (which doubles as office and ritual room) is a mess. I'm doing at least one ritual operation that requires careful timing, and I'm several days behind schedule. Personal correspondence feels like a herculean endeavor; I just responded to my dad's xmas wishes yesterday or the day before.

I plan to make a good effort to straighten things out, on this, my day off. But it's very difficult. Add in the lack of good paying work, and I feel kind of like I'm in freefall right now.

I'm thinking of heading out to a goth night here in town, tonight, for NYE. I have a running hypothesis that massive doses of psychick energy (say, ambient feeding at busy club nights, or intensive feeding from a single partner) don't just nourish us, but press the reset button on the energetic system. Maybe I'll test that tonight.

I've been feeling pretty damn low lately. I recognize that it's a confluence of factors:

- Money's tight. A lot of financial responsibilities are piling up. I work as a freelancer, so I pay all my taxes as a lump sum at the end of the year. It's a lot of cash to dump all at once, and it makes me nervous.

- My family's mostly out of communication with me (I'm estranged) and my mother is dying (stage IV breast cancer). This isn't news -- we got the diagnosis about a year ago (yes, during the holidays). Everyone is insisting to me that she's getting better, but they have a tendency to say that and then they happen to reveal that by most metrics things are much worse. We're selling her house, so this is a very important time, and I'm getting a lot more communication about things I have no control over, all of a sudden. There's no love lost between my mother and me, but this doesn't stop me from feeling an intense sadness about all of this.

- I'm in a new relationship, and it's triggering some of my body issues (I'm trans). I know my partner (who identifies as straight) is having some issues with my body as relates to his sexual identity, and he's very loving and supporting but I wish I were just, well, more normal and easy to love.

- My Dragon is riding me hard. I'm coming out of my first Saturn return and I know it's time to buckle down with the reasons why I've incarnated here. But it's hard to break through and get started, especially when the modes with which I express myself (writing, preferably essays) aren't really respected in the internet age.

- There's been a tremendous uptick in drama lately, in my life. A lot of my friends are going through serious problems in their lives, and my swan's ex is getting shitty at him. I am generally fine with seeing other people through their pain -- and I can usually siphon off some of the drama-energy, to feed me, but filtering has always been the part of feeding that I've been worst at. (I was one of those kids who was not allowed to set up healthy boundaries, in my childhood. Learning them as an adult has been a struggle.) So at a certain point I feel bogged down and overwhelmed.

- It's not sexy to admit, as a vampyre, but I have my share of seasonal affective disorder. I love darkness, both practically and aesthetically, and a lot of things about winter appeal to me (crisp air, snow, skies filled with stars). But I absolutely hemorrhage energy during this season -- or maybe it's that the cold keeps me from heading out on the regular to get the nourishment I need. I just want to curl up and hibernate. (I seem to remember the Kheprians having some theories about summertime vampyres, who thrive in summer and suffer in winter. I don't know if that's me. It makes me feel a little backward.)

Ironically, I'm staying very on top of my work right now. I set a series of alarms (look up the Pomodoro method; it's seriously changed my life) and just start working. I'm studying hard for my house, in preparation to see my adra and take on certain tasks. I'm still on top of my job, and earning money. My living space is (comparatively) clean and orderly. I am staying on top of magick and ritual work, and getting plenty of exercise.

But good god I just want to die right now. It has been a real struggle to not do stupid stuff, or harm myself. I am running out of my meds next week, and it's very hard to get off my butt and refill them, when money is already tight and I'm not convinced they're doing anything.

I'll survive, but in the meantime, my god.