When I popped over here to prepare to write a new blog post, I was a bit beside myself. It has been just shy of ONE YEAR since I’ve posted anything. Remember when I used to write blog posts three or four times a week? Remember when I couldn’t shut the fuck up for five minutes on social media? I remember. Where did that Jess go?

 

Well, she’s been through some shit. That probably doesn’t surprise anyone because we’ve all been through a lot in the last year and a half. And then, if you add on the entire Trump administration, we’ll call it four years of white knuckle anxiety on practically a daily basis.

 

For me, the real problem was the pandemic.

 

When COVID started, like many people, I didn’t expect anything huge would come of it. We’d have a little bit of a precautionary period, and then we’d just get back to business as usual. But when it was clear that wasn’t the case, and people were losing their jobs and life was going to hell in a handbasket, I felt everything in my own world start to turn upside down.

 

I kept feeling haunted by the phrase “essential.” Essential workers, essential services, essential necessities to survive. I watched people all around me in both my online life and my IRL one losing their jobs and getting sick. You could feel the energy in the Universe just shifting into this period of pause.

 

It’s like something I talk to my clients about a lot. Sometimes we get forced into a period of rest when we’ve been hustling and pushing for so long that we don’t know how to slow down. The Universe finds a way to make it happen. That’s usually when you find yourself sick, out of work, and forced into a period of reset. We all were forced into that.

 

While I was feeling the need to pull back, I was also torn. I saw many other coaches, witches, and mystics online going all-in on their work and businesses. Many people pushed their services, courses, and products as “essential” for good “spiritual and energetic health” during such a hard time. I thought, “Should I be doing that too? I’m not sure if this is right.”

 

Honestly, some of it just felt gross to me.

 

I completely get where what I do could be helpful or bring comfort to someone during all that was going on. On the other hand, I had a hard time wrapping my head around asking people to pay me. But I can’t work for free, I have to live my life and pay my bills too. But was I really “essential?” Would I feel OK asking someone to pay for a reading, especially if they were looking for help because they’d had something terrible happen due to the pandemic?

 

I tried. I really did. I wanted to make it all make sense, but I couldn’t. I felt guilty and kind of gross about it, so I just stopped.

 

So, what did I do during 2020 for the most part? Played a lot of video games. Started streaming on Twitch. Basically, just resting, reflecting, and being present in my life as best I could be for the first time in a long time. Even though on the outside, it might have seemed like I was escaping by playing a pirate game all day, every day, a lot was going on in my head.

 

One of the results of having all that time to think and reflect was I realized just how unhappy I was in my marriage.

 

My husband lost his job during COVID. He started working from home, so now we were home together all the time. All that did was make it more obvious that I just wasn’t happy, and we were in a relationship that had been over for a long time. We were friends…best friends even…but that’s all that was left. I was living with a roommate, not someone I felt like I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

 

As the months pressed on and the end of the year came, I decided it was time to finally do what I had avoided for a long time. Say the word “divorce” out loud. To my husband.

 

While we had the expected conversations, like the bargaining discussion about going to therapy or giving it some time, I knew in my heart that it was over. It had been over, really. It was best to accept that there was no saving this, and it was time to part ways.

 

So in January of this year, we began the process of getting divorced, dividing up our things, setting our finances in order, and figuring out our next steps.

 

I decided to move back to the east coast because I really never liked living out west. I wanted to be back in a place that felt like home, which neither California nor Nevada ever did.  I was going to move to Boston, that was the original plan, but things changed when I suddenly got worried that I might not be able to survive as an adult on my own. After being with someone for 17 years that did basically everything to take care of me, I didn’t know if I could make it or not. And a big part of that is money and work.

 

In April, the divorce became final and I moved back to Connecticut. And now, here I am, staring a whole new life, about to restart my business, and ready for a whole new adventure. Don’t get me wrong, I’m scared to death, but I’m also excited and ready.

 

Work is going to be the big focus, though. The truth is I have to make a choice now that I’m on my own. Do I put EVERYTHING I can into my business, or do I literally just quit and get a regular job? I know that the last thing I want is to go back to working in management or customer service in an office 40+ hours a week. And nothing, I mean NOTHING, could be more soul-sucking to me.

 

I’m in the process of bringing back things like readings and coaching, some live classes, and I’m going to working on a whole bunch of other content like more workbooks, journals, and new books. I also want to do a Witching 2022 since I didn’t do one for 2021. And that’s a project that I have to start NOW, basically, if I want to see it ready before the end of the year.

 

I’m getting ready to really dive back into a bunch of stuff to create content and resource for you guys to work on growing and expanding your magickal lives. One of those big things that I’m going to focus on is always helping you find ways to create your own magick, create your own path, and your own traditions.

 

There will be lots to come; I hope you’re ready!