Behind the Scenes of Flying the Hedge + Reader Survey

 

My original post for the New Year was going to detail this year's New Year ritual, which you could easily perform on the first New Moon of the year (Jan 5), but after much thought and consideration, I decided against it. I know the ritual would have been one you guys would like to see, and maybe even perform yourself, but this year I decided I wanted to keep the magic to myself. I post a lot of my rituals and spells on the blog. In fact, I post most of them, which may not seem like a lot to my readers, but the amount of work it takes to write, plan, photograph, and edit a ritual or spell post is time-consuming and exhausting at times which means I don't want to do a lot of them. I deserve to keep some of my magic for myself.

For readers, I know running a blog seems effortless. The posts are always informative, well-researched, and eye-catching, with beautifully edited images sprinkled throughout. There are hundreds of us out there running these blogs all of you love to read so much. I love reading blogs too, especially ones with pretty pictures. But there are a lot of things that go unsaid when it comes to blogging, especially in the witch/pagan community.

Each year more and more witchy blogs pop up, and many of them fail because blogging isn't as easy as it looks. Flying the Hedge is my third blog out of four. It is the only blog I have successfully kept up with and the only one that has attracted a large readership. Running this blog is a second full-time job, one that I constantly think about. There are very few of us out there that make enough income from our blogs for it to be our only job. I'm sure many of us would love for this to be the only thing we do, but it isn't. For example, I am a full-time high school science teacher. That job is even more time consuming, and it pays my bills, which is why sometimes I may not post consistently or at all for weeks because we are in testing season or I am writing new curriculum or I am just exhausted after spending my day with 125 high schoolers (these are just the kids I teach in 1 day!). We bloggers get exhausted and burnt out, which is why many of us fail to blog consistently or to continue a blog after a short period of time.

On top of how much work it is, sharing our magic is sometimes difficult. Most of the witchcraft bloggers I know want to share all that we do so our readers can learn and grow with us, but it just isn't feasible to share everything. I can tell you when I plan a ritual or spell, the first thing that goes through my mind is, "Is this good blogging material?" I'm sure I'm not alone in this feeling either. The truth is, I shouldn't be thinking that about my magic. No one should! While some spells are great to share, I need to keep some for myself as well, which is why I chose not to share my ritual with you guys today. I wanted the ritual to be more personal and whimsical. I don't like planning every single step. Sometimes I just want to throw things together and go with it. The best magic I have ever performed has been random and unplanned. Yours should be too.

With that being said, I would like to let you guys know where the blog will be headed this year. I've spent the past 2 weeks of my winter break planning and brainstorming ideas for the upcoming year. I have a lot planned, and I hope I can stick with it this year. So what's coming up?

I have two new series planned; one regarding bone magic and the other on the spirits of each sabbat. The Bone Magic series will not take the entire year to get through. I have only 8 posts planned for this series, which will begin on January 9th. The Spirits of Sabbats series will begin on January 28th, with posts going live a couple days before each sabbat so this series will last all year. Other ongoing series, such as my Herbarium posts and Apothecary posts will continue sporadically throughout the year, so keep an eye out for them. I know readers really enjoy those posts, and I have a lot of herbs yet to get through!

Other topics I will be covering over the course of the next couple of months include:

• Local Witchcraft
• Crystals of Hedge Riding
• Witchy Spring Cleaning
• Sabbat Altars
• Daily Witchcraft
• How to Be a Hedgewitch
• Working with Ancestors
• Folk Magic
• and other miscellaneous posts on working with spirits.

Another year-long project I have planned, which I think many of you will love, are worksheets for each Full Moon this year. These worksheets will help you set intentions and work with the specific magic of 2019's Full Moons. I am still working out the kinks and designs for these worksheets, but they will all have the same basic format. I will also likely create a generic Full Moon worksheet that can be easily adapted to any Full Moon in years to come.

I don't have the entire year planned out yet, so if you have a topic you would like me to cover, improvements you think I can make, or just general comments, please leave a comment below or take my reader survey. I want to hear your feedback so I know how to better serve you. These surveys are very important to making sure I provide the very best content for my readers. It should take you no more than 3 minutes to complete and those 3 minutes of your time will greatly help me.

TAKE THE 2018 READER SURVEY

I hope that no matter what you have planned this year, that it's a fantastic one. I look forward to reading your responses and making this the best blogging year yet!