Last week I mentioned working on a novel. The 26,000 words (so far) have been printed, and I’ve since re-read through the story for the first time since 2012. I would love some completely fresh eyes to read over this. I have asked in the past, people raise their hand, then it becomes a “oh I haven’t gotten to it yet.”

What I’d love is for someone who isn’t Pagan to read it and tell me if it makes sense. There are a lot of Pagan themes to the story (the young adult version, I don’t think I can part with this completely just yet) and it makes sense to me. The rituals and the rites of passage make complete sense to me. No idea if it would make sense to a muggle…

This in turn has gotten me thinking about other things we seem to just “get”. Recently I’ve been dreaming of crystal healing skulls, and with my soul sisters help I’ve been trying to remember if it was a unakite skull or a ruby zoisite skull that has been taking over my dreams. Being that I’m only at the computer at work (having a break at home because of uni holidays) I’ve been researching the skulls at my desk.

Que to Senior Project Engineer asking me about them, and his eyes glaze over once I begin talking about them and how the energies are different to using “standard” crystals…and you can see the clogs working behind those glazed eyes of, “I wonder how I can either get her to stop talking,” or “how can I back slowly away when I’m already up against the book shelf.”

This is new – again – as I’m not exactly out of the broom closet at this project. I’m not “in the closet” exactly, it just hasn’t come up in conversation. It’s also a different feeling than describing things to my Muggle – in which I’ve just stopped trying to talk Pagan to him. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t believe what I believe, and that works for us.

Crystal healing skulls are absolutely gorgeous! They all seem to have their own identity, and I’m yet to find the one that I’ve been dreaming about. Talking about these within our community is so completely normal! Energies of crystals, herbal properties, the emotional rollercoaster of the phases of the moon – it’s normal to us! Getting excited for the next Sabbat, or public esbat = completely normal! Excited about finding a feather on the ground = completely normal!

It’s the things that aren’t normal to me (but completely normal to the people I work with) is something I am STRUGGLING with! I don’t have TV reception at home, don’t have cable/Foxtel, so I don’t know what was on telly last night. I don’t watch Teen Moms. Or Game of Thrones. Or MasterChef. I’m also married and in Central-West Sydney, whereas I work with a lot of single people who live in the city. I don’t go out drinking on a weekend. I don’t want to go into the city on a Saturday night. I can’t justify spending $200 on a night out in dressy shoes that make my feet hurt and trying to ignore the loud drunks on the train home.

I’m ok with being in bed by 9.30pm on a Saturday night, if it means being warm under the covers snuggled into my Muggle watching a movie.

What is normal for me, as I am reminded daily, is not normal for those I work with. What is normal for us, is fucking awesome and the muggle world is missing out!

I love not fitting into society’s cultural norms. I’m not skinny – I’m fat. I don’t have long professionally cut hair that I style every day – I cut it myself in front of the bathroom mirror and most days you’re lucky if I come to work having put a comb through it. Actually, most days you’re lucky if I come to work wearing a bra. Being winter, I’m tempted to come into work with no bra and wearing slippers. I’m lucky that my clothing doesn’t dictate how I work, or how well I do my job.

I don’t understand people’s fascination with wanting to be normal, possibly because I’ve never fallen into the “normal” category. I don’t know how to. I’ve never known how to. This is also something I’m struggling with within the novel – my main characters desire to be “normal” when she clearly isn’t, but finding that her version of “normal” is our world’s version of “normal” but she just doesn’t realise it.

If you have any suggestions, please reply below. I’d love to try and get an idea of how we want to be normal (from a Pagan’s perspective) to assist with my main character.