b is for... my first Blogging anniversary!

Today's the day!

This is my very first "blogoversary" and I gotta say, I'm pretty excited for where this blog is going in the next year. I'm shifting my focus away from my own psychoses (ha!) and toward my art and writing, and my pagan path. Really, I'm not sure those three are actually separable.

I'm something of an animist, something of a polytheist; I use animal oracle cards and runes, and I'm learning tarot. My path, I believe, is visible in my artwork. That's especially true in the print I'm giving away today, titled Souls.

I have several projects going which I'll be blogging about: I'm working on building a primate deck, which I suppose will be a form of oracle cards, rather than tarot. I'll blog about my work with learning tarot via my new-ish steampunk tarot deck. I'm also helping Kourtney out with the Pagan Pages Blog Hop, and following along with the Pagan Blog Project. Occasionally, I peek in on the Pagan Blog Prompts and see what's going on there, too.

I've joined three reading challenges, too, just in case my blogging projects and the 19 credit hours I'm taking at the university don't keep me busy. They'll blend well with things I'll be reading, anyway, in the course of my studies and research, so it's not actually a big addition to my schedule. The buttons for those are on the left sidebar, if you wanna check them out (it's the Dystopian RC, the "This isn't Fiction" RC, and the "Get Steampunk'd" RC).

Speaking of steampunk... my fiction is going that direction. I'm hoping to finish my first story this year. I'll be adding some new poetry here and there, but that's not the focus this year that it was last year. I'm pleased with my first book of poetry, 40 Pieces, which I just finished at the end of 2012 and will be given away today. This year, my fictional story will be my priority.


If you're just stopping by to see who won the giveaway, here's what you're looking for: 

Congratulations to Magaly Guerrero of Pagan Culture fame!

Pssssst! Today is also Cletus' birthday. Pass on some birthday wishes on his blog!

countdown to the giveaway!

Ha! Bet you thought I forget, huh?!

Not so, my friends, not so. 

With less than a week until the drawing, have you entered your name yet?

Here's what's at stake: a handmade copy of my poetry book, 40 Pieces, and a high quality print of Souls.




Here's how to enter:

1. Publicly follow any one of my blogs on blogger.
        - this one.
        - Bones's Fiction
        - Bones' Poetry
2. Follow me on facebook at either my art page or my writing page.
3. Follow me on Society6.

4. (And this one is new!) Leave me a comment on this post, telling me what you'd like to see more of, or less of, on this blog. Alternatively, you could leave a comment and just say hi :)

The drawing is 18 January 2013 - next Friday - at noon, Arizona time.

Good luck!

*ahem* ...drumroll please...

Today is December 18th! 

And Finals are over!
And my graduate school application is done!
And it's exactly one month until my First Blogoversary!

So..... I wanna do something celebratory!

On January 18th, 2013, 

I'm going to Give Away Stuff!

(Incidently, that's also someone's birthday.

Someone pretty cool, even.

You should go say hi.

Don't worry, I'll wait here.)

Are you back? Ok, let's resume:

You have one month to get your name in!

Ok, I think I'm done with the exclamations now.
Phew, that was exhausting.

I am  pretty excited though.

In honor of my intent to incorporate my artwork and poetry with my blogging, I'm going to give away one of my art prints and a hand-made copy of my poetry book. I may or may not add more as we get closer, I don't know yet. 

Which print? 
This one, called Souls. 
The one I'm giving away is approximately 9.5x24" (it's 60% of the size of the original painting), and it's printed on heavy weight, fine art paper by the awesome people at Fine Canvas Prints in Phoenix, AZ. This is a level above the Society6 prints in terms of the quality of both paper the print is on, and the printing job itself. It's a $75 value, if you're curious.

It's one of my favorites. I hope you like it too!

"But Bones, how do I enter for this giveaway?"

Thanks for asking. Here's how:

1. Follow my blogs (each blog followed = one entry). 
*Just a note, if you don't follow me "publicly" (as Blogger calls it), I won't be able to see your name in my follower list. I have never, and will never, post or link to a list of my followers anywhere in my blogs, just in case that matters to you.

2. Comment on this post (one entry).

3. Follow me on Society6 (one entry).

4. Follow me on Facebook (one entry).

5. Share the link to this post either on your facebook or your blog, or any other social network, then email me the link at art.by.eala@gmail.com (two entries for each medium the link is shared on). 

So theoretically one person could get a bunch of entries. Pretty cool, huh?
Links to my Facebook and Society6 pages are at the top right of this page.

Let the games begin!

a challenge for the pagan community

Here's a challenge:

"Write a blog post about what you hope to see for the Pagan community in 2013, and include what you are going to personally do to make it happen. It doesn't have to be a grand gesture, but be daring. Be brave with specifics, and even ways you're going to hold yourself accountable, it's for the good of us all, right?"

That's from That Witchy Place's facebook page. They're doing a giveaway and this is one of several ways to enter (the other ways are far less time-consuming!). Go ahead, check it out.

~

It's a good question, huh?

What I hope to see for the Pagan community in 2013... well... it's not a question I would normally consider because, well, it feels a bit presumptuous. And maybe that's indicative of a trend, or a pair of trends, we see in the pagan community. It seems that there is a spectrum of humanity that gets a central stage in the pagan community. On one end are the people who love to tell others what to do, and shout their news to anyone who might listen. On the other end, those who avoid giving such advice in an almost phobic manner. Most of us, I'm guessing, fall somewhere in between those two extremes. I'm perhaps a bit closer to the phobic end, despite being a blogger. I'm not a fan of telling others how to conduct their spiritual or even their public lives, and certainly not how to integrate those two areas of life. So envisioning a direction I think an entire community should go isn't exactly a natural exercise for me.

To attempt this, I'm going to tell myself that nobody's taking my words here as directives, which I'm sure is accurate. Hypothetically speaking, it might be nice to see the pagan community to...

hmm...

... to communicate better. Yes. To learn to listen without swallowing anything whole, nor disregarding anything whole; to learn to advise without assuming authority unless that authority has been conferred by your listener; to learn to hear each other with sympathy, if not empathy; these are the things I'd like to see.

As to how I plan to make this happen... that's actually easier than it might seem. Or at least, it's easier than I might think it seems. I has a blog, after all. But if I'm going to look at this as a proactive change, it has to be more than just continuing the same old stuff.

It's a happy coincidence that my first blogoversary is coming up in January. I'd already planned to refocus this blog to include more of my daily life. The Diary of Bones started out as a place for me to write about what I call my psychosis. I didn't expect anyone to read it. But... I have more than 3000 views in less than a year. So somebody must reading. And lately, my psychosis has been less prevalent in my writing. Obviously, I've started writing about other things. The focus has already changed. Now I'm just adding a little intent behind the momentum.

One of the things I've written more about (probably the topic I've been writing about most, in the past several months) is my spiritual path. In 2013, I'm going to continue writing with the Pagan Blog Project and sharing Project Pagan Enough. I'm also joining the Pagan Pages Blog Hop as staff. As I do move into 2013, I'd like to recall in my writing - and reading - the idea of better communication in our community. Every movement starts somewhere small. Perhaps this isn't revolutionary, but it's something that would strengthen our community and our members. Who's with me?

Who Bones is...

... a girl, usually. Like when it's convenient, which is most of the time. That means I often present as a woman. But my core is ambiguous, or maybe androgynous. If I need a label, the best one is genderqueer. Let's go with that.

... fragile, but not weak. I'm a survivor, despite being overly sensitive to the moods of my loved ones and fluctuations in my environment.

~

I'm also Eala Magee.

~

The nickname, Bones, actually came from something completely... what's the word?... irrelevant to anything meaningful. Inconsequential. A few years later, Archer and Hela gave the name meaning for me.

How I first acquired the nickname: The Army, you may be aware, is overly fond of alpha-numeric labeling systems. While I was overseas, I headed a two-person team that was labeled "B1". B-one. Get it? Yeah.
That year, needed a screen name for a website (OKcupid, if you must know), I used "humanbones" on a whim. Because I was a human intelligence collector called Bones.

Ok, so that was in 2007.
In 2011, I started dating Archer. Not so terribly long into our relationship, we were bickering about something via text (highly NOT recommended as a strategy for constructive argument, by the way), and I asked him (I hope I'm remembering this correctly) why he cared about whatever it was. He responded "because I love you down to my bones."
It was the first "I love you" of our relationship.

He had already taken to calling me Bones because of my screen name on OKcupid (we met via that website). After his "down to my bones" statement, it became a thing. I started using "Bones" elsewhere, just because it made me think of him and smile.

Later, well... I already wrote a whole post about Hela's influence on me. No sense in re-inventing the wheel. Or re-writing the blog. Whichever.  And the connection with my nickname... well, I had to get stripped down to my bones, psychologically, in order to 'fix' myself. More on why that's connected with Hela, here.


These days, I'm ... well, I'm tempted to say I'm a different person, but that doesn't quite ring true. I'm sure it seems that way from the outside, but on the inside I'm the same person I've always been. Only, without the false front I used to have. Without all the fear. Now, the inside matches the outside.

~

So, what does that outside look like? A painter, a writer, student, an aspiring psychologist and anthropologist, a pagan working with Hela, Odin, Sretya, Epona, and - unexpectedly - Bast. I talk to my dogs and my cat, who make me happy; they respond one way or another, for better or worse. I have only been without horses twice in my life - this is one of those times, and it makes me sad. I'm without a motorcycle, too, which also makes me sad. But I'm also a lover: anam cara to Archer, and girlfriend to Doc, and those things make me happy. Music makes me happy too.

These things have always been there, at least in potential; now others can see them too.

I don't know this guy.

I just found this video on youtube.

He's not a great dancer,

but he's better than many

and he looks like he's having fun.

I had fun watching him.

Maybe you will too.

[This moment of reflection has been brought to you by my upcoming first blogoversary, which will be 18 January. Blog party? Maybe. Let me get through finals first.]

blog organizing

Ok, so in light of all this meta-blogging I've been doing (that is, blogging about blogging), I figure it'd be good to post some links to the other blogs I'm working on. I'll get them up on a side bar as soon as I can convince blogger to cooperate with the rearranging.

fictional story I'm writing: http://storiesofbones.blogspot.com/
poems (and some prose): http://poemsofbones.blogspot.com/

This blog will remain my 'diary.'

My previous posts in this blog which were specific to the story of my abuse have been moved to a private blog. That will be published... someday. Honestly, it will probably take me a very long time to finish that. The main thing I have to do before publishing it, is to tell my mother the story. I'm not ready for that. Actually that's pretty much the only thing I have to do before publishing it. Still. It's gonna take me a while. 

party planning step 1: determine reason to party

My first post in this blog, 18 January 2012. Reading it again, it feels like my first post ever. But I had two blogs before this one. Neither told the whole story, but that wasn't what they were for. I haven't deleted them - I hate to throw anything away - but I haven't posted in them, either.

I went back to it because I couldn't remember what I had written, or exactly which day I had started it. I was pleasantly surprised to see that what I had said then, has held true. It reminded me of the struggles I have surmounted within myself over the past year. This blog was the beginning of holding myself accountable for who I was, both the good aspects and the bad. Though at the time, what I saw seemed more bad than good. That's no longer the case, by the way. I'm pretty happy with who I've become, for the most part. In that purpose - holding myself accountable - this blog represented the first point of inner light which led to the end of a very dark time in my life.

That  is what I'd like to commemorate for my first blogoversary - points of light that lead us home, turning points and internal ordeals, and being a Survivor. 

anticipating blog-evolution

I've been doing this particular blog for almost one year.

Hmmm.... blogoversary party? I'm considering it.

I'm also having that internal discussion which is epidemic among bloggers nearing their anniversary, about the evolution of this blog. It developed from a place for me to figure out what the hell is going on in my brain, to whatever it is now. Which is, it seems, more of a spirituality blog. ...I'm cool with that, by the way. I don't know that I really need to 'redefine' my purpose here, but I do think it's important for me to recognize how my focus here has changed.

This is my diary, after all. No reason to put whatever the hell I want into it.

At the same time... I want to write my story, my survival story, and I think that will need its own space. But I feel it would be best for me to write that story in its entirety before publishing it. So - I think I just decided - those stories which are relevant will be moved from this blog, to a private blog. That will allow me to write my tale 'silently' and without pressure to finish it sooner than I am ready to. This blog will continue as it is; I will leave a summary of my already-posted stories here, perhaps on a separate tab or something.

I'd like to talk more about my art here, too, how it intersects with my spirituality, and the growth of these things together... My life is becoming more integrated than ever before. This blog will continue to reflect that integration. If all my interests become potential topics, which does seem to be happening, then you will see more of these in the near future: my paintings, my academic interests (developmental and evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and gender development, in particular), my animals, and even my child (maybe). If you're reading this because it's a pagan blog, don't worry. My spirituality has fully integrated itself into my life. It's never far, never separate.