The good news is I slept like a log. The bad news is I remember I dreamt something very important, but I had no memory of that dream because of how deeply I slept. I’m going to have to set a note on the pillow to remind me to skip the bedtime firing, I guess.
Otherwise, the day went well. “Good cheer” came in handy when I attended an appointment I’d rather not. “Good eats” came along for the ride when the person I met with insisted on feeding me as gratitude for my attention. (It’s… complicated.)
The appointment ended well and contained a reminder that just because I have performed some magic for a goal, I still have the responsibility of working towards that goal. If I want more money, then I have to make myself available for receiving that money. That could be promoting my Etsy, working overtime, or taking side jobs for scratch.
Yea, sure, I could buy a lottery ticket. (Spoiler: I did.) And the magic could make me ten times as lucky to hit the jackpot, but the odds are still set magnificently against me just the same so I shouldn’t rely on that (or any other) lottery ticket to meet my immediate needs. (Spoiler: I didn’t win.)
I bring this up because one of the private goals of the sigil shoal is for a thing I have been wanting for a while, but for a long while, was unable to even think about budgeting to obtain. Well, now I have the funds, but since the challenge started, I hadn’t even thought about how to obtain it!
I have been going about my days, picking the low hanging and fallen fruit of “good cheer”, “good eats”, and “daily coffee”, allowing work shenanigans to remind me why I set some of the other goals as mid-range challenges, and not doing any of the work required to reach those upper branches where That Thing I Want™ needs me to reach up and seize it from.
“I shouldn’t have to work so hard, now that I bought a lottery ticket made that shoal sigil, right? I’ll just sit back, sip my coffee, and wait for the world to deliver it to me.”
That’s not how it works. That’s not how magic works. That’s not how any of this works.
And I know better.
Just as “a rising tide lifts all boats”, all it takes is “one hole to sink a ship”. Ignoring That Thing I Want™ can create enough of a magical drag on progress to sabotage the other encoded desires, even my premature triumph of “daily coffee”.
The day was too full of other commitments for me to begin work towards climbing those branches, so I left a note on my computer for the next day. At least this time I remembered not to fire the sigil over the bed before crashing for the night. Let what comes, come.