Published: JUNE 30, 2026

Halfway to the Attic New Year

Full moon reflections, two weeks out from the New Moon on the 14th

The full moon last night marks the halfway point to the Attic New Year. MortalOfferings isn’t where I want it to be yet, but I think it’s important to take time and reflect on why I’m unsatisfied, and what I could change before the year turns over on the 14th.

What I’ve been working out

In figuring out what I could add to this site that I could honestly call an offering to the gods, I realised something uncomfortable — I was doing things for clout and my outward gain instead of worshiping my gods, collecting knowledge, and recording my reflection. I know the gods don’t mind glory-seeking, and may even support it so long as it benefits the world or their domains. But I want this site to be about them. About our relationship, about building knowledge, about building community. Attention for me was creeping in as the goal when it was never supposed to be the point.

To work on this, I think I need to step back from the social media habit of advertising the site for now, and make tributes with the gods in mind rather than an audience. Especially tributes I can’t show off. And for the things I do post online, I want to actually make them for the gods first, and ask what they’d like done with them — or use my intuition, and reflect on where my attention should really go.

I also need to show myself some grace and shine my spine. Things in my life have affected how I am able to engage with my practice, as it would with everyone practising any religion or mindful habit. And I have regrets for choices that I have made which contradict who I want to be. Like many in my life, the gods don’t want me to be a certain way — I already meet the minimum requirement. All they want for me now is for me to be the best me I can be — not reaching arbitrary goals of what an ‘adult’ or a ‘man’ or any demographic should be, but becoming someone satisfied in themself.

What I want to actually make

I have a lot of plans — collecting art of the gods to build out their shrine pages being a big one. But curating isn’t the same as creating, and I think I need more of the latter. For a long time I’ve just… collected things, not really curating them. Think pinterest boards where all thought but general theme can be forgotten — over a proper portfolio or exhibit that shows the links the curator has made and thoughts brought by individual pieces. Curating is what an altar already does: things gathered because they remind you of the gods. I want to make my own things to be mindful and reflective with them.

That reflection keeps bringing me back to something else: the messages I’ve received, quite pointedly, telling me to stop thinking lowly of myself, and to stop taking on emotional labour I was never asked to carry. Whether that’s the gods working through the people around me, or simply good advice they’d want me to follow regardless — I think it’s worth listening to either way. I’ve been hearing it and ignoring it for years.

I realised I’ve basically stopped doing things I love for the better part of a decade… making art, writing. I used to love writing essays in school, of all things. I have a break from study right now, and I think that’s exactly the opening to pick some of this back up. Quietly, for them, not for show. If I’m meant to stop underrating myself, maybe coming back to things I love and am decent at, just because they’re mine, is part of actually living that out. And maybe that love alone — learning to love like that again — can be a gift.

A Disclosure

This site was built with AI. I used Claude to generate the HTML and I’ll be writing up a proper disclosure about that separately. I’m honestly still working out how I feel about it. I know the environmental cost is real and ugly, and I know it’s being used in ways that displace genuine human creativity and effort, which sits badly with me. At the same time, I’ve found it genuinely helpful — talking me down from mental health spirals, identifying holes in concepts, and now helping me with code that isn’t my passion but supports things I want to make and share. Both of those things are true at once, and I don’t think I need to resolve that tension to be honest about it.

Where this is heading

My goals for this site, in no particular order: essays, research, communication, art, widgets, fun, worship. That’s never changed. In the future I plan to expand to other websites following my passions.

And if I ask myself what would actually make me happy by the time the New Attic Year arrives on the 14th — it’s simple. Doing something for my gods. Not something about them for other people to see. Something for them.

Two weeks to go. Let’s see what I make of them.