Last night not one but two old friends showed up. It was Lughnasadh and although we didn’t celebrate it with a ritual, there was something culminative about this particular holiday.  Lughnasadh also known as Lammas is a harvest festival, where you reap what you have sown. You celebrate everything that you have grown. Our friendships have grown and we have all had personal growth and I think last night we had the opportunity to revel in those changes.

Denise did tarot readings for us all. Including Thorik. Thorik’s was very strong as was Disa’s.

Mine wasn’t a surprise. Mine was what I know has been on my mind for the past few months. Hell, for the past few years: yeah, my failure with the FHPA and the fact that I know I am still supposed to start communities and bring people together. Not just people, as Denise pointed out, but the one’s who aren’t looking for more than friends. Not people looking for covens, but people who are solitary and just wanting to meet like-minded people. We are out there. We are alone and once in a while, just once, we like to be able to let down our guard and be around people like ourselves.

We don’t want to have to worry about what anyone else thinks, we don’t have to worry about being drawn into some coven or being looked-down upon by coven members for being solitary.

But we do want, at least in my mind and experience, someone who can relate to those living room rituals, those back yard rituals and maybe even a rare night with friends where we can experience a group ritual without the requirements of a coven.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against covens. They are necessary and some people work much better with a coven than they do on their own. It’s just not for me and it isn’t for everyone. I know some great covens and some great people who are part of covens. I am even comfortable joining in for a ritual with them here and there when I am invited. It’s just not for me full time. My relationship with the gods/goddesses isn’t the same as everyone else’s and to me it’s more personal. I don’t want to share on a holiday basis nor on a monthly basis. An occasional basis is very empowering and something I would suggest to all my solitary friends. Even then, that part won’t be for everyone.

Either way, the point is, I want to start gatherings again. Just like meetup.com

If only meetup.com hadn’t gone to requiring payments and memberships. So, I’m going to the root. I’m going to (as I’ve wanted to for a long long time) create a site where people can sign up for free. This isn’t going to be a small undertaking and I’m very excited.

I haven’t shared personal stuff in here in a while. Back in June, I applied for a position as a webmaster for a weather site.  My intro, my resume and my picture sold me. Yeah. LOL but this weather site is owned and maintained by a Vietnam Vet. So I felt that we were brought together for a reason. I redid his weather site and put it into a CMS. Sitefinity. And my boss has been very pleased. It gives him control and he is able to make changes on his own. He’s quite excited about this.

As usual, nothing is easy and he is unable to pay my full bill. He was upfront about this and I decided we could, if he wanted, take this process slowly.  I would move his site into the CMS and he would pay me 200 monthly (which is only 180 after guru.com takes their share. Bastards) Needless to say, he is not a patient man. It was fun and exciting at first. I love learning new things and I love doing web stuff, but by the 4th weekend of working entire weekends from 9 am until 10pm or later, I was burnt out.

Things that he should have been able to do on his own he wanted me to do..

Up to that point I had been giving him a lot of breaks. But when he wanted me to do all the copy and paste work, I charged him the full price. I told him that too.  Either way, by the time all was said and done, what I wanted to last until at least September was completed and live before I went to work on July 15 because the counter was erroring and broke the whole site. (Did the old programmers  never hear of error check and catching? DUH!!). It was rush rush, untested and completely unready.. but it happened, it worked and my boss was happy! ;)

ANYWAY,  small fixes between all that in addition to some other basics and I accrued a cost of 1k (which technically should have been about 4k but no worries… everything  happens for a reason, right?)  So,  a bit burned out but proud of the final results, the end of July drew near.. and my boss decided he needed to host his own server, so he hired a server lady.

I came up with a plan last night.. one that would be mutually beneficial: For 10 free hours a month, he would give me 20 gigs of server space and allow me 2 databases. *grin* More than fair, technically as 10 hours is $200 and that’s a extremely high end deal! ;)

That brings me back around to the point (finally, you say. Bite me! LOL)

That’s where I’m going to create and run my meetup.com, my pagan version of it. And it will remain  free as long as my boss man allows. ;)

I’m looking forward to it. That’s what my card reading said. I need to do this. I know I need to do this. I’m scared of screwing it up this time, but like Denise said, this time isn’t going to be the grande scheme. This time we will stick to the basics. Bringing people together. A community, simple, gatherings for coffee, etc. That was the original dream and that is what I need to go back to.

So mote it be.