August has been a strange mix of feelings like I have not done nearly enough while also realizing, when I actually stop and look around, that I have been doing quite a bit. It just has not been the kind of productivity that comes with a finished project, a big announcement, or something I can nearly cross off a list. A lot of it has been quieter work- cleaning, reorganizing, reading, journaling, meditating, planning, researching, and trying to create a little more order in both my surroundings and my head.
One of the biggest things I have been working on is my office, which has needed serious attention for a long time. In three years I have been living here, I have never really had the time, money, or resources to turn it into the space I have always wanted it to be. Things accumulated, projects got stacked in corners, and eventually it became on of those rooms where simply looking at everything made me tired before I even started. It is still not finished, and if I am being realistic, it still looks a little chaotic in places, but I have made more progress than I have in a long time.
I have also been pushing myself to keep going because I made a deal with myself: when the room is finally finished and feels the way I want it to feel, I am buying myself a genuinely comfortable office chair. It may sound like a small reward, but to me it represents finally creating a space that supports the work I keep saying I want to do. I spend so much time writing, researching, planning articles, and dreaming about what I want The Karmic Misfit to become that having a room where I actually enjoy sitting down to do those things matters more than I realized.
At the same time that I have been physically clearing space, I have also been going much deeper into some of the spiritual subjects that have fascinated me for years. Lately I have been doing more past-life regression meditations, experimenting with astral projection meditations, reading more of Carl Jung and Edgar Cayce’s work, and listening to people describe their near-death experiences. Somewhere along the way, what began as curiosity turned into complete immersion.
One of the more interesting things that came through during a past-life regression meditation was the year 1863. I still do not know what to make of it, and I am not trying to force an explanation onto something simply because it sounds interesting. But it was specific enough that I wrote it down, and it has stayed in the back of my mind ever since. This is part of what I have been learning lately – not every spiritual experience needs immediate answers. Sometimes it is enough to notice it, record it, and see whether anything connects later.
That mindset has also changed the way I journal. I have become much more adamant about writing down my meditations every time I do one, even when nothing remarkable happens. If I see something, feel something, hear a word, remember an image, or simply spend twenty minutes fighting with my own wandering thoughts, I write it down. I have also been trying to journal at night about my day, my moods, anything that stressed me, and any little revelations that came up along the way.
Life has been a little stressful lately, and journaling has helped me keep that stress from becoming bigger than it needs to be. I have dealt with much harder seasons before, and one thing I have learned is that mentality makes an enormous difference in how we move through difficult periods. That does not mean pretending everything is wonderful when it is not. It means learning how to recognize when your mind and body are becoming overwhelmed and doing something about it before stress starts running the entire show.
So lately I have been trying to take better care of my nervous system in very simple ways. I have been doing breath-work, mediating more, journaling, and taking warm baths with nothing but a candle for light whenever I can. None of it is complicated, but I have noticed that slowing everything down for even a little while helps me come back to myself.
Looking back, I think that has really been the theme of August so far. I may not have been producing at full speed, but I have been clearing out what feels cluttered, paying closer attention to what is happening internally, and making more room for the things I want to continue building.
Somewhere between decluttering the office and contemplating the afterlife, apparently I have been making progress after all.
The Office/Studio That Has Been Waiting for Me
My office has probably been one of the clearest examples this month of how something can bother you for a long time before you finally have the energy to really deal with it. Since moving here three years ago, I have always had an idea of what I wanted that room to become. I wanted a space where I could write comfortably, work on The Karmic Misfit, plan for the boutique, organize craft supplies, keep books within reach, and actually feel inspired when I walked into the room instead of immediately seeing a list of things I needed to fix.
But it is also much more than just an office. It doubles as my studio, and it is where I keep my altar, so a lot of my spiritual work happens there too. It is where I meditate, journal, research, work through rituals, sit quietly with my thoughts, and spend time exploring whatever spiritual habit hole has grabbed my attention that week. Because of that, the room carries a lot of different purposes. It is creative space, work space, spiritual space, and something simply the place I go when I need to be alone with myself for a while.
The problem was that life kept getting in the way. Time was limited, money had to go toward more important things, and there were always other parts of the house that needed attention first. So the office became one of those spaces that slowly collected everything that did not have a permanent home yet. Papers, supplies, projects, boxes, random things I meant to sort through later – somehow “later” turned into years.
This month, I finally got tired of feeling defeated by the room and started working through it. Not perfectly, and defiantly not all at once, but enough to make a real difference. I have been purging things I no longer need, reorganizing what is staying, trying to figure out where everything should live, and thinking more carefully about how I actually want to use the space instead of simply trying to make it look cleaner.
Because I use the room for so many different parts of my life, I have realized that organizing it is not just about making it look better. I want each part of the room to have some intention behind it. I want a comfortable place to write and research, space for creative projects, somewhere I can work on things for the boutique, and a peaceful area around my altar where I can meditate or do spiritual work without feeling surrounded by clutter. When my surroundings feel chaotic, I notice it in my head too, so creating a calmer room has started to feel like part of taking care of myself.
It is still a work in progress. There are still areas that need attention, and there are still moments when I look around and wonder how one room can possibly hold that much stuff. But I am beginning to see the version of it I have pictured in my head for years, and that has made it easier to keep going.
I also gave myself a little motivation. I made a promise that when the office is finally finished and arranged the way I want it, I am going to buy myself a really comfortable office chair. I spend so much time at my desk writing, researching, planning articles, editing, and working on ideas for The Karmic Misfit that a good chair is something I would use every single day. Instead of buying it immediately, I wanted it to become a reward for finally creating the workspace I have been putting off for so long.
There is something oddly satisfying about that promise because the chair represents more than furniture. It feels like a small way of saying that the work I do in that room matters enough to create a proper place for it.
And maybe that is part of what this whole process has really been about. I am not simply cleaning a room. I am trying to build an environment that supports my creativity, my spiritual practice, my work, and the things I still want to create. The office does not have to look like something out of a magazine. It just needs to feel like mine, function for the life I actually live, and make me want to spend time there instead of avoiding it.
After three years of telling myself I would eventually get around to it, “eventually” finally seems to have arrived.
Down the Rabbit Hole of Consciousness
While I have been clearing out the physical clutter in my office, I have also been filling my head with questions that are a little harder to organize.
Lately I have found myself completely immersed in subjects surrounding consciousness, past lives, the soul, and what may happen after death. These are things I have been curious about for a long time, but this month I have gone much deeper than I usually do. What started a a little reading here and there turned into past-life regression meditations, astral projection meditations, books and lectures, and hours spent listening to people talk about experiences that challenge what we think we know about the mind and body.
One of the more interesting things that came through during a past-life regression meditation was the year 1863. I do not know exactly what to make of it, and I am not trying to force it into some dramatic meaning just because it was specific. Still, it caught my attention enough that I wrote it down immediately. I have started to realize that when it comes to meditation and spiritual work, not everything needs to be explained the second it happens. Sometimes the best thing I can do is record it, stay curious, and see whether anything else connects later.
That curiosity is also what pulled me further into the work of Carl Jung and Edgar Cayce. I already knew a little about both, but lately I have been completely submerged in their ideas. Jung’s work on the unconscious, archetypes, symbolism, dreams, and the deeper layers of the psyche has especially fascinated me because so much of it overlaps with the way I already think about spiritual growth. Cayce’s work has taken me in another direction entirely, especially when it comes to reincarnation, altered states of consciousness, and the possibility that there is much more happening beyond what we can immediately see or measure.
And then there are near-death experiences.
I know they are called near-death experiences, but I sometimes struggle with that wording when some of the people describing them were clinically dead. In those cases, “death experience” almost feels more accurate. What fascinates me most is not that every story is exactly the same, because they are not. It is the fact that people from different backgrounds, beliefs, cultures, and walks of life often describe remarkably similar elements while still having deeply personal experiences.
Some describe leaving their bodies and observing the room from above. Others remember conversations, medical procedures, or specific details that they later repeated to doctors and family members – details they should not have been able to hear or see from where their bodies were. There are stories of people accurately describing what doctors were doing while they were unconscious, or recalling conversations that happened elsewhere in the room. Those accounts are the ones that really make me stop and think.
I am not interested in pretending that I have the final answer about what happens when we die. I do not think anyone sitting here on this side of things can claim to know every part of it with certainty. What interests me is how much we still do not understand about consciousness. We know so much about the human body, and yet there are still experiences that do not fit neatly inside the boxes we have built for explaining it.
Maybe that is why I keep coming back to these subjects. I am less interested in proving something than I am in exploring the possibilities. What is consciousness? Is it created entirely by the brain, or does the brain somehow receive or filter something larger? Why do certain symbols, experiences, and ideas seem to appear across different cultures and throughout history? Why do some people report memories or perceptions that seem impossible according to our current understanding.
I certainly do not have those answers. I have my beliefs and enough internal comfort in living my life. But I have become increasingly comfortable with not having all the answers. There is something freeing about allowing a mystery to remain a mystery while still being curious enough to explore it.
Writing Down Before It Slips Away
One thing I have become much more serious about this month is documenting my meditations. For a long time, I would finish a meditation, think about what happened for a few minutes, and then move on with my day. The problem with that is that even the smallest details can disappear surprisingly fast. The problem with that is that even the smallest details can disappear surprisingly fast. A word, an image, a feeling, a place, a number, or even just an odd emotional shift can seem vivid in the moment and then become fuzzy a few hours later.
So now I write it down.
Every time I meditate, I try to make a point of recording the experience afterward. If something interesting comes through, I write it. If I feel like I saw absolutely nothing, I write that too. If my mind wandered the entire time and I spent half the meditation thinking about laundry, dinner, or something unrelated, that still goes into the journal. I am trying to stop treating only the dramatic experiences as important, because sometimes patterns are easier to see when you have the boring entries sitting beside the strange ones.
That has been especially helpful with the past-life regression and astral projection meditations. I do not want to rely on memory alone and accidentally reshape an experience later because I have thought about it too much. Writing it down while it is fresh gives me something I can come back to without adding meaning that may not have been originally. It also gives me a way to notice if the same symbols, places, emotions, or ideas start appearing again.
I also have been trying to journal more regularly at night, not just about spiritual experiences but about ordinary life. I write about how the day went, what kind of mood I was in, what irritated me, what made me happy, what I learned, and whether anything clicked into place that I had not understood before. Some entries are longer than others, and some nights I barely have the energy for a few sentences, but I am finding that even that little bit helps.
More than anything, journaling has become a way of clearing mental clutter. Life has been a little stressful lately, and there is something about putting thoughts onto paper that makes them feel less tangled. I can usually tell when I have been carrying too much in my head because everything starts feeling louder than it actually is. Writing gives those thoughts somewhere to go.
It has also made me more aware of my own patterns. I am starting to notice what kinds of situations drain me, what helps me come back to myself, when I am overthinking, and when something genuinely deserves my attention. I think there is a big difference between reacting to every thought and learning how to observe your thoughts, and journaling has been helping me practice the second one.
I do not expect every page to contain some profound revelation. Most of life is not made up of dramatic spiritual breakthroughs. Sometimes it is just a normal Tuesday, a frustrating day at work, a meditation where nothing happened, or a random thought that may or may not matter later.
But I am learning that there is value in recording those things anyway.
Sometimes understanding yourself is less about having one giant revelation and more about paying attention long enough to notice the patterns that have been there all along.
Keeping My Nervous System in Check
Another thing I have been trying to be more intentional about this month is how I handle stress. Life has been a little heavy in places, and while it is nothing compared to some of the harder seasons I have already made it through, I have learned that stress does not have to become a full-blown crisis before it deserves attention.
For me, a lot of that comes down to mindset. I cannot control every circumstance, every unexpected expense, every frustrating situation, or every person around me. What I can control is how much space I allow those things to take up inside me. That does not mean pretending everything is fine when it is not, and it definitely does not mean forcing myself to be positive all the time. It means trying to recognize when I am becoming overwhelmed before I let that stress completely take over.
Lately I have been using some very simple things to help with that. Breath-work has become one of the quickest ways for me to slow myself down when I can feel my body getting tense. Meditation helps me step out of the constant mental noise for a while, and journaling gives me somewhere to put the thoughts that otherwise keep circling. I have also been taking warm baths whenever I can, usually with the lights off and a candle burning nearby. There is something about the warmth, the quiet, and the soft light that helps my whole system settle.
I used to think that taking time to calm myself had to be something elaborate or perfectly planned to “count,” but I am realizing that it can be much simpler than that. Sometimes it is five minutes of breathing. Sometimes it is writing one page before bed. Sometimes it is sitting quietly in my office near my altar. Sometimes it is getting into a warm bath and refusing to think about anything productive for half an hour.
Those little things have been helping me keep life in perspective. I have been through worse, and I know I am capable of getting through difficult periods, but I also do not want survival mode to become my default setting. There is a difference between being strong and constantly forcing yourself to endure everything without giving your body and mind a chance to recover.
That has probably been one of the quieter lessons of this month for me. Resilience is not just about how much you can push through. Sometimes it is also about knowing when to soften, when to slow down, and when to give yourself enough space to come back to center.
A Little Birthday Pause
In the middle of all the cleaning, researching, journaling, and general existential wandering, I did get to step away from everything for a little while and enjoy my birthday.
Since I was working on my actual birthday, my mother treated me to a birthday day on the 24th instead, and it ended up being exactly the kind of simple outing I needed. We went to the florist, which is always dangerous for me because apparently I can never simply look at plants and leave empty-handed. I came home with two new ones, and honestly, that felt like a pretty perfect birthday gift.
I had also wanted to stop at the bookstore because I have been trying to collect more books to get me through the winter. I want to keep my Book of the Month posts going, and with the colder months eventually coming, I like the idea of having a little stack ready to work through. Unfortunately, the bookstore was closed, so the universe decided I was allowed plants that day but not books.
Afterward, my mother made me the birthday dinner I wanted, which was tacos and dirt cake. And before anyone unfamiliar with dirt cake becomes concerned, no, it is not actually dirt. It is one of those desserts that seems questionable by the name and is completely delicious in practice.
What I appreciated most about the day was that it was simple. There was no big production, no pressure to make the day look a certain way, and no need for anything extravagant. It was just time spent together, a couple new plants, good food, and a break from thinking about everything I still needed to do.
I think I needed that more than I realized.
I spend a lot of time thinking ahead – what I want to write next, what I need to work on, what I want The Karmic Misfit to become, what I still need for the boutique, what needs fixing around the house, and what the next step is supposed to be. It can be easy to stay so focused on what comes next that I forget to actually enjoy where I am for a minute.
That little birthday day gave me a reminder that not every meaningful moment has to be productive. Sometimes it is enough to spend time with someone you love, bring home a couple of plants you absolutely did not need, eat tacos, and have dessert with an unfortunate name.
And really, that is a pretty good way to celebrate another trip around the sun.
Still Building What Comes Next
Even with everything else going on this month, The Karmic Misfit has still been sitting in the back of my mind almost constantly. I have been planning future articles, thinking about seasonal content, making notes for ideas I want to come back to, and trying to stay a few steps ahead so I am not constantly scrambling at the last minute.
That has become especially important because I want The Karmic Misfit to keep growing into something that feels complete and intentional. I do not want it to be just a place where I post whenever inspiration happens to strike. I want there to be a rhythm to it – articles, rituals, books, crystals, seasonal projects, spiritual topics, personal reflections, and eventually even more connected to the boutique side of things.
The boutique is still something I am trying to get moving too. It has not happened as quickly as I would like, mostly because starting anything takes money, planning, sourcing, paperwork, and a hundred tiny decisions that no one really talks about when they say, “Just start a business.” I am still figuring out pieces of it out as I go, and some parts have taken longer than expected, but I have not let the idea go.
If anything, working on my office has made me think about it even more. I want that room to become the place where I can write, photograph things, work on creative projects, prepare content, organize boutique ideas, and actually have the space to build what I keep envisioning. It is one more reason why getting that room functional feels so important right now. I am not just cleaning for the sake of having a cleaner room. I am trying to create a foundation for the work I want to do next.
I think this month has reminded me that building something does not always look exciting from the outside. Sometimes it is researching suppliers. Sometimes it is reorganizing a shelf. Sometimes it is writing down an article before you forget it. Sometimes it is realizing you need to slow down, regroup, and make your surroundings work better before trying to take on another project.
Progress can be frustratingly quiet.
But quiet progress is still progress.
And even if The Karmic Misfit and the boutique are not exactly where I want them to be yet, I am still moving them forward. Maybe not in giant leaps, but in decisions, notes, plans, small purchases, reorganized spaces, and all the behind-the-scenes work that eventually becomes something more visible.
Somewhere Between Here and Whatever Comes Next
When I look back at August now, I do not think it was an unproductive month at all. It was just not productive in the way we are usually taught to measure it. I did not have one huge finished project or some dramatic breakthrough to point to, but I spent a lot of time clearing, organizing, learning, questioning, writing, and trying to create a little more stability in both my environment and myself.
There has been something strangely fitting about working so hard on my office while also spending so much time thinking about consciousness, past lives, death, and whatever may exist beyond what we can physically see. One part of me has been sorting through boxes and deciding where craft supplies belong, while another part has been wondering whether consciousness exists beyond the body. Apparently both can be part of the same season of life.
Maybe that is what growth actually looks like most of the time. It is rarely one clean, beautiful transformation. It is usually a collection of small things happening at once. You clear out a corner of a room. You write something down that you do not fully understand yet. You notice a pattern in yourself. You learn how to calm your body a little faster than you used to. You read something that completely changes the way you think about a subject. You make plans that may take months or even years to fully become real.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, life keeps happening.
There are birthdays and tacos and new plants. There are stressful days and unfinished rooms. There are nights when meditation feels profound and nights when your brain refuses to cooperate. There are plans for businesses, articles waiting to be written, books waiting to be read, and dreams that are still very much under construction.
I think I am becoming more comfortable with that in-between space.
I do not need everything figured out right now now. I do not need my office to be perfect before I can appreciate the progress I have already made. I do not need to understand exactly why the year 1863 appeared during a meditation before I can remain curious about it. I do not need a definite answer about consciousness or what happens after death to keep exploring those questions. And I certainly do not need every part of The Karmic Misfit or the boutique completed before I can recognize that I am still building them.
For now, I am trying to pay attention to the life that is happening while I work toward the life I am creating.
Maybe that is the real lesson I am carrying out of August: progress does not always announce itself. Sometimes it looks like a cleaner room, a fuller journal, a calmer nervous system, a stack of ideas, two new plants, and a mind that is asking more questions than it has answers.
And somewhere between decluttering and the afterlife, I think I am exactly where I need to be.
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