Wednesday, Sep. 28th at midnight will be the cutoff point to book October altar work.
I am moving myself and a sort of travel-trailer-sized chunk of my materials, supplies, and inventory to Louisiana next month. I’ve been planning it and doing necessary preliminaries for a while, and things are finally at a point where it can happen.
This will enable me to help a family member with their land and crops and building projects, brush up on my ridiculously rusty French, fully immerse myself in the unique herbal and spiritual traditions of Louisiana (which has always done things its own damned way compared to any other state and which is still grossly misunderstood by most of the rest of the country), and deepen some ancestral ties. (Half my family tree has deep, deep roots in Louisiana, and I spent many summers there as a child, but I’ve spent comparatively little time there as an adult, and I’m excited to remedy that).
I can then apply the research and interviews I’ll be able to undertake there towards my work on A Bayou Hoodoo Herbal, which I was hoping would become a real book this year. That no longer looks realistic, but with this move, next year could be.
Admittedly, as it looks on the blog right now, Bayou Hoodoo Herbal doesn’t amount to more than a few social media posts. But I have *tons* of notes — decades of notes — waiting for me to flesh them out into actual English. I’ve just lacked the time and headspace to do that fleshing out. Once the dust settles, I should have a lot more time and headspace.
I don’t yet know how this is going to impact my currently available inventory. I really have to get in the space and see what I can realistically manage to cram into it. But I’ll be traveling back and forth between there and Alabama fairly regularly, so anything that’s unavailable for a little while is likely to be available again as soon as I sort out the logistics, or else I’ll publicly announce I’m discontinuing it or whatever.
My “field office” in Louisiana is only a few hours from here, so I’m not closing up shop. Currently-booked altar work and anything booked before Wednesday the 27th will not be interrupted. Monthly community altar services will not be affected, but it may take me a couple of weeks to get private services back online. I’ll announce it once they are.
And if you’ve been waiting *forever* for me to get back to you with a report or reading, and you’re rolling your eyes at what looks like my saying “a few more weeks,” I assure you that this is a move I’m consciously making in order to be able to safeguard and put firm, healthy boundaries around my time and energy, so that I can concentrate on what I need to concentrate on, which is my work, research, and clients. I’ve had way too much on my plate for a good while now, and this is going to function in many ways as a significant spiritual retreat, so I can get clear of a bunch of clutter and noise and get the most important things back into clear focus and good, healthy shape.