I Am an Impatient Sort, and Happy May Day!

I am an impatient sort, and sometimes I don't follow my own rule for this, which is never put anything 'out there' until it's perfect. I work very hard on what I do, perfuming, soaping, incense making, writing, and especially with perfuming and writing I get hung up on when is the work ready for public consumption. I'm doing myself a great disservice behaving this way, so my May Day corn dolly wish for the year is to become patient to the degree of near pain when it comes to perfuming and writing. Especially with the perfume books, I get frustrated and angry when the formatting doesn't cooperate, or the transfer of formatting from my computer to the publishing format don't play nicely together. I've put out some poorly formatted books and I need to quit it. The content is good, if I say so myself, but the poor formatting makes it all look like sh*t, and diminishes the value of the whole piece of work. As for perfume, I get too attached to my work and I lack objectivity when it comes to being 'done' (what perfumer doesn't?), and again, I get frustrated and fall out of love with the current work if it doesn't seem to do what I want it to do, so I rush it and don't give it the care it deserves. Again, I have to stop doing this. As with all great and wonderful things, it's done when it is truly and well done.

Accord building, this is something I need to start practicing more, just for fun and not only when I'm building for a particular perfume. A friend of mine recently let me play with her accord box, accords she'd formulated years ago, all nicely labeled and gorgeous, in little mini bottles because who really needs to make a ton of something that might not work out, right? This is another reason I petition the Universe for patience -- I need to get back into the groove of building accords for fun, just to see what they'll do later in 'life', so I can figure out if they might be useful in something I'd like to put together. I learned the importance of accord building practice when I discovered the main themes of my perfumes Serj, Oshiba, and now with the new chon-like perfume I'm building in my head. All these ideas for perfume started with layering three or so raw materials and really loving how it all came together.

Perfume making and writing are work. And art . . . but mostly work.

May Day. I had such big celebration plans (no bonfire). Yummy fresh food, handmade pastries, a few hours spent building corn dollies to petition the Universe for something I don't have, but I don't know if I have the energy to do much cooking. Blue seems to be the color of this May Day for me. Year before last I petitioned the Universe to erase fear from my life, and it's worked out nicely. I can't remember if I made a corn dolly last year... This year I'm petitioning patience with my work, and a few other things; a multi-purpose corn dolly wish. Now, you might be wondering exactly what is a corn dolly, so I'll tell you. It's not necessarily made of corn, unless you have some old corn husks lying around, or a bag of tamale corn husks, which work great. Corn dollies can be made with plants that grow right near where you live, twigs from a tree in your yard, leaves from your rose garden, even flowers work. The basic idea is to build these dollies while working the intent of your wish into them as you wrap and wind and braid the bits of grass and twigs and flowers together. A small piece of cloth that acts as a shirt is used to hold it all together. You want to make your corn dolly look like a person, with a head, arms, and legs. You can weave long strands of grass into the doll's head for hair, or poke a few flowers in the 'head'. When you're done, dedicate your dolly to your intention, light a candle, light some incense, set your dolly in a safe place where you see it every day, and wait. By the following May Day, your corn dolly 'wish' will come true.