As you’re all aware, I haven’t been writing, or crafting, or anything really, for quite some time. A lot has been going on. I’ve decided to try to come back to blogging, but the reason why I quit, and what that means for the future, is a little unusual. I really can’t say for sure how this is going to work out.

I’m not even sure how to put this… I’ve been through a lot in the last few years, and I mostly kept it to myself. I’ve dealt with psychological abuse, I had to take care of an elder relative with late-stage dementia, and I’ve had a lot of health issues to cope with. All of those factors really depleted my energy and my will to create. Add in being incredibly poor, and the state of the world thanks to Trump, and it’s been pretty rough.

All of that was bad enough, but to top it all off, I lost my faith. After 25+ years as a Pagan and witch, I couldn’t do it anymore. In all honesty, I’ve been questioning it all for a long time. There were things that never fit, but I thought it was the right path, and I lived it the best I could. 2020 and all it’s insanity, however, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I just couldn’t have faith in gods and magick anymore. I wish I could, I really want that feeling, but I can’t do it. In 2020 I admitted something I’d been fighting against my whole life: I really don’t believe. 

I don’t like the thought of being an atheist, but I just don’t really believe.  I never truly did. I wanted to, so I did the ever-popular “fake it ’til you make it” hoping that I would have true faith. It didn’t work. So, try to imagine what that realization did to me. After a quarter century of building my personal identity and business around being Pagan, I had to admit that that’s not who I really am.

Needless to say, that has made life difficult. I found myself floundering, with absolutely no clue how to move forward. I wrote Pagan books, I had a Pagan blog, I did Pagan art. That was everything to me for 25 years. Now I realize that I’m an atheist and possibly something else, but I’ll leave that bomb for the blog. At any rate, I’ve been struggling to figure out what to do next.

Honestly, I have no clue. I don’t know how to make such a major shift. All I know is that I still have things to say, and things I want to get out in the world. One thing I know is that I need to be talking, sharing, educating in my own weird way. I used to feel like that was my purpose in life, and I’ve lost that. I changed everything about who I really was in order to fit the mold, in order to be palatable to the masses, in order to make money. Well, it turns out that doing all of that left me with no money, no business, and a hole where my soul used to be.

For now, I’m just going to start writing again. Google’s rules be damned, too, and I’ll write a post about that. I’m going to go back to free-form blogging, speaking my mind, saying what I feel needs to be said. It’s not going to be anything like what I’ve done in the last few years, it’s going to be more like my old writing, when I did op-ed and personal pieces for Yahoo and Bubblews. Google will probably hate it, and I don’t know if anyone will read it, but seriously, from a business standpoint it can’t get any worse than where I already am, and at least I’ll be doing something that feels good.

What this means is that you’re going to see some unusual stuff on the blog. It’s going to be more personal, more of me speaking my mind about the world and saying the things I think people need to hear. If people love it, great. If they don’t, well, at least the money I spend on hosting will be going to some use. I have some other projects in mind too, but I’m not going to reveal them yet. It seems that every time I say what I’m going to do, before I do it, it fails. I’ll be keeping things to myself from now on, until they’re already done and ready to share.

I hope that folks will come to the blog and see where it goes. I’m not going to delete all the old Pagan content yet, I don’t know if I should or not. I will be adding new content though. How much and how often all depends on how it feels as I move forward. for all I know, this may be exactly the right thing to make the blog popular again and reinvigorate my business. Maybe not. At least I’ll be doing something I actually enjoy.

Briana Blair

Briana Blair is an author and artisan. She has published more then 30 books and thousands of articles across multiple sites. After practicing Paganism and witchcraft for 25 years, she's now on a journey as an atheist and skeptic. She's eclectic, unpredictable, and always evolving. Facebook - Twitter