Welcome to an American Tragedy Waiting to Happen

To preface this post...

I am not a financial advisor. You should NOT read this post looking for advice regarding stocks, investing, or the market. 

Now that that's out of the way... have you guys seen what's going on with GameStop?

I know, it's been all over the news. As I write this post, the GameStop stock is currently trading at over $300. About a month ago it was less than $15.

This screen shot is from 31 Jan 2021

People unfamiliar with the stock market might think that this is amazing and shows that GameStop is doing really well and that if they buy the stock, they'll make money. People unfamiliar with Reddit might be trying to figure out what it is and why it's causing GameStop to trade at such an inflated price. 

Guys, this whole thing is one giant troll.

I mean that in the Internet sense.

Yes, some people are doing this to mess with Hedge Funds. Yes, some ordinary people are going to make a lot of money. 

However, this is an American Tragedy waiting to happen.

This all started when some dudes on a Reddit page noticed that a Hedge Fund was planning on shorting the GameStop stock in the hopes of making a ton of money. This is not an unusual thing to happen in the market - most financial institutes are just smart enough to not advertise what they are doing to the general public. How or why the people of Reddit learned this information isn't super important. We can assume it was public information or at least released publicly. 

What is important is that these people on Reddit - because of nostalgia, wanting to stick it to "the man", pull of the biggest troll of their lives, or to deal with their boredom from the pandemic - decided to buying up the GameStop stock. Thus they drove up the trading price.

More people jumped on the "buy GameStop" train and the value of the stock shot up. This meant that the Hedge Fund that made a bet to short the stock were going to lose a ton of money.

Now, I don't really like the practice of shorting stocks - I don't think it's all that cool to bet on someone or something to fail - so I don't feel much for these institutions. But I'm also not going to go out and tell people to buy GameStop or any of the other stocks these Reddit people are trying to drive up. 

GameStop stock is not work the $300 it's currently trading at. 

What does this mean?

It's a massive train wreck waiting to happen. 

Here's where we get to the tragedy. If you need a refresher on what tragedy is, it's basically when a story ends badly because our protagonist has a personality quirk that's actually a fatal flaw. Think Hamlet or Othello from our days studying Shakespeare (assuming you guys studied this). If you want a quick deep dive into the genre, go watch the Overly Sarcastic Productions video (link here) that came out a couple of days ago. It's funny and informative.

See the thing about the stock market is that it's just another type of gambling. By buying a stock, you are betting the value will go up. The value of a stock usually, but not always, reflects how a company is doing. There are other benchmarks that should be watched and some stocks are traded at future/potential earnings instead of real/current earnings which adds another layer of risk. People who know what they're doing know that there's no guarantee that the money they put in the stock  market will ever be seen again... even if there's also the chance they'll make a ton of money.

From my perspective as an outsider of the situation looking in, I'm entertained by what is going on. A bunch of people on the Internet getting together to disrupt the stock market and stick it to a bunch of billionaires is satisficing in many ways. Its a whole new level of trolling.

But there's going to be collateral damage… and I don't mean those Hedge Funds that are going belly up. Real individual people are going to be harmed by this. 

Though I've been avoiding reading the actual Reddit forums, some of my friends haven't and they're concerned by the number of people bragging about how much money they put in to buy GameStop stock. Some people were claiming that they had put in all of their savings or at least their stimulus checks to join in on the buying frenzy.

I want to repeat that GameStop stock may be trading at over $300, but it is not worth that amount.

GameStop is not doing well as a company. And the most tragic part of this story is that they could easily go bankrupt. If that happens, everyone loses their money. There's no refund for a stock from a company that goes belly-up. 

That's the worst case scenario. 

The real tragedy comes from the people who brought the stock when it was at it's highest and how much they're going to lose when the market re-stabilizes. The people who brought the stock when it was still around $15 are going to make a lot of money, but that's not going to be most people. Most people are going to lose all the money and then some that they put into GameStop.

That's the reality.

That's the tragedy.

I don't think that many of those people who helped drive up the cost of the stock realize this. Investment isn't something that the average American participates in on their own. With the push for investment apps and free trading on the Internet, more people have begun to try their hand at it, but it's still not the norm. How to invest isn't a standard class in schools (though I did take several classes on the subject in both high school and college, but they were electives). 

So no matter what happens next, the market stabilizes or GameStop declares bankruptcy, the people still throwing their money at this stock are going to lose it. I don't know when the bubble is going to burst. I don't know how awful it might be (it might not be that bad).

I don't even know what kind of laws and regulations are going to come out of this. And, oh yes, there will be laws and regulations because of this madness.

Like I said earlier, it's a train wreck waiting to happen. I'm morbidly fascinated being entertained by a situation that I know will end badly no matter what. I am a member of the audience watching a play where the actors are inviting the gullible to join them on stage.

Tragedy is cathartic. It's not positive or negative. It simply is. Hamlet continues to be performed nearly 500 years after it was written even though we know how it's going to end. Heck the first monologue in Romeo and Juliet tells us that our two love birds are doomed to die. There's no mystery to the story. We already know what's going to happen. What we don't know is the "how".

Which is where we are in the GameStop stock saga (as I write this post).

Some people might walk away with a lot of money, but the average person is going to get hurt. Seriously hurt - like Ophelia drowning because she went crazy hurt (that's not a spoiler to a 500 year old play).

And that my dear readers, is why this is an American Tragedy.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to being Multilingual

Do you know someone who speaks multiple languages? Do you want to write a character who speaks at least two or more languages? Well, here’s my experience as a multilingual person who is trying to keep up the skills they’ve gained.

I very much admire people who can speak more than one language with little trouble. The skill to speak many languages is tough.

I speak roughly three languages to varying degrees. I also understand some of a forth language - though not enough to make it really count. 

Naturally, as I am writing in English, I can understand it. It’s my native language.

English even popped up a lot outside of English speaking countries (this picture was taken in Iceland)

The other two that I consider myself knowledgeable in are Spanish and Japanese. I began learning them at an early age. So early, that I learned a few things first in them instead of English. Heck, I didn’t know the American Pledge of Alliance in English until I was ten, but I can still recite it in Spanish.

Now, I’ve never lived out of the country, so I picked up these languages from my family and at school. Actually, a lot of my friends growing up could speak two or more languages. The area I’m from was very diverse and it wasn’t unusual to hear two or three languages shouted out in the school hallways. 

I also studied these languages in school: ten years for Spanish (to the point where I often still think and dream in it) and two semesters of college Japanese. Which is why my confidence in them is fairly strong. 

However, it’s been so long since I’ve been in school that some days I worry that I’ll become so rusty, I’ll forget how to speak them. Thus, this year I decided to try practicing in them at least once a day. I’m using a language app (Duolingo) to keep up practice. Though I have also read Spanish books and watched TV in Spanish quite a bit (Telemundo was one of the few consistent channels I got in New Jersey and they showed some good movies). Trying to find similar ways to practice with Japanese has been a little harder for me.

Having the recourses to practice languages outside of school is a great blessing. I can still understand and speak Spanish well enough. While, my Japanese has improved enough that I’m confident in writing in it between myself and my cousins - though I would hate to be asked to speak to someone outside of my family as I am not nearly that confident in practice. 

Now about that forth language...

Years ago, I began learning Portuguese as my roommate at the time was Brazilian. Her family came to visit one holiday season and most of them (particularly her mother) didn’t speak any English. Naturally I took it upon myself to learn a little Portuguese to try and make them feel welcome.

Learning Portuguese wasn’t too hard (not like learning Japanese which has a completely different grammar structure). It’s very similar to Spanish and there are a lot of words that are pronounced the same. I was doing alright with my learning. My roommate thought the app was hilarious and took it upon herself to teach me the Brazilian pronunciation of words.

The challenge came when I tried to speak with my roommate’s family. I would start in Portuguese, get confused or stuck, and switch into Spanish. Also, I found the only phrase I could get out when I was nervous was basically: “I like this.”

I know my roommate and her family appreciated my efforts (they told me). But I was still embarrassed by my poor attempts.

It’s intimidating speaking a new language. Though that hasn’t stopped me from trying. In fact I have a lot of similar hilarious examples of me either trying to speak or understand someone and thoroughly messing up.

Remember how I said that I learned somethings first in a language other than English? Well, I seem to default to thinking my directions in Spanish as that’s the language I learned them in first. This caused a horrible crisis when I was in the middle of a Japanese language exam where I was supposed to be telling the teacher how to get to the library. My mind kept switching from Japanese to English to Spanish, then back to English, finally ending in Japanese. Eventually I got stuck in Spanish and I began freaking out in front of my Japanese teacher... in Spanish.

Thankfully, said teacher also spoke Spanish and could calm me down. I also kept apologizing that all I seemed to be able to think in was Spanish and couldn’t even find the right English words to say (which would have lowered my grade). 

And yes, when I’m trying to speak Japanese, I sometimes switch into Spanish. Just as when I sometimes want to speak Spanish I’ll start thinking only in Japanese. 

Then there are the times where I think I’m following a conversation and it turns out I am way off the mark because I’m confusing a word in one language for a similar sounding word in another.

My Brazilian friends tried to speak English around me as much as possible (not that I minded - it’s easier to pick up a language when it’s spoken around me), but sometimes they’d forget that my Portuguese was terrible. One night, I was near my friends and kept hearing a word that my brain translated as “purple”. So, I stopped and asked them why they were talking about the color purple.

Spoiler alert: they weren’t talking about the color purple.

The word they were saying sounded like the Spanish word for purple, but actually meant boyfriend. They had a good laugh at my expense, I blushed and took the humiliation in stride.  It they didn’t want to discourage my curiously and happily explained my mistake.  I enjoy telling this story from time to time as an example of how to help a person who isn’t a native speaker speak your native language.

Learning new languages is tough. Your friends who can speak multiple languages have an awesome skill. If they mix something up or forget a grammar rule, it’s probably because of all the languages floating around in their head (seriously Japanese grammar is no joke). Don’t make fun of people who try to speak English, at least they’re trying.

Finally, if you want to write a character to be believably multilingual, have them make lots of silly mistakes like forget the word for snail and call them a house less slug or mix up the grammar or substitute two similarly sounding words that mean entirely different things. (A good example in English is the word sheet, my poor fifth grade Spanish teacher always had a room full of laughing ten years olds when he told us to take out a sh*t of paper).

If you’re interested in learning a new language or practicing one you think has gotten rusty, check out an app or a game. There are lots available on Steam and in the app stores. I picked Duolingo because it has exactly what I need to keep practicing, but there may be a better option for you.

Happy practicing.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y’all like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to the Quiet Reflection During Hard Times

 This week I was unfortunately laid off...again. 

It's a tough position to be in, especially now. I'm anxious and a bit scared, but I am thankful that I have a wonderful support system who are willing to help me through this. There are many other people in a similar position as myself who can't say that.

It sucks that this happened twice. It sucks that this time I'm facing the added hurdle that is a pandemic. It all around sucks.

As I am not a person who takes idleness well, I have already hit the ground running taking care of updating my resume, job hunting, and all the applications I need to put in now that my work status has changed. At least this time I know more of what I need to and should do.

My knowledge doesn't make the situation any easier. And it's also not just me this time - I have my evil fluffy kitty Karma to worry about.

My list of things I need to do is long and overwhelming. Just thinking about it leaves me wishing to curl up into a tiny ball under a blanket fort and pretend I'm six instead of an adult. But I'm getting them done one item at a time.

Worrying won't fix my situation, but I also can't be constantly working to "fix" it. I'll burn out or turn into a messy pile of shaky bones if I don't take a break every once in a while.

Last night, I needed to take some time to center myself. I grabbed my watercolors, paint brushes, and some washi tape. I cut one of my special art papers into six Polaroid shaped rectangles. Then, I started to paint.

I don't always know what I'm going to create when I put pencil or brush to paper. Sometimes I get inspiration from the colors I pick, other times its an image I've seen that I want to try to recreate. Last night it was a piece of music going through my head. It's a calm song called "The Sixth Station" by Joe Hisaishi and plays at the start of the final third of the movie Spirited Away.

Though not perfect, I am very happy how it turned out

The calming music gave me inspiration. I hummed along with it as I did my best to bring the images in my mind to life on paper. I bobbed and I swayed and I left my mind picture the beautiful image of Chihiro walking along the train tracks covered in water to catch a train.

I love the movie Spirited Away. Chihiro's character grows a lot during the story. There are a lot of unique characters and intense action scenes. Some moments are silly and the animation is wild. But then there are the times when the film is quiet, contemplative. One of those moments is when "The Sixth Station" plays. 

Chihiro is on her way to visit the witch Zeniba - twin sister to the witch, Yubaba, who runs the bathhouse and turned Chihiro's parents into pigs. The scene is beautiful, quiet, and a little melancholic. Chihiro has no idea if Yubaba is going to eat her parents or not. She's worried and scared for her friend Haku. 

However, Chihiro has grown so much since the start of her adventure and this quiet moment is a reflection on all the hard work she's done. There's a chance things may go wrong, but there's an even bigger chance they'll go right.

And [SPOILERS] things go right for Chihiro. She finds a wonderful ally with Zeniba who gives her the courage and wisdom to overcome her last challenge. 

Through all my trials and tribulations over the last two years, I hope that I'm (metaphorically) on my way to visit Zeniba. Yes, there's still a lot of hard work to do. Zeniba puts Chihiro's friends to work, while she sits and thinks on everything she's learned. Chihiro pulls through and I know I will too.

Being laid off is the worst. It's an emotional roller coaster and it's very easy to be left doubting oneself. Taking a quiet moment to reflect or do something that will help relax away the tension is just as important as doing that hard work. 

Muscles tense? Take a hot bubble bath and give yourself a bubble mustache and beard. Mind going a million miles a minute? Take a walk or do a breathing exercise (especially if you find meditating hard).  Find a moment for yourself.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to Remembering Moments in History

I remember sitting in my history classes throughout my school aged years hearing stories about the events my teachers lived through. Modern historical events like the Kennedy assassination, the fall of the Berlin wall, Vietnam, and going back further the Depression and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Young me often wondered how I would have reacted to those events. What would I have done? What would I remember?

Would I have been on the National Mall to see MLK speak?

I've written a bit about my experience of 9/11 and the days that followed on this blog. It was (if not the biggest than one of) a major life event for me. I remember the day vividly. I remember the following week vividly. You can read more about that here.

But 9/11 wasn't the only major event that happed on the national and even international stage to shape my life. And now I can add the events that took place on Wednesday to that ever growing list.

Some days I forget how young I was when 9/11 happened. That teenagers sitting in their history classes are learning about it the same way I learned about the fall of the Berlin wall. Their teachers probably told them where they were or what they were doing when the first plane hit the World Trade Center the same way my history teacher talked about hearing that Kennedy had been shot while sitting in their history class.

A few months ago, I mentioned to my dad how many unprecedented and historic events my generation (the Millennials) had lived through. My dad laughed and said that his generation (the Boomers) had also seen a lot more on top of what we were going through. He then told me how on the day the Vietnam war ended, his father decided to ring the bell at the seminary - which then led to more bells ringing all across the city of Lancaster. That was how my grandfather wanted to acknowledge the end of the war. I almost hope to hear bells ringing once the wars on terror finally end.

The United States has been at war most of my life. Teenagers have never known the United States to not be at war. I forget that fact - often. Have I just grown numb to it?

I think the first big international event that I can remember is when Princess Diana died. I was very young, at an age where memories are more likely to be forgotten than formed. I had no idea who she was, but I knew that mom was very upset that she had died. 

Two years later, the Columbine high school massacre occurred. My main memory from that event is my teacher bowing her head to pray, tears in her eyes.

Right after 9/11 was the DC sniper in 2002. By this point in my life I still believed that adults had all the answers and would protect us kids. As time went on and more people died, I lost that faith. When teachers and school administrators tell your friends walking between their outdoor classrooms to "use the buddy system" so as to not be killed by a sniper, it becomes obvious that adults have no idea what they're doing.

At some point in the early 2000s (also after 9/11), I remember being worried for my cousin in the military going to war. I didn't want him to be deployed into an active combat zone, especially after all the war movies I'd grown up watching on World War 2. My cousin was deployed. Other members of my family have been deployed. One of my distant cousins died - it was suspected to have been by friendly fire.

The Virginia Tech massacre happened just before my birthday. Three days later a bomb threat was called into my school. Tension was high.

My friends and developed a thick skin to tragedy and often joked our own mortality. We learned early that bad things happen and there's nothing anyone will do about it.

I cried my eyes out when I saw the news on Sandy Hook. I had just gotten back from studying from my finals. My roommate and I talked about it for a bit. Sharing stories on what the kids had gone through, what they had survived.

Wednesday's insurrection was historical. If I had been asked as a teenager in high school whether or not something like that could happen in the United States, I'd have laughed and firmly said no. I've grown up a lot since then. I've learned more and come to understand things in different ways.

A lot of people saw this coming. A lot of people tried to warn others that this was likely to happen.

On Wednesday during the insurrection, I took my dad to a doctor's appointment. While I sat in the waiting area, I scrolled through Twitter - getting updates live. I was stunned, but sadly not surprised. I let the people in the office know what was going on in real time. Dad and I watched the live coverage once we got home. It was so much worse than seeing the BLM protestors getting gassed so the President could hold a Bible upside down in front of St. Johns Church. 

I know where I was and what I was doing on Wednesday.

I probably won't ever forget it. And neither will most Americans.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me*.

Until next week.

*If you bully, taunt, spread hate speech, or threaten in my comments section, I reserve the right to delete them. This is not censorship.

Welcome to the Reading Over a Year

 Last year I joined Goodreads to help me keep track of the books I've been reading. I really like the platform and am enjoying writing reviews for everything I've been reading. 

Now, I'm normally a slow reader. When I saw that there was a challenge to read a certain number of books, I opted to give myself an arbitrary number that seemed reasonable for me to achieve. That number was 20.

As time progressed, I found that I was reading a lot more than I thought I would (thanks to the pandemic and all). I kept upping the number of books I pledged to read until I settled on 30. As the end of the year approached, I wasn't sure I'd accomplish my reading goal (especially when the counter kept reminding me how many books I was behind). Good thing audiobooks count!

I managed to hit my 30 book goal plus one.

The books I read over 2020 were varied and didn't have any common themes what so ever. The majority of the books I read were poetry and manga - quick reads that I can finish in about a week. However, there were a few books that took me months to get through.

I'd like to share with you guys some of my favorite books that I read last year. I promise there won't be too many spoilers. 

1) Finding Your Harpy Place by D.H. Willison - This was the final book I finished in 2020 and put me at 31 books read. It's a fun fantasy adventure with Darin, the poor modern guy who ended up in a fantasy world where everything wants to kill him, and Rinloh, a harpy who really doesn't want to kill and eat a human to become a full fledged member of her flock. It's an unlikely friendship and an even more fun adventure.

2) The Girl and the Goddess: Stories and Poems of Divine Wisdom by Nikita Gill - I have so far loved everything Nikita Gill has written and this is by far my favorite of her work. This poetry collection is unique in that it tells a full narrative about a young girl growing up in India and then studying in the UK. I highly recommend it if you're a fan of mythology and poetry.

3) The Daphne and Velma books by Josephine Ruby and by Morgan Baden - This is the start of a not so average Scooby Doo series that heavily focuses on Daphne and Velma. Shaggy and Scooby do show up in both books (and have a somewhat larger role in the 2nd), but poor Fred gets barely any attention. That's okay because the books aren't just about the mysteries the girls are solving, but their relationships and personal growth. Both The Vanished Girl and The Dark Deception are worth a read if you're a fan of any version of the Scooby gang (and there are tons of references in the books). I can't wait for the third book to come out in February.

4) Princess Holy Aura by Ryk E. Spoor - I've been meaning to read this book for a while and 2020 was the perfect year to do so. If you loved Sailor Moon or any other magical girl manga or anime than this book is for you. All of the tropes are there, pointed out, and subverted all to save the world from Lovecraftian monsters. There's also a lot of reflection on identity (particularly gender as the main character was originally male and then became female), ethics, and what it means to be a hero.

5) Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise by Oscar Hijuelos - I was gifted this book from a friend. It was the longest to read (both in page number and time). It is historical fiction based on the actual friendship between two of the most famous people from the turn of the 20th century, Mark Twain and Henry Stanley. It was a fascinating take on speculated events. It prompted me to learn more about the two men and the events that shaped them. I have a lot of mixed feelings on Henry Stanley. He was a deeply flawed person and this book doesn't shy away from that.

6) The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin - My sister gifted me this book last Christmas and it was one of the first I read in 2020. Evidently she read it in school, though I never did. It's delightful and fun mystery to figure out. I can't wait to pass this book along to my younger cousin (when he's just a little bit older).

7) War / Torn by Hasan Namir - this is a tough poetry collection about a man facing homophobia in his home country. It's raw, depressing in place, and beautifully written. If you enjoy poetry on tough subjects (especially for the LGBTQ+ community) I recommend picking up this collection.

For 2021 I'd like to read at least one more book than 2020. I've already started my challenge with a poetry book and a longer Young Adult novel set in Jamaica. 

There are a lot of things I'd like to achieve in 2021. Many of those things depend on the pandemic going away or at least the risk of COVID greatly diminishing. Other goals require a lot more creativity to achieve. Reading 32 books feels doable in the current crazy climate. 

If y'all are on Goodreads let me know and I'll be happy to see about adding you as a friend. If you've got goals you'd like to meet in 2021, feel free to leave a comment on those as well. We may all be separated by necessity, but little things can bring us together without physically being close.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Welcome to Alone at the Holidays

This year will be a quiet year for me during the holidays. Normally I would be traveling to one of my many relatives’ homes for Christmas and/or New Years, but not this year. There won’t be any parties to attend, no Japanese New Years feasts, and certainly no surprise Christmas trips (I managed to get my mom to jump about a foot in the air when I surprised her last year).

It’ll be just me and my dad...and my cat.

This isn’t the first time I’ll be spending at least part of the holidays alone. I’ve woken up on Christmas morning without any presents to open - granted I flew a few hundred miles and opened presents a few days later - but I still felt a little depressed because there was no one with me. That year, I didn’t even bother putting up a tree.

But as I stated before, it wasn’t the first time celebrating a holiday all by myself. And I technically won’t be alone this year - unlike a lot of people who will be separated from their friends and family.

How celebrations have changed have been all over social media. This one guy posted about celebrating his first Christmas ever (he said he’s Muslim) and how his roommates were including him in every “mandatory” activity - I feel a little bad for this guy because his roommates seem positively Christmas crazy. While one of my friends posted about celebrating Kwanza. My friend mentioned feeling a little odd celebrating by herself, which I totally understand.

A few years ago, I began celebrating the witch/Wiccan sabbats (basically holidays). Since I wasn’t part of a coven and was a little self conscious about my practices, I didn’t have anyone to celebrate these holidays with. And these holidays are meant to be shared with friends with all the food I end up making.

I’m a solo witch. And a lot of people who I talked to regarding my shift in spiritual practices had a lot of misconceptions about my beliefs. (A side note: I’ve mentioned how I’m a Christian in previous blog posts. I’m still a Christian, but also a practicing witch. Believe it or not the two don’t have to conflict with each other. I am not a Wiccan, but there is some crossover with how witches practice.)

To understand how best to celebrate the witch/Wiccan holidays, I had to do a lot of research. Once I had more information than I knew what to do with, I began to figure out which parts of the celebrations made sense for me. There were a lot of little things I could do to celebrate like taking a walk in nature, baking or cooking food with herbs and spices symbolic of the season, and meditating.

I’m still adjusting my celebrating and practices. This year was the first time I made soul cakes for Samhain as an offering to the dead who were visiting and shared some with my dad (who absolutely loved them and was disappointed when I said I wouldn’t make more until the next year.). My dad sort of rolls his eyes at my witch practices, but he seems to like the food I make for the sabbats.

Tomorrow is Yule. 

I plan on building a fire in the fireplace. I’ll toss in some holly to burn up my woes from 2020 and burn bay leaves with wishes for 2021. I’ll have a feast of root veggies and heavy meat stew in honor of the food that’s readily available at this time of year. Hot wassail will warm my insides. Pine and Frankincense incense will purify my home. Green, white, and gold candles will be lit since it’s the longest night. Oranges will be stuck with cloves to welcome back the sun. And I might try to do some star gazing.

Oh and I’ll make cookies.

Each activity I plan to do has been researched and has meaning. A couple of things were borrowed from my Christian roots (the oranges and the cloves for example), but flow well with my intentions for the celebration. 

Because what matters most in how I practice witchcraft is the intension.  It’s a practice of mindfulness and living in harmony with nature.

I walked a little with my friend about how she plans on celebrating Kwanza. She plans on doing some research and doing a few of the holiday’s rituals. It might not be a lot, but she’s excited to explore this side of her heritage.

A lot of people will probably be celebrating a holiday or five alone this year. Some might be putting in all their free time into it and have a “magazine ready apartment” to post on Instagram. Others might be planning on marathoning Star Wars and that’s it.

However you plan on celebrating the last two weeks of the year, I hope it’s wonderful.

And if you have the opportunity, toss a sprig of holly into a roaring fire to burn the woes of 2020 away.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to Ghost Sightings

Ghosts are real. 

They exist at the edges of our minds to help us deal with the reality that one day we will die and no longer exist as we do right now. We might go our whole lives without ever seeing a ghost, but that doesn't mean we aren't followed by them.

I've never seen a ghost. I probably never will. But I know they're there to keep histories and memories alive for just a little longer.

About a month ago, I wrote a blog post about how ghost stories (at least the best ones) are rarely about the ghosts. You can read that blog post by clicking this link. 

That post primarily focuses on fictional stories and the ones that get passed down from generation to generation as a way to preserve culture or history. It wasn’t my first post on ghosts, nor was it the first time I brought up the fact that ghost stories are a good measure to discover what a culture values. This post will likely not be the last either.

Today I was feeling under the weather. Thankfully nothing COVID related (at least I haven’t heard of a crumbly stomach being associated with the virus). I ended up spending most of the morning under a pile of blankets with a cat curled up next to me and Unsolved Mysteries on in the background. I came back to full awareness when the episode playing was entirely in Japanese.

The episode in question was on the aftermath of the 3.11.2011 earthquake and tsunami. At first I was a bit confused as to why this was on Unsolved Mysteries as I hadn’t heard of anything unusual happening after the tragedy. Then ghosts were mentioned and things began to fall into place.

The episode wasn’t about a murder or disappearance that occurred in conjunction to the day, but about the trauma that happened to the people after over 15,000 were swept away by a wall of water. People began to see ghosts.

I don’t think this is all that unusual after such a horrific disaster. Though the episode does mention that ghost sightings are a rare occurrence in Japan after incidents of mass death (natural or man made), there is a cultural explanation for why this region of Japan had a high number of ghost sightings in the months and years after 3.11 (as the day has become known as).

Mass death isn’t normal. Sudden mass death is traumatic and leaves a gaping impression like a bullet hole.

The amount of death going on right now because of the pandemic feels so much worse. It's like a stab wound that hasn't closed properly and became infected. It'll likely leave a massive scar, if the wound ever heals.

I’ve been lucky. I haven’t seen the mobile morgues. My family has managed to avoid the worst of COVID. I’m still incredibly stressed by the situation.

We’ve seen how humans of the past dealt with pandemics and it was filled with images of death. The great plague that ravaged Asia and Europe in the Middle Ages left us with tons of paintings which featured dancing skeletons and iconography we still closely associate with death. The Dance of the Macabre is familiar enough to most modern people - even if they aren’t aware of its exact origin.

That particular disease really did look like something out of a zombie movie. COVID doesn’t have the tell tale disfiguration or gross puss filled boils like Bubonic or one of its similar plague buddies has. It’s not flashy and easily hidden away from the public eye. 

But the stress and trauma is all around us. I do wonder how our modern world will deal with it.

In the mid-2000s there was a huge uptick in paranormal investigative shows. I won’t deny that I enjoyed them back then. Although, now I much prefer seeing the story unfold rather than watch 40 of people wander around in the dark and then spend 10 minutes trying to tell me that there was a “ghost” on a recording. I like to think I’ve matured in taste since then, but it’s unlikely.

I’m not saying that the trauma of 9/11 was the reason for this sudden splash of TV shlock, but the timing is there. Kind of like how it wasn’t necessarily the counter culture of the 60s and 70s that led to the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s. 

But after traumatic events, we as humans seem to be drawn to what comes after life. Many times the trauma takes the form of ghosts.

I think there’s a reason Gettysburg is known for its battlefields and ghosts more than any other US city. The town and surrounding area was bombarded for three hot days in July. It’s the bloodiest battle to take place on US soil. And the town is filled with ghost stories about those three horrific days.

Will COVID correlate to another surge in live action ghost shows? Will we get more shows or movies like The Haunting of Hill House or Bly Manor? 

If anything, I do hope that the pandemic brings the end of the zombie. For years zombies were equated to disease and that we could fight our way out of it. Nothing remotely like the zombie apocalypse has happened. Please creative types, make zombies go away.

I’m still feeling a little queasy. The only other time I’ve felt like this and didn’t actually get sick was when I had a horribly stressful month at work while I was still new to my career. I couldn’t eat for a couple weeks. COVID has wrecked my nerves in a similar way - don’t know why this was the week for my body to freak out.

I have never seen a ghost - though I wouldn’t mind the experience. I think it’s important to understand that ghosts are very real. Whether or not seeing them is a response to trauma or a suggestion of the mind to rationalize the unknown or they are in fact real is up to you the individual. Right now my body is physically responding to the stress of the pandemic. Years from now, my mind might process the trauma differently.

And boy has my generation lived through a lot of traumatic events. 

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Stay safe everyone.