After spending a day thinking about the potential changes to “Upon a Pagan Path” including a thought to change the name back to “Edge of the Circle” – I have to agree with my two listeners, Troy and Scott. The podcast name does not need to change – in fact its a far better title for a show than “From the Edge of the Circle” was. It reflects who I am far better than being on the outskirts of things. However, I will be changing some of the aspects of “Upon a Pagan Path”. The idea is to continue to bring interviews with people I think are interesting and/or have an interesting topic/story to relate. But I am also going to add some other elements to the overall show as well.

Currently, the show has four thematics associated with it – “Interview/Topic”, “Personal Opinion/Topic”. “Featured Musical Artists” and “The Spoken Word”. Those aspects of the podcast will not change. In fact, the first three will definitely remain the same. However, I will be expanding “The Spoken Word” segment from poetry to include retellings of various short tales and myths that I come across. I am not the world’s greatest story-teller, but I think that in retelling some of these stories and myths – I just might be able to entice some of you to do some deeper research into some of these areas. I will also be re-adding the commercial segments for other podcasts to the format as well. I have a rotational set of about five shows at the moment – so if you know any show that might be a good add…send me a shout.

Also, I will be creating a show ad of my own as well. Something that can be traded with other shows. The way I see it, the best advertisement that we can do – is to help plug other shows out there and cross pollenate with one another. After all, as Pagan Podcasters, we are not in competition with one another – we are here to add our voices to the entire mix.

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Now, let me get into something else. I have started noticing a few things in my own personal life…particularly how difficult it is to do the things that I am wanting to do. And over the past few weeks, I realized what it was: I was over-committing my own time. For instance, I had decided to go back to school for another degree. This wound up sucking down a tone of my own time. Enough so, that I always felt that I had never accomplished much at the end of the day – any day. I already have three degrees – a Bachelor’s degree and two Masters degrees. Another Masters degree is not going to help me accomplish the things I want in my life. So, I have dropped out of my degree program, and have started the process of refocusing on the things that matter more to me – such as my own Spiritual Life.

The last three years have been tough. Things of a Spiritual Nature have taken a back seat to too many other mundane aspects of my Life. Not just because the mundane things were important – all of them were. However, I had over-scheduled things, and placed myself into positions of impossible commitments. Now, I am at a point where I can take a few minutes to breath, and re-collect myself. I am learning the process of saying “no”. And much of this got into the way of the podcast schedule, and the one process I have come to rely on the most in my Life: the time to write.

Writing has become far more important in my Life over the past decade. I am keeping two journals – one for my OBOD studies, and one personal journal. I am about to start a third journal for another set of studies. And now that I am realizing that I am over-scheduling my free time and changing that, I am finding the slots that I need to be able to write. And that also means that I will find the time to connect and re-connect with folks as well. I have found that I am missing much through my over-scheduled life. And part of that which suffered was connecting with folks in the Pagan Community.

Its been a hard and difficult set of lessons to learn. The adage of being “too close to the forest to see the trees” certainly holds true. Taking a major step back, and allowing myself to breathe, relax, and look over what I was doing was extremely helpful. I live in a very busy American metro area. Just because I live here does not mean I have to adopt that way of living my Life.