If I’m doing something mechanical or physical, like packing items from our Etsy shop, I’ll sometimes have a fun podcast or my Spotify daylist playing in the background. More often than not, though, it’s an audiobook — I’ve listened and re-listened to tons of my favorite books this way.
As time goes on, however, I find that I have a large amount of tasks for which I require no music at all. Obviously I need silence if I’m editing video or audio — and much of my day is spent doing that… but I’ve recently been rather surprised by how distracting music can be while I’m writing.
In fact, anything with words will completely destroy my writing process. I find it extremely hard to distinguish between the words in my head and the words in conversations around me… and I’ll often mix up the two and end up writing a response to something that was said near me instead of the next line in my paragraph.
Now that I think about it, I actually hear the words in my head as I write them. I’m hearing this sentence right now. No wonder it’s so easy for me to get mixed up if other people are talking nearby.
If I do have to drown out conversations, I’ve found that lo-fi beats based around video game music works the best. Surprisingly, even better than classical music, which was my previous go-to.
Good morning and happy Monday, friends!
It was a pretty non-stop week of things, but Selene and I managed to have quite a bit of fun, too!
- New Book Review: The Tameless Path
- New Blog Post: Athena, Medusa, and the Birth of the Flute
Early in the week, we took a night to go see the new Superman movie. It was fantastic. Seriously. Fantastic. And fully deserving of the italics that I placed on the word.
For years, we’ve been buying our tickets online… but the prices and “convenience” fees have skyrocketed to the point where going to see a movie has almost felt like an extravagance. This time, however, we decided to just wing it — we went straight to the local theater and selected our showtime after arrival. Aside from avoiding the convenience fees, we also discovered this “Super Tuesday” discount (or something like that), so our tickets ended up costing less than half of what they would have if we booked in advance. Go figure!
We picked a showtime that gave us a little time to eat, so we walked from the theater to a nearby pizza place.
The movie was great. And the score was even better. No disrespect to John Williams, but I can’t say that I have ever particularly enjoyed the Superman Theme in previous years — but this time, they nailed it. It made me feel things.
On Thursday, I had a great conversation with Coby Michael. He has a new book out: The Poison Path Grimoire… so he came back to M3 to tell me all about it. That raw interview footage will be up on Patreon in the next couple of days!
On Friday night, we discovered a cool little bar that’s opening up soon near our house called The Purple Lizard.
It’s a gay bar. The owner said that he wants everyone to feel welcomed. He was doing a little neighborhood meet and greet type event and was offering free drinks for the evening. It’s not officially open yet, but probably will be in a couple of weeks. Seriously though, almost everything in our city closes around 9 or 10pm, so having a nice little place that’s open late will be a big change.
On Saturday morning, Selene and I went for a volunteer session at prison. We did a short class and were able to bring some additional supplies for ritual… and we’re still working on getting another batch of books in.
That evening, it was my Zoom class for The Witch’s Toolkit series. This class was on Fluid Condensers… and I think it went well! If you’re interested in taking any of these classes, by the way, they’re all recorded… if you sign up for the next class, you’ll get access to those recordings.
On Sunday, we went out for a little adventure to Miami, The Perez Art Museum, and Little Havana. We saw some art, walked around the streets, heard some music, ate some food, and bought some cigars.
It was a lot of fun… and you can find more pictures on social media.
The night concluded with a misa.
All in all, pretty great week!
Coming up, you’ll be able to catch the next episode of Wyrd Wednesday, where Christiana Gaudet and I discuss runes.
And hopefully I’ll have a new episode of M3 coming out soon. It all depends on how much editing time I get this week, but we’ve got a trip planned for the weekend… my sister is getting married!
That’s all for now, but stay tuned for more soon!
Aerik Arkadian 
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