Spell for Finding

…A husband/boyfriend/love. Which seems to be a pretty popular topic on Tumblr. And something I do not get in the slightest.

I mean, the wording on the spells is what bothers me. Or rather, since most of these people don’t post the actual spell, but just say what they want from the spell, and their intent, that’s what scares and freaks me out. Because most of these people have a pretty frightening idea of their intent for what they want to do. Regardless of spell wording specifically, if they choose not to share the exact word-choice for their spell, there is the problem of their intent for the spell that they are going to write and perform. And most of these people seem to not realize that their intent has a major problem for it.

The intent for most of these spells seems to be pretty direct.

It’s always, “I want person X to fall in love with me.” Or, “I want person X to marry me.”

That isn’t exactly comforting. I mean…think about the choice of language there. Directing the spell at a specific person is problematic, in all honesty. At least, from my perspective it is. Because once you say, “I want specific individual to have specific feelings for me”, you take away all their individual choice in the matter. It is no longer their mind and heart that get to choose how they feel about you as a person, but your spell that has them feeling a certain way.

So, say I cast a spell, asking that my friend V falls in love with me, and he does. Awesome for me, right? Actually, no. Not really a good idea at all, if you think about it. I mean, V falling in love with me might have been a timing coincidence. But if I’m performing a spell, I had damned well better believe in it, right? So, I believe it worked. Well then, how do I ever know, ever be sure that V isn’t just in love with me because I cast a spell for V to fall in love with me? The truth is, I never can be certain that the spell wasn’t a part of it. I would always have to wonder. And, if I ever told V what I had done, I risk losing him. Who wouldn’t feel betrayed to know that their feelings might have been manipulated so directly?

Now, asking for love to come my way, that is to me, very different.

If I ask for a love that is correct for both parties involved, then I feel more confident asking for that. However, I still think there are too many variables. It is still problematic. I mean…there are potentially dependents involved more than just the 2 people who are going to fall in love. What if I have a pet (I always will, I know this), and the other person is extremely allergic to cats? There is a third party that is incompatible. That is a problem. Minor to some, perhaps to this potential partner’s views, but major to mine, because I will not live without a pet cat in my life, that is just a given for me.

And in general, I just find that casting spells for love, for husbands or boyfriends or significant others to be too much. There are too many variables that can go wrong. There are too many ways to step on toes and cause problems. Not to mention, there are too many land-mines per say with the word-choices and wordings that can blow up in one’s face with how a spell must be cast. I suspect that I may be overly cautious here. But I would rather be far too cautious than have something blow up in my face for mistakenly casting a spell that I cannot control or did not mean to cast by accidental language choice.

I just have never understood why so many people on Tumblr are so obsessed with wanting to learn these spells. Or why so many cast them, and then wait anxiously for results. I mean, I have no mundane luck with finding dates, and I doubt that any supernatural or spiritual push will help me. But, I certainly do not want to accidentally screw up mundane chances with spiritual workings. And yet, so many people on Tumblr seem intent on pushing through with these types of spells like it is child’s play and there are no consequences.

 

F – Functionalism in Practice

One of the most common things that pops up in that little “most searched things” in relation to my blog is “functionalism in witchcraft”. Which I’m not quite sure about, since I haven’t quite posted those words all together at once. I don’t know how that came up, but it did come up, so it was rather uniquely interesting. But, it did spark my curiosity to write a post, so I figure, it wasn’t too unusual to add this post to my blog.

I do have the interesting little dichotomy between my “pagan” practices and my “witchcraft” practices. I suppose that stems from some other parts of my personality and mentality, that I like order and function in my life, as I’ve already pointed out. So things work best for me when cleanly ordered and organized in ways that are convenient for myself. The more conveniently organized to my standards, the clearer I find everything to be. I wrote my last functionalism piece in dealing with mostly my daily life. It was not really anything much to do with my practices. That post was a bit more groundwork than anything else.

This time I want to focus on the more specific term that everyone keeps searching for, and on more pertinent examples that seem to draw people to my blog. I like relevance. And it seems people are interested in what I have to say, at least partially here, so I’ll share my personal opinions here.

Functionalism has far more to do with paganism/polytheism for me than it does with witchcraft. I am more fond of functionalism in things that do not require of experimentation. Polytheism for me has more functionalism to do with it than witchcraft does, because there isn’t as much experimentation to be done. There is some, absolutely no denying that fact, but it seems to me, rationally, that there is less experimentation there than in witchcraft practices. Perhaps that is personal bias or ideology, but that is how it has always seemed to me.

Since functionalism is to me based in being rational and functional, what is functional in its place, I don’t like basing anything in my life on this kind of relational thing that can’t actually be determined thus. I mean…experimental relations, such as witchcraft is for me, cannot be totally functional. There will be misfires, things that do not totally go as they should the first time, that go out of place…so it’s not functional, not fully. Therefore, for me, witchcraft is not functional, not as part of my “functionalism” as such. Because things are going to be off at the start, and therefore I cannot see there being, for my practices “functionalism in witchcraft”. It won’t exist, because witchcraft has too many unknowns, too many things that will change and warp, that are dependent upon other factors. That isn’t functional to place within a set and defined system, and therefore cannot then be totally part of any system.

However, polytheism for me can be functional.

In my view, the gods and spirits have various purposes that are unique and necessary within the system to their own. They might overlap at times, and sometimes might seem to contradict. Still, the purposes are set, and they fit within the system. Polytheism is easier to put within the framework of structuralism, which is my way of seeing the world. Things might sometimes clash within the system, but mostly they stay in their usual places. Functionalism in polytheism means, for me, that things have their place and purpose, that they sit where they ought and remain comfortably out of where they ought not. So, if something is certainly not a home spirit, it will not ever be a home spirit, whereas, if it is a god of prosperity, it will act in such a way that goes along that path.

Witchcraft however, is different, because unexpected events can unfold. One might do magic or a spell for one purpose, and unusual results can show up. Or also, as I think, it can show up in unintentional side-effects of sorts. Not always, but since experimentation is essential, things will crop up at times, and unintentional will happen on at least rare occasions.

So functionalism is not, for me, possible, in witchcraft. Experimentation makes it almost impossible in my worldview.

Related articles

• Functionalism? (witchsjourney.wordpress.com)

 

B – Balance

So I’m a bit late (sorry, school/family is hectic).

However, balance. I’m continuing a bit off my last post (Medication and Spirituality), because it seems prudent to do so. And I want to, so that’s most important. It follows along with how my mind and mental state have been lately, so I’m going to write along as I see fit.

Getting myself all balanced out mentally is important to me. I don’t much care what other people think about my mental state and whether I should be a practicing witch, or a pagan petitioning deities if I choose. Other people’s opinions on that aren’t worth my time, because they don’t know what I’m going through. I have to work with what makes sense to me, and how I believe is best, and what the clues my system has given me over the years. All the clues and signs show me that what I am doing has not offended anyone/thing yet, so I think that at least on that front I’ve found something that works for me. So I’m coming to where I don’t listen to what others have to say about what I must do. Still, for my own sake, I want balance. And by that I don’t mean a duality, or a dichotomy or any sort of traditional meaning of the word.

For me balance is being level, being happy and confident with myself. It means having a level of emotions that isn’t swinging between extremes and not feeling depressed most of the time. It means me being comfortable in my own skin and with who I am. Because I’ve finally come to accept that I am not going to be what a normal person is, not with my mental health what it is. For me, being “normal” is never going to happen. It is not in the cards for me, that much is clear just from my mental makeup and the way I’ve been raised. I had to come to terms with those facts. I might be able to pretend, to act normal, and at times, acting is important.

But, balance for me is being myself. It is accepting who I am and working with what the gods have given me. That means, I’m working with a mental framework quite outside the ordinary. I’ve been fighting that thought for quite some time. It’s only very recently that I’ve begun to accept that I need to be myself before I can really work as either witch or pagan. If I’m fighting myself on who and what I am, I’m not in balance or able to do what I need to. Accepting that I have flaws, and that my mental health is considered (by society) totally wrong, is something I’m working with. There are some good points to my mental health, and good days, where I do better. Those are good days. But balance for me is working through the worse times, dealing with myself and my health when I’m not at my best.

I enjoy finding this balance, actually. Finding ways to keep the balance is forcing me to be creative. I have the “mundane” (I still need a better word for this) points all covered, and I’m working on those with my doctor for my health. But, on a spiritual level, I have to get creative at times. Because some things I read will just not work for me, they are not part of how my mind works and functions, they would throw what balance I have out the window. I enjoy the challenge of finding ways to continue to find balance though. It helps me see myself in a positive light, which is something I’ve never much been able to do throughout my life. So finding balance is helping me in my normal, day-to-day life as well, even if the intended purpose is to help my spiritual life, it carries over into making me feel just overall better on the self-esteem front.

Balance is just a rather new concept for me though. I’m just beginning to figure it all out in all facets of my life. I’m sure I’ll make mistakes and mess it up, but at least I’ve begun to find a framework to work with to keep myself in balance in most cases.

An Interesting Little Thought

That’s perhaps only interesting for me. (But then again, that’s why I write this whole blog, so screw it ) I’m taking a break from some homework that I should be doing. I’m overwhelmed. 2 majors is beyond crazy, as are 2 major research papers in 1 term I might add. However, I suppose I’ve always been a bit crazy in terms of studying, so that’s that.

However, I realized something, an hour ago and it’s been stuck in my head, and it won’t go away, so I’m going to write it down now, and hope that gets me back on track. Because, clearly my personality type (or more than likely my mental disorder — if I’m honest with myself here) doesn’t let me focus on things once something has caught my attention. So, I’m going to write it, and then get back to the grindstone of college life.

So, in my study of paganism, I’ve gotten onto the trail of Slavic deities. Which is both fascinating and by turns immensely frustrating. Because I love learning about them, and learning about things from my family’s heritage, but on the other hand, there’s comparatively little research in languages I can read that’s reliable. Of course this further fuels my desire that I will be learning Russian as my next language, then probably Czech. But that’s a ramble. In any case, just knowing English, I am very cautious, because there’s a lot of Quatsch out there, just like there is for other paths.

But, I do know, from my learning, that one Slavic deity is known for being related to magic. Which of course sticks in my head, because well, it’s interesting. And, I suppose, most people tend to, when I explain what I practice, the first word they come up with is “magic”. So, fun connection for me. It kind of makes me smile. Not that I’m thinking I’m going to go out and dedicate myself to a god yet, I’m not near secure enough in my knowledge to do that, and I don’t really feel mentally/emotionally ready enough for that right now. But, I figure, since I keep getting this kind of connection popping up in my “real life” (i.e. offline), perhaps there’s something to this. I need to do more research obviously, and I’m still trying to sort out the difference from obvious later Christian-mythos overlays that paint this god as the devil, but it’s fun research. I enjoy doing the research after all.

It’s just something that’s been kind of “bothering” me in real life lately. Bothering isn’t the right word of course, just kind of prodding at me, kind of like ‘hey, pay attention’, or just, do some research kind of bothering. Not nuisance bothering at all. And it’s been just rather amusing that lately a few friends, when asked about my attempts at my knot-magic bracelets (I’ll have to post photos next week when my camera has batteries again), were calling it “magic” without my even using any words to bring up the connotation. Then of course, without my using the word witch at all, just explaining that I’m a pagan, and that I’m not pagan, and that I do spells on occasion, I’m getting the word “magic” thrown around. It used to be “witchcraft” all the time. Lately it’s magic. Fun change.

So I dunno. Might just be coincidence. And if it is, oh well. It’ll prove a fun little diversion. If not, well then maybe I’m getting some little sign that I need to wake up and pay attention.

Magic and Mental Illness

So I’m going to write this, even though I’m probably going to cry while doing it. See, this is intensely personal, and yet, it’s a huge part of who I am, something that I struggle with on a daily basis. I haven’t talked a lot about it because I’ve been rather ashamed. I still am not fully comfortable admitting everything, so I’m broad-stroking some details. Still though, I need to write up something that is a huge part of who I am. Even if I can’t/won’t write it all yet, I need to at least write out some of it, because it is a factor in my life.

All Good Intentions

Kind of go out when packing. I’ve been home just over 48 hours now. It’s hard settling back into a time zone 9 hours behind the Freiburg one. I’m still not used to being back in the States. I have to consciously think not to speak German. That’s the hardest part – since no one in my family speaks German, so no one would understand me.

But, before I left I had intended to do a bit of knot magic as a kind of security measure. Something to keep some emotional protection close at hand to myself. Of course, intentions go awry when one must pack 11 months worth of things up in 3 days. So I didn’t get to do that in Freiburg, and the last 2 days I’ve been too busy and exhausted. So that’s my project for tomorrow morning. I’m going to make a bracelet out of some thread I brought back from Freiburg. I figure, keeping it close will make it more effective and should help me out as well. And if it’s a bracelet, well it will be easy to wear without anyone asking any strange questions. Not to mention – it won’t bother my more conservative friends who are uncomfortable with such things.

So experimentation took a week-ish long delay. But that’s a priority for tomorrow. Should be a good exercise. And since I’m not totally exhausted anymore, I have the energy to do this correctly now.

Knot Magic

New project. I’ve been fascinated by this for forever. I’m really always interested in yarn/thread-craft.

My grandma taught me to crochet when I was 7 over Christmas vacation at her house. She’d been doing it for years. I still have 2 blankets she made me. And she was brilliant at it as well. So I asked her to teach me. I’ve been doing it ever since. I’m not good, not at all, but it’s fun and relaxing. I enjoy it, even if for the most part I just make fabric-blobs that serve as really good practice. Or, if they turn out decently, as good cushions for my figurines. Basically – I’m not up to blanket-making territory in the slightest. But I enjoy it.

However, I’ve recently been reading about people who knit as part of their practice. I haven’t seen crocheting discussed that way, but it may just be that more people knit. In any case, I was thinking about it, and it seemed like a good idea. After all, something with patterns, with intention, ought to be good for magic. So I think I might try that, since it would be an interesting experiment at best and at worst just a new way to do things (note – worst isn’t bad at all. I see this as a no-lose scenario).

But then I found a few articles about knot magic. Which sounded fascinating. I’ll need to learn knots to do it, because I don’t know a lot of them. But, I kind of like the idea of creating magic with knots. I know that it probably isn’t the most popular way, but the things I’ve read about it seem fascinating. And I definitely think it would be an interesting thing to work with. The other reason why it probably appeals is that I still live at home, at least until college starts up in September. And my family doesn’t want me “practicing”. Which to them means altar, incense, candles, etc – i.e. big things. However, a small thing like knot magic, well that they wouldn’t care about. It isn’t intrusive at all, it doesn’t make them see that I’m doing anything “weird”. So it’s a form of craft that I could do, even around family or during vacations.

Of course, I’m finding that blogs that discuss knot magic are good for figuring out theory of it. For ideas of how it could be used. For the actual knotting itself, I’ve found some braiding websites or knot-information websites that tell how to make the knots. So it’s practical too. I enjoy practicality in everything I do, so this should work quite well.

And I’m excited to start actually performing witchcraft again. I’ve had to moratorium it all because of my family deciding no more candles or setting up installations in the house. And, me bringing plants, oils, incense and all that stuff into the house would have always been a no. So I have a way to work on this now that my family won’t have a problem with, because it’s wholly unobtrusive. It will be fun to work with this and see about my results.

Insomnia, Tea and Centering Oneself

Or, more coherently spoken: 2 things that every woman in my family has in common and 1 new idea.

Insomnia runs in my family pretty strongly. I think that nearly every adult has bouts. Though I happen to have it worse than almost any other. My mom gets bouts just as badly as I do, but not, I think, nearly as frequently as she used to. I suffer pretty badly from it, no doubt not helped along by being a college kid trying to finish 2 term papers while packing to head home too. But that’s just an excuse. My insomnia flares up even when I don’t have a lot of stuff to do. I just have the unfortunate luck of being an insomniac by nature. And I’ve always been more the night owl. I can get up early and go to 8am classes and function and not be a grump, but I really prefer being up at nighttime. I get most of my work done then, I’m far more comfortable, and just generally far more me later in the day. So insomnia is really not helpful when paired with my natural night owl tendencies.

Which leads to present problem. I’ve had in 5 days 2 different times being up for 36+ hours straight. Not tired at all, not really wanting to sleep, etc. And that’s a problem of course, because I can’t really say it is healthy to stay awake for that long and then sleep again. It’s not healthy in the slightest. So today, or rather yesterday the 17th, I crashed at 5pm and slept until 2am this morning (the 18th), after being awake for 36 hours. Not good. Sleeping in the afternoon/evening just messes with me even more than normal, even though I clearly needed the sleep if I crashed like that.

Really, my mom’s already worried. So I’ll have to discuss the insomnia with my doctor when I’m back in the States again. Because it’s beyond just “inconvenient” anymore and into the territory of “life disrupting”.

However, tea helps. Not green tea. I like green tea, it’s good, especially jasmine green tea…but I don’t drink it a lot. It isn’t strong enough. I live on black tea. And every woman in my family loves tea, though I drink the most of it by far. Between my junior and senior years of high school I got to the point where I was drinking an average of 10 cups of tea a day. My doctor had a fit when she found out and insisted I cut back and stop drinking all tea whatsoever. She swore that the “recent uptake in caffeine from tea-drinking” was the cause of my frequent and awful migraines. Now, I’d been drinking that much tea for over a year before the rash of migraines, so I figured that was crap. And I got extremely sick and worse migraines when she told me I was only allowed to drink decaf and I listened. So after three weeks of no tea I gave up and went back to drinking my tea, though in all fairness I cut back to 4 cups a day.

Now, 4 years later, I’m at an average 3-5 cups a day. My friends like to drink tea when they need an energy boost. And none of them will touch it after 5pm. It “keeps them awake”. Which, in theory makes a lot of sense. However, I’ve learned that drinking a cup or 2 of black tea helps ease my insomnia. My doctor swears that it’s not true, but since I’m the one who lives with it, I think I know in this case a bit better. It’s almost (and this is just my opinion as to me myself, not fact) as though I’ve gotten rather immune to the caffeine in black tea. Not immune per say, but, well, it just doesn’t affect me a lot anymore. So while my friends can’t touch tea after a certain hour, I can have a cup or 2 right before going to sleep at 11pm and still sleep excellently for 6-7 hours. And actually, it does seem to help the insomnia when I have tea.

But then that made me think. Because whether it is purely mental or not, tea does help my insomnia. It helps calm me and relax me. And I can always use that, because my mind naturally runs in a dozen different directions, all at once. Which explains why I can’t really just calm down, focus on myself and get anything done. My mind is just naturally far too frantic. But, if I want to do better with witchcraft and the like, I need focus, calm and to just be less frantic. I figure I need to center myself, make sure that I’m not in 20 places at once. Focusing inwards, I guess is how I think of it. And I don’t know why it never occurred to me before, but I should have thought of drinking tea before doing this, because it always works for “normal life” stuff, so why wouldn’t it work for my spiritual/witchcraft stuff?

Which means it’ll be experiment time once I’m back home and settled. It might make things a bit easier and less chaotic. And, it actually is quite a brilliant idea for myself, so I’m going to attempt it. After all, if it works – I have an excellent new way to help keep myself on track and focused. Might even help me with meditation, now that I’m writing this out. So that’s a new plan, to try and see if this helps with the centering, relaxing, calming and focusing.

Pagan Blog Prompt: All in the Genes

Pagan Blog Prompts: All in the Genes:

Is it hereditary?
I had to think about my wording on this one… I had to leave it vague, because I wanted it to be as open to interpretation as possible.

What I’m referring to here can be magic, witchcraft, spirituality, the things you can do that others around you cannot, etc. Another way to put it might be “Do you come from a family of Witches?” but that only works if you see yourself as a witch. Get what I’m trying to say here?

What you do and who you are – did it come from your bloodline? Or is it something you discovered and nurtured on your own?

This is interesting. I’m not sure if there’s even really an answer. Because this is complicated on so many levels. It seems like there’s this whole attitude that people need to have some sort of history, or they’re lacking credibility as witches/pagans/whatever. And that just rubs me the wrong way. See, as I’ve already said – I’m the only pagan or witch in my whole family. My family is made up of lapsed Catholics and Protestants – now Agnostics or Atheists – or just plain Agnostics or Atheists who never had religion to begin with. I’m the only one who ever turned to magic, to witchcraft or to paganism. It definitely has been unusual, my family doesn’t always understand me and my beliefs, but they’ve come to at least accept that I’m going to believe this stuff and they might as well accept it.

Having some fun with Christians

And no, I do not mean this in any way of “let’s mess with their beliefs”.

I mean…enjoying a great conversation about religious and spiritual beliefs with full respect. See, I went out this last Friday and hung out with 2 of the women in my study abroad program. They’re both wonderful and I really enjoy spending time with them, we all kind of get along and are quite different from most of the other kids in our program. So that’s another fun thing. But, we went window-shopping, searched the local Münstermarkt (I guess farmer’s market is probably the correct thing to say in English), and then had a wonderful German dinner and chatted for several hours. And by several, I’m pretty sure it was about 4. But it was great.

We were discussing college, our majors, life experiences, tattoos and if we want them or not (I already have 3 and am planning/saving for my 4th, neither of them do, but 1′s planning hers), and religion. Usually I shy away from religious discussions with people my age, they usually end pretty badly. Because, for whatever reason, people my age seem to think that while normally they would be all for “total equality and respect”, when it comes to their faith they have to be boors about it. And I’ll admit, if someone’s disrespectful to me, I do get proud and I will get back in their face, if they’re my age. I’ve learned to not do this nearly so much…but there’s 1 or 2 people who I still instinctively will argue with, no matter what, and they know it. We both are at fault for that, I know. But, for the most part, I try to remain respectful, no matter what. Which is why I avoid the discussion with people my own age, because most people my age can’t be respectfully disagreeable about spirituality. Or rather, that’s just my experiences in the most part.

But we had a wonderful discussion, the 3 of us.

We were discussing relationships, and whether we would date someone not of our spiritual beliefs. I would, but then, my experience with the people I know always has me as one of 2 or maybe 3 self-identified pagans. So I’m very open, as long as my partner will respect my beliefs. Both of them want to date someone in the same faith, which I can understand. It makes sense, and their reasoning, I can accept, even if it’s not for me. But then we were talking weddings, and just other girly things. But I admitted that I’d never get married in a church. See, I don’t understand the whole marry in a church fantasy. For me (and this is me alone), if you aren’t Christian or aren’t marrying a devout Christian, it’s disrespectful to get married in a functioning church. Because by getting married in the building, you’re marrying “before God”. And if you aren’t Christian, I feel like that’s an insult to that God, and to those who worship him. Again, my opinion. Besides, I’ve always wanted, if I get married, to do a fast ceremony – I mean as short as possible, I seriously wish I could get the ceremony over in 5 minutes – and then just have a huge barbecue. I’m sure one of my grandparents would let me have it at their houses on the lawn. Just a huge party, that’s my plan. No church involved.

But of course, they asked why I said I thought it disrespectful to get married in a church. So I explained that I’m pagan and a witch. I was kind of expecting a bit of shock and disdain. Actually, both of them were fascinated. So I had to answer a lot of questions, which was both a bit strange and really nice. It’s a bit weird trying to explain what I believe to people who are raised Christian and don’t really know anything else, but I think I did pretty well. I explained polytheism, and that I’m what you’d call a “hard polytheist”, and what I’m studying at the moment. Of course, because I’m also having this prod to look into specific deities, I explained a bit about that. It’s fun to explain and have a civil conversation. So they asked questions, I answered. And we compared different parts of my belief to Christianity. We have some major differences of opinion, but it was all very respectful.

We talked about ghosts, and what we think they are. Spirits, things that are unusual that we’ve seen or experienced. I sense ghosts at times, I’ve only seen 2. One was my grandma the day after she died. That one almost scared me at first, because here I was, 19 years old, and I see a ghost. The last time I’d seen one I was 7. So I almost dropped everything I’d been carrying, because I thought for sure I was crazy. But, I’m not. And I think my grandma did that so I could see her happy again. Because it was peaceful, a tiniest bit of closure. I also grew up sensing them though, which is what I’m more used to. I can handle feeling ghosts’ presences, even if it startles me at first. So we had a ghost and paranormal discussion.

All in all, I had a blast. I’m not used to enjoying myself in religious discussions. Usually I end up defending myself against attacks. While I don’t mind explaining my beliefs, I will admit I grow tired of the mockery. As one of the girls pointed out “Well, you can’t be any crazier than other people who see things.” Which made me laugh. Because, I had to say that my own personal code is that believing in my gods and accepting their existence is no crazier than any Christian who believes that their God speaks to them. It’s a nice way to end a conversation, just agreeing that we clearly have different beliefs, but we can get along and not have it be a huge deal.

So Friday was a great day. Fun time seeing more of my own beliefs. It’s really a wonder (and I always seem to forget) how much I can learn about myself by trying to explain my beliefs to others who don’t believe anything similar. So it was fun, but I also learned a bit more about myself. All in all, an excellent day.