October 2024 - Picking Up Pieces, Spiritual Practices & Samhain, and Website Rambles

Posted on 10/13/24

Halloween is basically here, and so is my first personal Just Vibing blog post.

Little Updates

✦ I made a strawpage! you can use this to send me any questions & comments, or even doodles. Eventually, learn more about me in general as I build onto the site. I had a lot of fun crafting it! I feel as far as site-builders go, while carrd is a bit more user-friendly, and it's easier to make sure elements align properly, I appreciate the informality of Strawpage greatly and using it felt more like scrapbooking. It has a lot of charm, and even allows you to craft websites on your phone if you don't have access to a computer. Anyway, you can find my strawpage right here: https://julianember.straw.page

✦ My birthday is this month on the 26th! I didn't really get to do much to celebrate last year, so I'm excited to try and make up for that. Current plans since it's on a Saturday are to make it a 3 day weekend sort of deal. Friday there's the local gem show I like going to, then actual day of there's a Halloween vendor event with a lot witchy stuff we found out about by accidentally walking into it one year instead of the gem show. Sushi and other favorite foods are also often a staple. Sunday... will be for simply chilling and eating all my treats. I usually also do a little spa day/week right before. All in all lots to look forward to.

✦ I'm currently playing around with xtiles, an app along similar lines to Notion. Unfortunately, it shares some of Notion's weaknesses, namely not being local & having no offline mode. When it comes to strengths, it seems much more like a workspace over a wiki. Tasks are much easier to keep track of, and it's more limited & thus simpler than Notion while still allowing a fair amount of customization. This makes it possibly much better for productivity if you're the type that's always found Notion too overwhelming, or that spends probably way too much time trying to make the perfect layout. I like it so far! But I'm still very much in the experimentation phase, so that's all I have to say for now.

✦ I've joined the alpha/pre-alpha for the website league! Since it hasn't officially launched yet, I have no links for you at this time, but stay tuned.

✦ Currently watching playthroughs of the Silent Hill 2 remake, and I have thoughts... :-) probably expect my first gaming long post in the near future. Other things I'm working on: A post about self-love, and a more practical post about meeting your needs which you might get an idea of when I reference it below.

✦ I'd like to start doing blog roundups, even if I'm not posting weekly. To start off, here's some I've enjoyed since I got my RSS feed set up: Online Community by eladnarra, art programs (pt 1: my mains) by platinumtulip, we live in internet hell by alyaza, website thoughts by ant.computer

✦ On Repeat: 1. //In Reflection (a beautiful song about grief), 2. ATTN, 3. Slow Bloom, 4. Perdidos, 5. Halcyon

Getting back in the swing of things

For much of this year, my brain has felt like mush. I'm not sure if that's how it was destined to be, or if the first five months being insanely stressful just heavily inspired me to want to do fuck all, but a lot of things have fallen to the wayside. I'd like to pick them back up as best I can.

Most important is a desperate need to get back to basics. My routine has been practically nonexistent since my hysterectomy. I've fallen off medications, ceased healthy eating for the most part, managed to get my (already admittedly poor) sleeping schedule even weirder... I recently picked up The Self-Esteem Workbook by Glenn R. Schiraldi, as while my self-esteem feels leagues better than it did in my teenage years or early twenties, I could feel I was getting a bit down on myself again. I have a bit of a history with the book, having read excerpts from it before as part of an outpatient program. I always see that period of my life as the point where I started picking up pieces of myself and putting them back together, and I was hoping going back to the ~beginning of my journey in some way would help me reconnect with myself more deeply.

The start, naturally, puts a lot of stress on healthy eating, exercise, and sleep—encouraging the reader to make a plan to improve on these things and commit for 14 days. To be entirely honest I was about to just skip ahead because I'm insanely impatient, but the fact of the matter is taking care of your most basic needs and having a routine to do so is foundational work. It can feel tedious, but without it, any other plans will cave in eventually. Begrudgingly, I accepted that I should probably hold off from moving forward until I was meeting my base needs more consistently, especially when some of my current issues are around my appearance; which, in all fairness, a lot of the bigger changes we may desire take time, but also yeah you're going to feel gross if depression has you struggling to stay as clean as you'd like, or causes you to not put as much care into how you dress. I'll probably make a whole post on "returning to the basics" at a later date, but for now I'm just trying to focus on small steps. Basic stretches and an alarm going off every hour as a cue to get up and move some. Getting back to making proper grocery lists/some light meal planning. Making sure I stay up no longer than 16 hours and... probably working towards a rough sleeping schedule, as much as I hate keeping one. Of course, I also intend to start taking my meds consistently again, and I realized recently I need to start small there too and focus on taking what was going to have the most profound effect: my antidepressants. Ideally I'd also like to get back into my skincare routine, and maybe return to daily meditation, or just practice it in what still, quiet moments I can, like while I'm waiting for my testosterone to dry.

Getting back in the swing of things (Spiritual practices version)

Another thing I've fallen out of are my spiritual practices, for the most part. I've still done things here and there, but it's definitely not consistent. However, I can feel the energy picking up this month and it feels like a sort of "coming home" moment. I'm starting with tuning back into moon cycles, as well as trying to get back into my collective readings. Feeling good about being able to help people with my work in the past aside, realizing how connected we all are and remembering I'm not necessarily alone in what I'm going through is one of the most significant ways I've been able to tap in to the energy around me in the world. I want to make it a habit to use my cards again on a routine and journal with them, rather than just breaking them out when I have a question. I mentioned meditation already, which is just as beneficial for my spiritual health as it is my mental health. I also have plans for Samhain this year.

I don't go to cemeteries often. The one most of my family is buried at isn't necessarily far away but it's not close by either, and I've never really felt like it's actually any sort of resting place for my loved ones. I feel them around me everywhere I go, so why would it be a place I have to visit, as they don't live there? However, since last year, I've had the feeling to make it a point to visit specifically on the 31st. I didn't get to actually go previously as I was busy having a grand time healing from getting 4 teeth extracted (would NOT recommend multiple tooth extraction the day after your birthday, Worst Mistake Of My Life) but it didn't feel as pressing then as it does now. A large part of it isn't even about connecting with my family, but feeling the surrounding energy, sensing and communing with other spirits that do wander there. It's a gift I possess I haven't tapped into as much and have honestly been afraid to, which is part of the point I believe in having this calling now. A few intense experiences in the past have left me weary and nervous of anything I don't immediately recognize, and now it's time to move on from that and get reasonably comfortable.

At the same time, I'm not in an environment I feel fully comfortable in. That's just in general, but naturally it's extended to my Samhain celebrations. I can't set up a silent supper fully how I'd like. I don't have the privacy to feel entirely comfortable communing with my loved ones, and as I'm around someone who has a judgmental attitude towards this sort of thing, I'm always at least a little bit worried they're going to barge in as they're prone to doing and make some sort of negative comment. While I don't feel like my loved ones are really tied to a cemetery, cemeteries serve a purpose. They give our grief a refuge. They're a safe place to reflect, remember, and reminisce, and there's power in the rituals we practice within them. Cleaning a headstone, decorating a plot for holidays, leaving flowers and various trinkets, all acts of love we show for those we can no longer take care of in the traditional ways.

I hold closely the sentiment of "Be in the world but not of it." While I believe there's things in life that can leave us lost and off track if we lose sight of what's important, I've never been the type to disregard the here and the now, the purpose in the material realm. I don't think all of this is for nothing, or just some sort of obstacle, I think life on this earth is a sacred and precious thing worth honoring, appreciating, fully experiencing. At the same time, I suppose I subtly disregarded how important these acts could be based on some of my beliefs. Maybe my loved ones don't reside there, but if I don't feel like I can honor them comfortably in my current residence, It's a place I can meet them, leave an offering, share a meal in the form of a picnic. I'll have to go during the day, which is a bit different than my usual 12am Nov. 1st celebrations, but I think the timing will be good enough.

Future of the Webbed Site

I made my neocities in a bit of a rush, using a template since while I could have gone for coding something super simple from scratch, I'm a bit of a maximalist and that better enabled me to be one. There's a few things I'm not entirely happy with though, the main one being how narrow the main section is. Generally, it's fine, but with longer posts it feels too squished, especially with the sidebars being blank and taking up a good chunk of space. I could technically just widen it, but then I'd also have to make adjustments to my header and navigation bar, and the thought of that feels like it'd be more annoying than just making something that suits me better from scratch; which is what I kind of wanted to do anyway. (I'm really glad I went with a template though as I feel fiddling with it helped me understand html & css much better)

I'm currently playing with different layouts in Figma. Coding them, obviously, will be an entirely different matter, but it's nice to think about what I specifically want and why I want that. Currently, I know for sure I want to move my little updates section to the main part of my homepage so I don't have to update it every time on every single page, and I'd like to add scrolling. I like the sidebars, but I want to make them smaller, and give them more purpose by moving the navigation to one side above my links. Unfortunately for me I also want to keep the recent posts on them which means I'll be updating my sidebars on every page each time I make a new post, but sometimes we must suffer for our art. Why not test my will a little bit. I'd also like to cut it and add a featured posts section eventually, or on individual blog pages make it "related" posts, but that'll be a while when I have a decent backlog of posts I want to link. One additional change I also want to make is having the sidebars be fixed, with the main section scrollable instead. That way, there's not the empty space on the sides.

Better accessibility is also on the radar. A bigger main section is a part of that, along with bigger text. stainandco over on Cohost before it went read-only made a post with links for better website accessibility I'll likely be pouring over throughout the month. I'm not sure if things like light and dark modes are doable without JS, but I figure whatever little changes I can manage will help. Honestly, part of the plan too is making my site more accessible for myself! I did go a little crazy here and there just having fun, so it'll be nice to clean things up a bit and make my cyber sanctum a little more usable, as best as I can without sacrificing the creative touches I do love.

That's all from me for now, but I do plan on trying to make monthly updates like this in the future! I might not always have as much to say, but I'm sure I can find something. One reason for this is it's become clear to me that part of touching others, and helping them through whatever they may be going through, lies in sharing my own footsteps. With any luck, sooner or later, someone'll find a little gem hidden in what I might see as mundane.