Merry meet all,
Happy New Year! Happy 2024!!!
I am so excited to welcome in 2024. Are you as excited as I am? I hung up my beautiful calendar, the Hedgewitch Botanical, for 2024. The first botanical it mentions is Sitka spruce, which grows on the nature trail. I have foraged Sitka spruce and made a tincture and oil from it. Sitka spruce is lovely. This is what was said about Sikta spruce on the calendar page:
Sitka spruce withstands the chill breath of winter’s reign, offering peace and protection to all who shelter near. Hang a branch above your door to attract benevolent spirits, or burn it in incense to cleanse your sacred space.” That sums it up. The Natives love Sitka spruce and used the wood well for a variety of purposes.
I have challenges to meet and new opportunities to embrace. That is part of the fun of a new year: everything is new and while I never make resolutions because I won’t keep them, I do attempt to make new plans and projects that I can keep. For instance, I am still working on my novella edits with Stephanie Ellis, I am still writing on this blog and I still have the goal of achieving 1000 blog posts. I have new projects and plans. I am still studying at the Herbal Academy. I plan to continue to write horror fiction, love my cat, drink coffee, do baking, feed the birds suet and create, love, conjure and hope.
To make my studies easier on me, I decided to buy a huge- like super huge binder to hold all the printed pages and the pdfs. It didn’t take long for the binder to fill up. The spine of the binder is 5 inches. It has a capacity of holding up to 1270 pages. There are 14 units in the entire Advanced Herbalism course, each with a set of lessons. I don’t expect to make the binder hold all 14 units but it is nice to have all the lessons and papers in one place, one binder as opposed to several small ones.
Now on to my new goals for 2024:
I want to finish editing the novella. We are almost done the first round of edits, then I will find a beta reader and get their comments, then I will go through the second round of edits with Stephanie Ellis then on to a publisher. I want to write more horror stories. I want to write a dark book of poetry. The Writing Poetry in the Dark workbook is on order at my local fave bookstore and should arrive soon. Once it does, I shall get writing! I will paste each poem as a completed draft or, as complete as I can make it, because we all know that a poem is never truly finished. I want to write the rough drafts in another beautiful blank hardcover journal I have. I would love it if I could get my novella published.
My other dream goal that I want to achieve is to graduate with flying colours from the Herbal Academy. I know that won’t happen in 2024. It is nonetheless my big goal, a huge important goal for me. I want to make my dreams a reality. So, to recap, get my writing published and graduate from the Herbal Academy. I can do it. I won’t do it all at once nor in one day but I will eventually achieve it all. I will take small steps to get there. I don’t want to graduate from the Academy, I am having too good a time studying there. I am going to be very sad when I do eventually graduate. I have till 2025 to finish the course and read and conjure potions…
On a more personal note, I want to work on myself. I want to improve on myself, and not overreact to things, to learn and grow as a person. I would love to hear what your new year goals and dreams are! Let me know.
Blessings, Spiderwitch
The Paranormal Quill 