That quest led me here: Ren Wicks Bathing Witch

GO TAKE A LOOK! These are some of the nicest, cutest, most beautiful and just out and out funny pictures of sexy witches out there. Bonus to get to see Janet Stewart-Bone nude on her initiation day.

So forgive me, just ignore it, eventually, hopefully soon, it will fall off the bottom and be gone.

Mea culpa.

And if I lose readers, I bear you no hard feelings.

I’ve kept a large segment of my life away from here. I have done this mostly because I felt that (first off) it was no one’s business except mine, and (second off) that it really didn’t matter as it was not relevant to my spirituality which is what I talk about here.

However, various things have occurred in my life that has forced a merging of those segments of my life, and an intermixing of them until in many cases, the lines are completely blurred.

As you know I have had financial troubles recently. That’s okay, everyone does have those difficulties from time to time, and most often you get through with them and go on. However, this has apparently become a permanent state of affairs with me and my family.

I’ve been out of work since February 10, 2007. I had the job that I was fired from for 7 1/2 years, did a good job at it too until I lost my temper at the wrong time and that gave management the excuse they needed to finally get rid of me. (They had been trying to get me to quit for 5 years previous to that. I guess I didn’t kiss ass like they wanted me to do.)

Be that as it may, I have been out of work since then. I’ve had the occasional short term temporary job, which hasn’t lasted. But for now, I’m out of work.

An acquaintance of several years standing came to us not too long ago and offered two things: 1) that he move in with us and pay us rent to help with the finances and 2) that we start working in his home job. He offered us the profits from that job for a year if we did.

That job was adult in nature. Basically it was taking photographs and distributing them to websites. Yes, given my dancing around it as I am doing, they were those kinds of pictures.

Now, understand, I have no problem with pornography in and of itself. These were not illegal in any way, they were consensual and while they were of some acts that I find distasteful and which I would never show a minor (or any adult for that matter), these were making us an income. Given that we lost our house later and moved into government housing, despite my wife’s part time job of Customer Service calls from our home, and my continuing search for permanent employment, it was bringing us some money, enough to keep the lights on, or to pay for the bus for my daughter to school and back, or the water bill and so on.

Am I proud of this? Not particularly. It is necessity, and when I do get a permanent job, I do plan to give this one up. But in the interest of full disclosure I thought I would have to tell you this also.

Yes, there is more.

Do you know how some people don’t like that they have brown hair and they wanted red hair, and that others wish they had blue eyes instead of brown? Well, I was born with a body part that I wish I didn’t have. I am Transgender. This isn’t unknown, I’ve always felt that I was not a male soul, but a female one.

This does not mean that I am gay. I am not attracted to men, but to women, so if I was a female, I guess that would make me gay, but not as a man. This doesn’t affect you at all, but it really defines myself and my spirituality and my sexuality. I’ve been invited to write articles about being transgendered and the priesthood. While it won’t be appearing in the publication that I was invited to initially submit to, it will be here.

Am I ashamed of this? Not at all. I was made to be ashamed of this aspect of myself for many years when I was younger, and I’ve gotten to the point in my life now where I don’t care. I promise I won’t shove this down anyone’s throat, I won’t force you out of your comfort level, but I’m tired of hiding this part of me and never talking about it, especially where it intersects my spirituality.

Some of you may ask how this manifests itself in my life. It shows up two ways, an extremely girly part of myself who is called “Joy”, and crossdressing and doing really domestic “women’s work” in my day to day life. I don’t do this daily, but I do it often enough that my immediate family knows and supports this part of me. My siblings know, my mother knows, my father, however, doesn’t. To a person, none of them want to talk about it. That’s fine, I have no need to discuss it with them.

The last thing that is probably an open secret is this: I make adult toys for the BDSM crowd, including restraints and impact toys. It’s another personal aspect that I also use in my spiritual life, and a hobby I turned into a craft business. But I haven’t made any money from it for some time, so it’s one of those things that I also don’t normally discuss, certainly not with people I don’t know.

All these aspects have points of intersection my spiritual life. The BDSM comes in where I get into altered states of consciousness and in energy work. The endurance of a good flogging also lends strength.

I mention this latter part because I had my first experience with this kind of play, and the resultant mental shift, at an activity in Columbus Ohio, and at this point I believe that I’m probably blacklisted from that same event for that incident. Which is sad since I really enjoyed the event.

I wanted everyone to understand what will be happening. That is why I’m posting this, so that Twitter posts that are confusing may become less so. Also so that you had an opportunity choose to stay or go.

Let’s be honest here, I’m under no illusions. Some parts of my life are distasteful or confusing to many in mainstream Western civilization. I know this because I’m in therapy for some issues that I have. I’m a honest person. When I start writing again, I don’t want to have to censor myself. So I figured I’d just come out and say this so that you knew about it before hand instead of finding out about it through the microblogging feed, or from rumors.

I would ask one thing. For those who might wish to spew abuse and negativity, e-mail me privately. I ask that because I would like to have a discussion and to keep others from being affected by potential anger and misunderstanding. I promise I will respond. If you are truly open to having a discussion, it’s fine to have it here.

Hold it, before you all get drunk, go take a look at my current article!

PeTA Rant

It shouldn’t take very long. Then you can get drunk.

We got about half the money we needed from some wonderfully generous people (and I haven’t forgotten to find my tarot cards, your readings are coming). The rest we got through a call to Mary’s Mother. We won’t ever be doing that again.

We are in our new apartment, the PODS is outside and I’m slowly moving our things in. I’m also going through the detritus of several years and getting rid of some of it. It’s a slow process, and one that, frankly, wears on my body, but it’s getting done.

Financially, we are still in jeopardy, although it’s not crisis right now. We have some money, not a lot. It’s at that balance point where we will be okay as long as nothing else goes wrong. THAT is the fear now.

So thank you all for your help, prayers and support. It really REALLY has helped us.

• We lost our house. It was foreclosed on and we have until December 1 to get out. We are in the process of packing and getting things settled.
• We have a place to go to. Worse is that there is no place to send the fur-babies, our cats. We won’t turn them lose, nor will we put them in a shelter. The no-kill can’t take them and there isn’t anyone who we know who is willing to take them. We are nearly frantic trying to find someplace for them.
• We have money coming in, just not a lot. Mary is working, I’m doing odd jobs and other things are getting some cash flow, but I still don’t have a permanent job.
• I’ve made arrangements for the site to continue. As long as their is money in my checking account, the site is paid for and bandwidth is paid for. So we won’t be disappearing any time soon, but I probably won’t be able to respond timely or whatever. I ask your indulgence and tolerance.
• I have to give a special “Thank you” to The Witches Voice. Someone over there saw my plight and sent a donation of $500 to us at a VERY critical time. It allowed us to keep the power on for another month. If you are reading this whomever did it (Fritz, Wren or other staff member), thank you very much.

Want to follow the adventures of Daven? I’m on Twitter as davensjournal I am also on LiveJournal as davensjournal as well, but it’s Friend’s only. Leave me a note there and I’ll make a decision as to whether or not I’ll add you back.

As always you can get in touch with me through this site.

I’m also now on a place called 78Friends. It’s a site for Tarot Readers to get readings at. I’ve been there for only a few minutes and I’ve already found three of my friends that I’ve known for a while. Check it out if you are inclined to do so. You can kibitz on other people’s readings.

Now to go pack a few more boxes and listen to Nickleback.

May the Stars Light Your Path and blessings to all of you on this holiday time. Don’t take anything in your life for granted, it can be taken very quickly.

1) I had my “Pagan Basics” lessons taken and used by the ULC church. It’s not their fault, they accepted it in good faith, but Lord Starwalker, whoever that is, is the one who took it. We’ve worked things out and it’s okay now, just saying.
2) Still no permanent job, although I have had SEVERAL interviews.
3) We are totally out of cash and have no prospects of more to come in.
4) We got notice recently about being foreclosed on. Want to buy our house? The auction is October 14.
5) Our health is good, although deteriorating, as it would with anyone who is alive. Nothing really recent to report.
6) I have a part time position teaching at a local community college. It brings in some money, not nearly enough though.
7) The cats are doing well. As is my daughter.

So those of you who feel that this is all what I deserve, and who like to gloat at my misfortune, go ahead. Send your vitriol to feedback@davensjournal.com

I look forward to being entertained by your hatred.

(For those of you not in the know, last time I put up an update like this, I got a gloating email later that day saying that this was what I deserved because I am a bad person. It hurt at the time, but not a lot since the person in question didn’t give me any kind of information to connect their facelessness to someone I supposedly hurt in the past. So whatever.)

So that’s where we are now. This is one reason that I’ve done very little with this site recently. I’m not closing it at all, and as long as I have the $15/month to pay the bill, I plan to keep this site going.

Hopefully things will turn around sometime.

It’s due to a huge combination of factors. Part of it is an evolution of myself, a maturing and a changing into someone else. This does not mean that I’m changing my religion completely, but it does mean that I’m going to be withdrawing from a lot of stuff I have been doing as Druid Daven. Among those is my participation in various online forums, bunnyhunting, active teaching and article writing.

I’m taking a hiatus for a while. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but this site will remain. I might be back as Druid Daven, or Druid Erin, it depends on a lot of things that I have to work out.

I love you too Dad. Thank you for trying to force me to be a narrow minded bigot and driving me away again.

To everyone who reads this, I love you all and I hope that you will take this ride with me and come out the other side. It’s a really deep rabbit hole.