Hello December

December 2, 2022 / Winona Morris / Leave a comment

Hello again my Wildlings.

I have left you alone for far too long. Unfair of me I know. But I did say I wanted to keep this place free of a lot of “woe is me” and I manged to start writing here at the very start of “woe is me” season.

See, when it comes to the holidays, I turn into a bit of a Grinch. Just a bit. I mean, I’m not a fan of the season for many, many reasons, but I don’t go out of my way to ruin it for other people.

My family seems to be largely amused by my distaste for the HoHoHolidays. They do things like play Christmas music, watch Christmas movies, and put Christmas decorations in my bedroom and on my desk. All of this starting November 1st. Before I’ve even shaken the dust of Halloween off of myself.

The fact that exposure to each of those things will make my eyes start twitching every single time just makes them that much more amused.

I let them have their fun, though I don’t partake in much of it. I let them decorate the house, and the tree, and the yard and enjoy themselves for the most of 2 months.

I enjoy it starting whenever I get home from work on Dec. 24, until I have to go back to work on the 26th.

I’m trying, ever so hard, to actually ENJOY the season of JOY this year. Emotionally and mentally it is hard. My (retail) job makes it harder.

But I did get myself a tiny little tabletop tree this year. And decorated it minimally (not counting the Zombie Merle that my husband put on there.) I’ll take pictures at some point this month to share with you.

See, I’m going to try to do a December Daily/Blogmas thing this month. Though I’m not promising a post every day, and I’m not promising them all to be Christmas or holiday related. I have mental limits, and some day just surviving my job extends past them.

But, while planning I have to ask, Is there anything you’d like to see me blog about this December?

What is Feral Coziness Anyway?

September 2, 2022 / Winona Morris / 5 Comments

Hello my Wildlings!

I know that most of ya’ll have heard the term Cottagecore at some point in the past 4 years, right? It brings to mind pretty ladies in flowery meadows wearing flowing pastel dresses with matching hats, usually carry a picnic basket full of home baked breads and cookies.

Turns out there are a lot of “cores” and while searching for “Something like cottagecore but less pastel and with pants” (okay, that wasn’t the EXACT search phrase, but an embodyment of it) I found the one that seems to fit me pretty close. Goblincore. (Forestcore, dirtcore, vulture culture, mosscore, a lot of them mesh into and alongside each other.)

I have always been the kind of girl who will go for a walk and come back with a pocket full of rocks, feathers, empty snail shells, shells with the snails still inside of them, a neat stick with some lichen on it, a pretty leaf, some moss, a cicida shell, a butterfly wing, an empty wasp nest, this random pinecone that looks a little different, this half of a walnut shell some squirrel has emptied, etc. I love rich color, but given a choice between pastel and earth tone, it’s going to be earth tones every time. I like frogs and snails. Mushrooms are my happy place.

If I went in the woods with an empty basket, I would come out with a full basket.

“Ooops, I think I’m lost in the forest” might be the aesthetic of my whole home, if my husband wasn’t the kind of person who thinks an aesthetic is something you might need to take an antibiotic for.

Anyway, I snatched the “Feral Coziness” phrase from a Mashable article talking about goblincore. The title was “Goblincore’s feral coziness will get you through the rest of the year” and the words “Feral Coziness” just resonated with me.

I envision myself in an overstuffed chair by a roaring fire, a mantle covered with my forest treasures, walls of bookshelves full of books and craft suppllies and hand made baskets full of other goodies (crafts are going to be a thing here at Feral Coziness….nature inspired and others too.) Of cousre, in realityh I live in a place that never gets cold, so I can’t really go for the physically cozy part of the cozy aestetic, but bookselves full of books and craft supplies I do have.

After embracing my love of goblincore, I found that some people find offense in it. Turns out that Goblins are known to have anti-semantic associations, having been used in Nazi propaganda. And that makes me sad because I don’t think of my inner goblin as the pointy nosed money hungry bankers a la Harry Potter. I see her more like the trash goblin in The Labyrinth, hoarding all the “shinies” that might mean nothing to anyone else but are precious to her. So I do want to apologize if the phrase is hurtful to any of my readers.

So, I thought Feral Coziness fit my inner self enough to name my whole blog after it, so here we are.

Once More, With Feeling

September 2, 2022 / Winona Morris / 3 Comments

I am what is currently known as an “Elder Millennial.” That mean’s I’m in my early 40’s and have seen some stuff when it comes to the internet.

One of the things I’ve seen is the evolution of the blog. I first started blogging in the 90s. I’ve done my time on livejournal, xanga (RIP), and blogger of course as well as other free blogging platforms that came and went. I remember blog-rings and blog hops and other things that made blogging more like a community. You found friends through blogging, you shared lives. Kind of like Facebook, but again with more words.

These days blogs are more like “Do you want to become a millionaire overnight? You too can earn money while brushing your teeth! Just purchase my 12 page PDF and sign up for my 3 week e-course for $24.99!” Like much of the rest of the world, all the personal has gone out of blogging, it’s just another business.

But I have never been able to let go of the concept of blogging as a more personal way to communicate your life and share your dreams with millions of strangers on the internet.

For a while my dream in life was to have my blog featured in Stampington & Company’s magazine Artful Blogging. I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the images in it. I fell in love with the bloggers in it. And I fell hard. I fell so hard I changed everything about how I blogged trying to be in it. Sadly, much like personal blogs (and most other things I loved about the 90s) it no longer exists and I never got a chance to be in it. In fact I never considered my blogs “Good Enough” to even submit it for consideration.

See, I live in an old house. Not cute antique farmhouse old. Just old old. It’s not very photogenic. Then, of course, I’m not a very good photographer either. There are no crisp white walls to display my colorful life against, and I can’t pull off the hazy/gauzy/cottagecore vibe to hide the age and livedinness of my life. And my life is kind of dull. I work. I come home. I eat sandwitches and surf the internet. I don’t make museum quality quilts or have a studio or go fancy places and do picturesque things.

I had plenty of other excuses too. I’m good at making excuses to get out of things that I’m afraid of. Even if I’m just subconsciously afraid. Because at the time I was unaware that pretty much every decision I’ve ever made in my life is based off my fear of rejection.

And eventually this FEAR led to me becoming a sporadic blogger, then a non-blogger. No matter how many trends I tried to hop on.

But, I miss blogging the way I used to blog. And I keep trying to get back into the blog I’ve had on blogger for the longest time and just can’t stick with it.

So I said to myself, “Why not blog? Why not blog the way you used to, the way you WANT to?”

It’s 2022. I’ve been blogging since the 90s. I’ve never managed to “monetize” my blog, even when I was trying to. I never made it into the fancy magazine. I quit blogging because I was trying to hard to be like everyone else. And if you know me IRL or have followed me online for any length of time, you know that I am 100% against being like everyone else.

I’m not now, never have been, never will be, a true NICHE blogger. However, I was aiming for a goblincore/cottagecore/cluttercore vibe here. I have plans that will involve personal essays, crafts, book reviews, and other things. Probably (maybe) I will work out some kind of posting schedule.

Despite this being an online extension of my personal journal, one thing I do want to try is to keep this a …less depressing… slice of my internet life. Depression is a PART of my life that will maybe (probably) be touched on in some of the personal essays, but I REFUSE to let it turn into another “Woe is me, my life sucks, whaaaaaa” dumping ground. (I’ve got facebook for that).

So, welcome to Feral Coziness. Pull up a chair (just push the stuff in it onto the floor), grab a cup of your favorite hot beverage, feel free to borrow a book (hope you don’t mind horror). I hope you’ll stay a while. I hope we can be friends. I hope you’ll come back and leave me lots of comments (interaction if one of my love languages!)