One of my favorite television shows of all time is Charmed. I grew up with it and even have a tattoo of a triquetra. One episode that has stuck out to me throughout the years (Apocalypse Not) involves Phoebe asking her sisters a question about ethics: If you were in a burning building and had to make a choice between saving one sibling or five strangers, who would you save? At the beginning of the episode, they both answer one sibling, but by the end, due to events of the episode, when all three are asked the question again they change their answer to five strangers.
When I was in college, a professor asked the class the same question. He also followed up by asking similar ethical/moral dilemma questions, including the famous trolley question. I'm sure you've heard of it. You are standing at the lever for a trolley track. The track divides into two separate tracks, one with one person tied to it and one with five people tied to it. As of right now, the trolley is on track to run over and kill five people. If you do nothing, those five people will die. If you pull the lever, they will live, but the other person, who would've otherwise survived, will die. You don't have time to make it down to the track and untie them. There is no possible way to save everyone. What do you do? What are the ethical implications of your choice?
On the one hand, if you don't actually pull the level and make the choice to kill someone yourself, then you didn't really kill anyone. You didn't really kill those five people; someone else tied them to the track. You simply chose not to act at all because you didn't have time to save everyone and you didn't want your action to have the direct result of murdering someone else.
On the other hand, you technically have the opportunity to save four lives. By choosing to kill one person, you let five other people live. Only one life is lost instead of five. You save more lives that way, four more to be exact. However, then you undoubtedly did make the choice to kill someone. You made the choice to flip the lever. That one person who would've survived would now be dead because of you. But five other people who were doomed would survive.
Is it more ethical and more morally correct to let more people live even if it means you have to choose to actively get involved and make the decision to kill one person? Or should you never choose to do anything that would kill someone even if it means more people will die if you don't?
There are variations on this question of course to make it more complicated. One of the more common ones I've seen is that you are standing on a bridge above the track. A fat person is standing next to you. They are fat enough to stop the trolley. If you push them over the bridge, they will land on the track, get hit by the trolley, and die, but it will prevent any of the people tied to the track from dying. Would you push them over? Often, the same people who would flip the lever say they wouldn't go so far as to push someone over the bridge. Why is that? What difference does it make if it's just a matter of "five lives are more important than one?" Is it because pushing someone seems more violent than pulling a lever? What causes the difference in answers?
What if you personally know the one person tied to the track by themselves but you don't know the other five people? If the one lone person tied to the track is a friend, family member, lover, etc. and the five people tied together are strangers, does that make you more likely to let the trolley kill five of them rather than flipping the switch? Often, people who would otherwise say they would pull the lever would suddenly change their minds and not pull it if the one person tied up alone was a loved one.
But what if it were opposite? What if the trolley was headed towards the one person that you knew and cared about and you had to make the choice of whether or not to pull the lever and have it instead kill five strangers? That would involve actively making a choice to kill five people rather than having it go on course to only kill one. This particular scenario is rather similar to the burning building question from Charmed, with the extra moral implication of not only would you not be saving the five strangers, you would actively be pulling the lever to kill them.
Then of course, there's another famous question that I've heard asked a lot: If you could go back in time and kill Hitler when he was just a baby or a small child, would you do it?
I recently heard another one, a rather interesting one at that. Let's say you are a paramedic and you come to the scene of an accident to find that the victims are your spouse and their other lover. You are the only paramedic at the scene. No one else can get there in time. Both are still alive, but your spouse's chances of survival are slim to none even if they receive medical attention right away. Their lover, on the other hand, will definitely survive but only if they receive medical attention right away. You only have time to give medical attention to one, because by the time you get to the second one they will surely be dead. Do you: A. walk away and save neither of them, letting both of the cheaters die because you are hurt and betrayed B. attempt to save your spouse first, knowing that it will almost certainly be a futile effort, and let their lover who would have otherwise survived die or C. save their lover and let your spouse die, since you know their lover will definitely survive with medical attention and that your spouse will almost certainly die anyway?
All of these scenarios are things that the average person would never find themselves in or hopefully would never find themselves in. The most realistic is the original Charmed example I heard of the burning building and the least realistic of course is the time travel. However, they are interesting questions for self-exploration on our views on morality and ethics. What would your answers be?
My Answers (not based on what I think would be the most ethical option, but what I would really do in the situation)
For me, personally, I would likely flip the trolley switch to kill one person instead of five unless the one person was a loved one. If the one person was a loved one and the other five were not, I would not flip the switch. If the trolley was headed toward the one person originally and they were a loved one and the other five were not, I would make the choice to flip the switch and kill five people while letting my one loved one live. This is assuming that everyone tied to the track was a healthy adult, as the question becomes much more complicated if that's not the case. I would likely never ever think of throwing the fat person onto the track in the first place so it's highly unlikely that I would ever do that. Even if for some reason the thought did cross my mind, I would almost certainly be physically unable to do it. If for some reason the thought did occur to me and I was suddenly strong enough to pull it off, I still almost certainly would not do it. I absolutely would never do it if I knew the fat person personally and/or if all the people on the track were strangers.
As for the burning building, if the five strangers were all healthy adults, I would let them die and save my sister. If they included children, such as a family of five, then I would save the children instead. It's what my sister would want me to do.
For the paramedic example, well, I personally would never be a paramedic so I would never be in the situation. However, let's say for example I was somehow in that scenario. I would try to save my husband first. I would certainly never walk away from them. Even knowing that my husband would almost certainly die anyway and even knowing that his lover would have lived with medical attention, I would still try to save my husband. I would want the last thing he saw in his life before dying to be me trying to save him and being with him. Even though he betrayed me, I would still try. I wouldn't be able to ignore him. I wouldn't have withheld the medical attention from his lover out of jealousy or malice, and certainly if I could've had time to work on her too I would have, but I wouldn't be able to just ignore my husband in his last moments, even if the cost was her life.
The Hitler one is probably one of the most controversial questions. It could never possibly happen, but it's an interesting scenario to think about. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I would not go back in time. However, that's more to do with me being afraid of the butterfly effect than it is of me refusing to kill a child that hadn't done anything evil yet even though I knew they someday would become one of the most evil people to ever live. I wouldn't want to mess with time travel. However, it would be very hard to live with knowing I could have saved millions of people from a horrible death (most of whom would be dead by now anyway from old age though) if I had just been willing to go back in time, murder one child, and then quite possibly cease to exist since both sets of my grandparents may have never gotten together had circumstances surrounding the time period of WWII been different.
I'm interested to hear other people's opinions on these questions! Do you agree with me? Would you do something differently? Let me know what you would do and if you know of any other questions post them in the comments!
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Friday, November 3, 2017
CDD- Abuse Disguised as Religion
Warning: This post has adult themes and describes abusive and violent situations. Those who are underage or who may be triggered by this are advised against reading this post.
Abuse has a long history of disguising itself as religion. People have been saying "spare the rod, spoil the child" as an excuse for child abuse for centuries. People have been quoting the vow for wives to "obey" their husbands as an excuse for having controlling and often abusive marriages. People have used the Bible to back up their beliefs in slavery or to excuse extreme homophobia. It's a shame and disgusts me to no end how often people will ignore the commands to love others and treat them as we would like to be treated and instead try to use the Bible to excuse our own hatred. It's nothing new unfortunately, but there is a new movement in Christianity that is much more proud and upfront about their abuse, and its often tied to bdsm and sexual perversion.
What I'm talking about is called Christian Domestic Discipline (though there's nothing Christian about it in my eyes) and it's an insidious movement of abusive husbands and brainwashed wives. It's truly one of the most awful and evil things I've ever come across.
In these CDD marriages, the husband is viewed as the head of household (often shortened to HoH) and has full authority over the wife in all aspects of their lives. He is responsible for her spiritual well being as well as her physical, sexual, mental, emotional, and financial well-being. She is supposed to submit to him in all things. They claim there is biblical evidence for this, and unfortunately because of Paul, they aren't entirely wrong. Of course, I think that's complete and total bullshit, but I'll get more into that in a different post.
Quick side-tracked rant though before I move on: It really IS bullshit. It's also bullshit that the Catholic Church won't allow women to be priests. Jesus didn't just choose male followers, he chose women as well, and revealed himself first to the women when he was resurrected. The earliest leaders in Christianity were women, slaves, and the oppressed. Women were priests in the earliest days of the Church. Paul partnered alongside them and then forgot them and took over. He was a typical man in that sense. Jesus didn't say that women should be subordinate to their husbands or silent in the church, Paul said that long after the crucifixion and resurrection. While women were forming the earliest churches and gathering believers, Paul was still persecuting and executing Christians. Nothing pisses me off more than this. NOTHING. Rant over though, because this is another post for another day.
Alright, back to the point. In order to enforce her submission to his authority in all things, the husband reserves the right to literally beat her into submission. Often this takes the form of a list of rules he creates for her to follow. Some examples of rules I've seen include informing him if she goes out, coming home by a set curfew, asking his permission to do certain things, avoiding certain dangerous things such as texting while driving, eating a healthy diet he's approved for her, wearing only modest clothes that meet his approval, abiding by a budget he's set for shopping, fulfilling all household duties such as completing errands on time, keeping the house clean to his standards, preparing dinner on time, etc., only using respectful language while talking to him and/or others, not swearing, going to bed by a certain time, avoiding certain activities such as certain websites or television shows or staying off the computer after a certain time, etc. Does this sound like a list of rules parents would have for their children and then ground them if they break them? Because that's what it sounds like to me. It sounds like the husband treating his wife like a child. There is no equal partnership in a marriage like this. There is no respect for the wife as an adult and an individual. It's literally treating your marriage like a parent/child relationship. It's disgusting.
If she breaks the rules or otherwise acts "disrespectfully" then he has the "right" to "discipline" her. The "discipline" often takes the form of grounding, time outs, writing lines, or spanking. You know, like she's a fucking little child. Except I don't believe in spanking children, but regardless, these punishments are exactly that; this is treating her like a child. When I say spanking, I don't even just mean with an open hand. Some of these couples go so far as to include paddles, belts, whips, canes, etc. Some wives don't even have to break the rules for their husbands to decide to beat them. Some couples participate in "maintenance" or "reminder" spankings, which essentially means even if she follows every single rule, does everything according to his standards, treats him with full respect, and always submits to his authority, he will still give her regularly scheduled beatings anyway just to make sure she never forgets that he has the authority to beat her if it becomes necessary and that she should submit to what he decides is best for her even if she doesn't think she deserves a beating. I've seen husbands schedule these beatings as far apart as monthly and as often as a few times a week, though not all participate in the maintenance/reminder spankings. Some of these women literally get beaten by their husbands every single day of their lives.
Some of the couples I've seen participating in this are young newlyweds. Others are of retirement age and already grandparents who recently got into the movement or who have been practicing something similar to this for decades but never had a term for it before. Some were couples headed toward divorce that decided to try this to save their marriages. In my personal assessment of the situation, I would say that the vast majority of these couples, or at the very least the vast majority of the men, are people who have a sexual fixation on giving or receiving pain. I'd imagine the majority were first interested in bdsm, then felt guilt over sexual perversion, and decided to try to find a way to justify it as something "Christian" instead of something sexual. Either that, or the husbands know damn well they're only in it because they get off on beating their wives and they needed to find an excuse to get their wives to agree to it instead of running to a domestic violence shelter as fast as they could (which, by the way, is undoubtedly what should be happening because these marriages are some of the worst domestic violence and abuse cases I've ever seen).
The most despicable thing of all is that there are ministers and preachers out there who know this is going on and encourage it! There are counselors and therapists out there who give advice on how to do this instead of advising the women to leave and telling them that it's abuse. I'm not just talking about maybe one or two people, but it's actually a growing movement. Even if the wife tries to talk sense into her husband by going to her priest or marriage counseling, it's becoming more and more likely that they'll agree with him. There are many women who seem deeply brainwashed into the movement who now have blogs encouraging other couples to get into it and even publishing books about it, claiming that when their husbands beat them its a sign of love and devotion to her well being, its a sign he cares about protecting her and saving their marriage, and that CDD changed their lives for the better. They claim they're still pious people and that this is what the Bible says marriage should be like and what marriage was like for the majority of human history (unfortunately, they aren't wrong...). They claim it has nothing to do with bdsm or sex. I call bullshit on all of it. This is 100% bdsm, and just like the rest of bdsm, it's 100% abuse. The underlying biblical and historical "evidence" for it is also 100% misogyny, plain and simple. This is hatred for women and severe abuse disguising itself as religion. It makes me sick.
One final note: If you are a man who would ever consider getting involved in Christian Domestic Discipline, leave my blog, never speak to me, and please never get married. If you're already married, just file for divorce. Stay away from women. Go fuck yourself.
EDIT: I originally wrote this in October because it was National Domestic Violence Awareness month, but as usual for me, it sat in my drafts until November. However, unfortunately, discussing domestic violence and spreading awareness about it needs to be a year round thing anyway, so I'm posting it now. If you are a victim of any kind of domestic violence, there is help for you. Even if you initially consented to a relationship like this, I promise you can still get help getting out of it. You can visit this website for more information (which includes a link you can click on the page if you need to quickly exit the site for your safety) or call the national hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE). Make sure that you call from a phone that your partner can't trace.
Abuse has a long history of disguising itself as religion. People have been saying "spare the rod, spoil the child" as an excuse for child abuse for centuries. People have been quoting the vow for wives to "obey" their husbands as an excuse for having controlling and often abusive marriages. People have used the Bible to back up their beliefs in slavery or to excuse extreme homophobia. It's a shame and disgusts me to no end how often people will ignore the commands to love others and treat them as we would like to be treated and instead try to use the Bible to excuse our own hatred. It's nothing new unfortunately, but there is a new movement in Christianity that is much more proud and upfront about their abuse, and its often tied to bdsm and sexual perversion.
What I'm talking about is called Christian Domestic Discipline (though there's nothing Christian about it in my eyes) and it's an insidious movement of abusive husbands and brainwashed wives. It's truly one of the most awful and evil things I've ever come across.
In these CDD marriages, the husband is viewed as the head of household (often shortened to HoH) and has full authority over the wife in all aspects of their lives. He is responsible for her spiritual well being as well as her physical, sexual, mental, emotional, and financial well-being. She is supposed to submit to him in all things. They claim there is biblical evidence for this, and unfortunately because of Paul, they aren't entirely wrong. Of course, I think that's complete and total bullshit, but I'll get more into that in a different post.
Quick side-tracked rant though before I move on: It really IS bullshit. It's also bullshit that the Catholic Church won't allow women to be priests. Jesus didn't just choose male followers, he chose women as well, and revealed himself first to the women when he was resurrected. The earliest leaders in Christianity were women, slaves, and the oppressed. Women were priests in the earliest days of the Church. Paul partnered alongside them and then forgot them and took over. He was a typical man in that sense. Jesus didn't say that women should be subordinate to their husbands or silent in the church, Paul said that long after the crucifixion and resurrection. While women were forming the earliest churches and gathering believers, Paul was still persecuting and executing Christians. Nothing pisses me off more than this. NOTHING. Rant over though, because this is another post for another day.
Alright, back to the point. In order to enforce her submission to his authority in all things, the husband reserves the right to literally beat her into submission. Often this takes the form of a list of rules he creates for her to follow. Some examples of rules I've seen include informing him if she goes out, coming home by a set curfew, asking his permission to do certain things, avoiding certain dangerous things such as texting while driving, eating a healthy diet he's approved for her, wearing only modest clothes that meet his approval, abiding by a budget he's set for shopping, fulfilling all household duties such as completing errands on time, keeping the house clean to his standards, preparing dinner on time, etc., only using respectful language while talking to him and/or others, not swearing, going to bed by a certain time, avoiding certain activities such as certain websites or television shows or staying off the computer after a certain time, etc. Does this sound like a list of rules parents would have for their children and then ground them if they break them? Because that's what it sounds like to me. It sounds like the husband treating his wife like a child. There is no equal partnership in a marriage like this. There is no respect for the wife as an adult and an individual. It's literally treating your marriage like a parent/child relationship. It's disgusting.
If she breaks the rules or otherwise acts "disrespectfully" then he has the "right" to "discipline" her. The "discipline" often takes the form of grounding, time outs, writing lines, or spanking. You know, like she's a fucking little child. Except I don't believe in spanking children, but regardless, these punishments are exactly that; this is treating her like a child. When I say spanking, I don't even just mean with an open hand. Some of these couples go so far as to include paddles, belts, whips, canes, etc. Some wives don't even have to break the rules for their husbands to decide to beat them. Some couples participate in "maintenance" or "reminder" spankings, which essentially means even if she follows every single rule, does everything according to his standards, treats him with full respect, and always submits to his authority, he will still give her regularly scheduled beatings anyway just to make sure she never forgets that he has the authority to beat her if it becomes necessary and that she should submit to what he decides is best for her even if she doesn't think she deserves a beating. I've seen husbands schedule these beatings as far apart as monthly and as often as a few times a week, though not all participate in the maintenance/reminder spankings. Some of these women literally get beaten by their husbands every single day of their lives.
Some of the couples I've seen participating in this are young newlyweds. Others are of retirement age and already grandparents who recently got into the movement or who have been practicing something similar to this for decades but never had a term for it before. Some were couples headed toward divorce that decided to try this to save their marriages. In my personal assessment of the situation, I would say that the vast majority of these couples, or at the very least the vast majority of the men, are people who have a sexual fixation on giving or receiving pain. I'd imagine the majority were first interested in bdsm, then felt guilt over sexual perversion, and decided to try to find a way to justify it as something "Christian" instead of something sexual. Either that, or the husbands know damn well they're only in it because they get off on beating their wives and they needed to find an excuse to get their wives to agree to it instead of running to a domestic violence shelter as fast as they could (which, by the way, is undoubtedly what should be happening because these marriages are some of the worst domestic violence and abuse cases I've ever seen).
The most despicable thing of all is that there are ministers and preachers out there who know this is going on and encourage it! There are counselors and therapists out there who give advice on how to do this instead of advising the women to leave and telling them that it's abuse. I'm not just talking about maybe one or two people, but it's actually a growing movement. Even if the wife tries to talk sense into her husband by going to her priest or marriage counseling, it's becoming more and more likely that they'll agree with him. There are many women who seem deeply brainwashed into the movement who now have blogs encouraging other couples to get into it and even publishing books about it, claiming that when their husbands beat them its a sign of love and devotion to her well being, its a sign he cares about protecting her and saving their marriage, and that CDD changed their lives for the better. They claim they're still pious people and that this is what the Bible says marriage should be like and what marriage was like for the majority of human history (unfortunately, they aren't wrong...). They claim it has nothing to do with bdsm or sex. I call bullshit on all of it. This is 100% bdsm, and just like the rest of bdsm, it's 100% abuse. The underlying biblical and historical "evidence" for it is also 100% misogyny, plain and simple. This is hatred for women and severe abuse disguising itself as religion. It makes me sick.
One final note: If you are a man who would ever consider getting involved in Christian Domestic Discipline, leave my blog, never speak to me, and please never get married. If you're already married, just file for divorce. Stay away from women. Go fuck yourself.
EDIT: I originally wrote this in October because it was National Domestic Violence Awareness month, but as usual for me, it sat in my drafts until November. However, unfortunately, discussing domestic violence and spreading awareness about it needs to be a year round thing anyway, so I'm posting it now. If you are a victim of any kind of domestic violence, there is help for you. Even if you initially consented to a relationship like this, I promise you can still get help getting out of it. You can visit this website for more information (which includes a link you can click on the page if you need to quickly exit the site for your safety) or call the national hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE). Make sure that you call from a phone that your partner can't trace.
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Altars
What an eventful couple of days it's been...
Last night my dogs got a hold of some chocolate and ended up eating an entire 11oz bag of Hershey's assorted miniatures, which contains primarily milk chocolate but also a few dark chocolate in the mix (very bad for dogs!). That resulted in me paying a fee to speak with animal poison control, attempting to make them throw up the chocolate, going through vomit looking for the candy wrappers to see what they ate and how much, and cleaning up diarrhea. What a night! I ended up not going to sleep until 2am, called into work and told them I'd either be late or miss today and that I could make up the hours later, and then called the vet first thing in the morning. They told me to monitor them closely to check for certain symptoms and if I see those to bring them in for blood work. So that's what I've been doing.
Meanwhile, my mother in law came over to help out because we had carpet installed today. The original plan was for her to let the guys in for the carpet because I was supposed to be at work by the time they got here, but obviously things weren't going according to plan! Within an hour of the carpet being installed, one of my dogs had an accident on my brand new carpet. I almost had a full blown mental and emotional breakdown due to the stress. Finally, after cleaning it up, my mother in law helped me to set up and organize my new walk in closet. We've been remodeling the upstairs of our house for a year and the bedroom and walk in closet are finally move-in ready! I spent a few hours organizing clothes and still have plenty more to do. The bed will be moved up this weekend once my husband comes back from his business trip. I already bought a full matching bedding set and curtains. I even have a small piece of art work I bought at the Renaissance festival of a dragon that matches the color scheme that I'm planning to hang up. I'm excited to find a few accent pieces to complete the room, such as lamps or picture frames.
We decided to put my husband's dresser in the bedroom to hold the television and my dresser in the back wall of the walk in closet to hold a mirror and jewelry boxes. However, I'm going to have a decent amount of free space on the top of my dresser. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. I've always wanted a private space to set up a little altar and I think I finally have one! I'm going to set up a small discreet altar on my dresser in the walk in closet.
The space is already fairly private, but I still want my altar to be discreet. I don't want it to scream "altar" or "witchcraft" or anything like that since I know there will be other people entering my closet. I'm thinking I might go with an ancestral altar style. I want to find a decorative box to hold items such as my grandmother's jewelry, my rosary, my tarot cards, an athame, etc. Then I want to put up at least one photograph of my grandparents. I might also put up a few other photographs of other deceased family members as well. I have a huge picture of my great grandmother but I'm not sure if I'll have the space to hang it there unless I move the mirror into the bedroom. Then I would like to set up an incense burner, a few candles (specifically a purple one for my grandmother), perhaps a vase for purple flowers for my grandmother, an offering bowl (I have a few I made in high school), and a chalice. I also have a large assortment of little religious items such as angel and saint statues, holy water vials, crosses, etc. so I may set up some of those as well.
I'm going to wait until the bedroom is completely set up before I start on the altar. However, I am really looking forward to this new project. I've always wanted an altar but never really found the space or time to set one up. I'm so excited that I now have the perfect place and opportunity to do so! This realization is the one good thing out of the past two days of stress. I can't wait for my husband to come back from his business trip tomorrow. The dogs and remodeling are really tough to handle by myself!
Last night my dogs got a hold of some chocolate and ended up eating an entire 11oz bag of Hershey's assorted miniatures, which contains primarily milk chocolate but also a few dark chocolate in the mix (very bad for dogs!). That resulted in me paying a fee to speak with animal poison control, attempting to make them throw up the chocolate, going through vomit looking for the candy wrappers to see what they ate and how much, and cleaning up diarrhea. What a night! I ended up not going to sleep until 2am, called into work and told them I'd either be late or miss today and that I could make up the hours later, and then called the vet first thing in the morning. They told me to monitor them closely to check for certain symptoms and if I see those to bring them in for blood work. So that's what I've been doing.
Meanwhile, my mother in law came over to help out because we had carpet installed today. The original plan was for her to let the guys in for the carpet because I was supposed to be at work by the time they got here, but obviously things weren't going according to plan! Within an hour of the carpet being installed, one of my dogs had an accident on my brand new carpet. I almost had a full blown mental and emotional breakdown due to the stress. Finally, after cleaning it up, my mother in law helped me to set up and organize my new walk in closet. We've been remodeling the upstairs of our house for a year and the bedroom and walk in closet are finally move-in ready! I spent a few hours organizing clothes and still have plenty more to do. The bed will be moved up this weekend once my husband comes back from his business trip. I already bought a full matching bedding set and curtains. I even have a small piece of art work I bought at the Renaissance festival of a dragon that matches the color scheme that I'm planning to hang up. I'm excited to find a few accent pieces to complete the room, such as lamps or picture frames.
We decided to put my husband's dresser in the bedroom to hold the television and my dresser in the back wall of the walk in closet to hold a mirror and jewelry boxes. However, I'm going to have a decent amount of free space on the top of my dresser. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. I've always wanted a private space to set up a little altar and I think I finally have one! I'm going to set up a small discreet altar on my dresser in the walk in closet.
The space is already fairly private, but I still want my altar to be discreet. I don't want it to scream "altar" or "witchcraft" or anything like that since I know there will be other people entering my closet. I'm thinking I might go with an ancestral altar style. I want to find a decorative box to hold items such as my grandmother's jewelry, my rosary, my tarot cards, an athame, etc. Then I want to put up at least one photograph of my grandparents. I might also put up a few other photographs of other deceased family members as well. I have a huge picture of my great grandmother but I'm not sure if I'll have the space to hang it there unless I move the mirror into the bedroom. Then I would like to set up an incense burner, a few candles (specifically a purple one for my grandmother), perhaps a vase for purple flowers for my grandmother, an offering bowl (I have a few I made in high school), and a chalice. I also have a large assortment of little religious items such as angel and saint statues, holy water vials, crosses, etc. so I may set up some of those as well.
I'm going to wait until the bedroom is completely set up before I start on the altar. However, I am really looking forward to this new project. I've always wanted an altar but never really found the space or time to set one up. I'm so excited that I now have the perfect place and opportunity to do so! This realization is the one good thing out of the past two days of stress. I can't wait for my husband to come back from his business trip tomorrow. The dogs and remodeling are really tough to handle by myself!
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
NaNoWriMo
Anyone planning to participate?! For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, which is November. It's an annual one month challenge for everyone to attempt to write a 50k word novel (or get 50k words into a novel that they can continue to write after the challenge is over). It's a great group of people that organize "write-ins," create challenges for each other, and they have a website where you can keep track of your goals. It's a fun thing to be involved in, allows you to explore your talents and creativity, and everyone encourages each other to reach their goals. If you plan to participate, I highly recommend using Scrivener for writing.
I've been trying for the past few years but never hit 50k words. In fact, for the past few years I've worked on the same novel but I'm only about 20k words into it. Although, I've done a lot of planning, research, outlining, etc. and wrote excerpts from various parts of the story that aren't in order. That one was really fun to work on because it required a lot of world building and I was able to create an entire fictional religion, complete with deities, rituals, traditions, holidays, different sects of the religion, a full mythology behind it, sacred texts, etc. As you can tell from my blog, that kind of stuff is very up my alley!
This year I decided to work on a different new idea for a novel and take a break from my old one. I got excited about it early and already wrote about 10k words before November even started so I'm already 20% of the way to the 50k word goal on the first of the month.
I have a lot of studying to do this month too unfortunately so I hope I have enough time to continue with my novel. I have an important exam coming up a few days after Thanksgiving so hopefully I can succeed at both studying and writing for NaNoWriMo. Everything always seems to come up at the same time, doesn't it? Maybe it's just me, but it seems like I always have a hundred things going on at once or nothing at all and I'm bored out of my mind.
I'm going to try to carve out the time in my schedule for NaNoWriMo. I'm using the excuse that it's a mental and emotional health thing. It's self-care. I look forward to it all year and if I don't participate at all because I'm too busy studying, I'm just going to be left feeling bummed out, burned out, and upset. Let me know if you plan on participating too!
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