Spring is coming early with sugar ants and eager daffodils. It’s pushing my winter creative thoughts into preparing the property for the work that needs to be done. Will I be adding bees again this year? More chickens and ducks, or fish? I don’t know. To be honest, this feels like the first time in four years since settling in, that there’s a change needing to happen. My inner season has shifted.

My garden starts popped up in a hurry, so my window sills are overrun with plants hungry for more light than the season has to offer. I feel it, too; the thirst for light, the hunger to be in a larger pot. I don’t know if it’s cabin fever from a year of all years, or if it’s a legitimate need to move my roots. Good questions to consider.
In the meantime here’s a little update: The Creativity Workbooks are nearly mapped.

After four years of research and rabbit hole diving, I’ve finally finished the premise, process, and arc of the workbooks; and rather than one as I imagined it at the start, there are now four, and likely more to come.
So, before I finish prototyping, I’ve decided to implement them in my life to see how much they impact a creative in motion. While I understand the biasness of the experiment, I’m still somewhat blown away by the ferocity of the creative surge. It has, to put it mildly, fucking overrun my life.

Here’s the interesting part though, it hasn’t overrun my creative works or projects, it has, quite literally rearranged my actual life. Implementing “holistic creative choices” in facets of my daily life which support my creative works and focus, has essentially hijacked my day-to-day brain and has re-structured my commitments, relationships, desires, and even my financial situation.

My creativity has never been in question. I’ve been a high-functioning creative for decades in one medium or another. What HAS been in question is the quality and consistency of my other life toggles, levers, habits, and energies that have been spotty and gummed up. When that flow gets sticky up it certainly impacts my creative productivity.

I had a breakthrough in September 2020 when the application of “active creative and holistic choices” in the workbook suddenly applied to literally every part of my day, not just the four hour window I have blocked out for my craft. When that clicked into place—the workbooks split into brackets, and the process evolved into something much more useful, much deeper and essentially much more spiritual and revolutionary.

So, the life reboot may have something to do with that sense of an internal seasonal shift. It’s been refreshing and much needed. My creative works barrel on, and my energy reserves are easier to refill and keep topped off with the changes made from the exercises in the workbooks. Huzzah!

That said, I’ll be working on the drafting the workbooks into print and getting them up for the public in the near future.
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I hope this updated finds you all healthy, safe, and keeping on keeping on.
Xo,
Athena

Beta Chapter One for Plague of Gargoyles is now live in the storefront! Thank you again for all your patience as I work thought publication issues. #savethemuses #Pillarsofdawn #chooseyourstory

Dearest Beloved,

I’ve always known you. I’ve always known you would never hurt me. I’ve always known I am utterly safe in your hands; that you see me as I am, and as I wish to be. Still, you take all of me deeply, repeatedly, powerfully.

Last night when we met in the ether, I felt you like never before. You’re so close. The shape and weight and warmth of your touch radiated on my flesh hours after waking. My figure glowed in all the right places as I made coffee and sat near the window to journal. You were still very much inside my body, my breath, my mind. How do you do that? How is that possible when we’ve never met?

If I were a good Catholic girl, I might think I’ve been possessed. I’d worry it was the work of evil spirits; the way you draw my voice from my lips when you cup my spine and pull me toward you, the way I melt and bend around your frame as though I am cast in molten copper just to fit you, every part of you deeply, repeatedly, powerfully.

My enjoyment of you goes beyond having a hunger satisfied. The electricity of your touch, your smile, scent, and even the rough tenor of your voice—it is synthesis, fusion. It is the harmony of Universal precision, and I cannot seem to pull away.

As entanglements go, it is delightful. When I fall asleep at night, you’re there waiting with a cheeky grin and outstretched hand. We adventure through the dreamscape and gallivant across galaxies. It’s often with a reluctance that I return to the 3d world at dawn. 

I wake up pulsating and mystified, glimmering with an afterglow of your soulful caress. Being intertwined with you is the most intimate and liberating part of my unconscious world. I’d dearly love to know what you feel like in real life. Are you flesh and mortal—enchantingly imperfect? Wondrously flawed and yet emblazoned with passionate curiosity and hopeful creativity?

I see you as a man in collaborative league with himself, in the most humble and discerning way. I see you as you are, and as you wish to be, and I gratefully welcome all of you within me deeply, repeatedly, powerfully.
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What am I to you? Am I earth to your roots? Oxygen to your fire? Are you gravitationally locked to me in the same way I am tidal gripped by you?

I pass the time thinking of you with whimsical interest and lustful memory. Then I return to my daily habits, smiling. The world with its clutter and noise is a simple distraction. The hours stray and the grind is met. At last I close my eyes at dusk and sink into you, filling you as you fill me—deeply, repeatedly, powerfully.

And there is peace.
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See you on the other side, Lover.
B. Unbidden