Mabon

I am a bad pagan. I missed Mabon again. Maybe it's something that's wrong with my life or my life-view, but I always miss the First Harvest, like it doesn't even matter, when the whole point of a harvest is to reap the rewards of all your hard work. Wouldn't it have been nice if I'd gotten a job that day, because that's where all my hard work is going right now...

Maybe it's the fact that I'm living in Florida, where it's still pretty summery as far as sun and rain are concerned, and we've still got months left on our growing season. The hurricane killed all my tomatoes, which would have been starting to actually produce now that the nights aren't so hot, so I'm already missing that little connection to the Wheel. I've got my peppers and eggplants, but they only just started budding and fruiting again, so that's a false message, as far as a temperate-climate calendar is concerned.

Maybe it's the fact that the afore-mentioned temperate-climate calendar just doesn't apply here? I've been playing with the idea of figuring out a non-temperate calendar for myself, moving the holidays around to fit their equivalent placements in a Florida year, but that would require a large chunk of the holidays to be crammed into the small segment of the year that isn't summer, and Mabon's an equinox, anyway, so that's set even if the rest of the year doesn't like me. I'd have to separate it from the equinox, and that just seems... weird. Wrong? I don't know, something like that. Of course, I'd be able to have two calendars running at once like the Maya did, and that could be neat.

But this post is supposed to be about Mabon. Here's what I've reaped in this first harvest:
- an understanding that retail is not what I want to spend my life stuck in, and an understanding that the state of the american economy might make that necessary
- a little knowledge in how to market myself, and the vague feeling that it's degrading-- and yet, less degrading then dumbing myself down for a crap job I hate
- the belief that without a circle, I kinda suck at being a pagan, and the existential question of whether religion even matters to the world if you only share it with yourself?
- one pepper from the garden, but lots of basil all through the year
- a renewed dedication to getting my fat ass thinned down, even if I sometimes forget the exact day I'm supposed to be dancing on
- a refreshed love of cooking

What did you reap?