Every year I promise myself a calm December and every year I prove to be a liar.

It’s usually not my fault. The general life things creep in like day job projects, new book promotion schedules, and the fun bits of the holidays like dinners, parties, and friends.

This year I’ve been reflecting a lot on the act of wishing, since I’ve spent so much of this year in the doing part of manifestation. It’s been a rubber to the road type year. And I’ve been romanticizing for months the act of scooting under a blanket, allowing the snow to cover me, and just dream of the exciting things that I’ll get to do at some post-hibernation date when I’ve recovered.

But like most humans, I am not afforded much hibernation time. And with the usual onslaught of disturbed sleep, either from tasks or stress dreams due to too much chocolate, I’ve been focusing on what wishing can do for me.

The 13 wishes of Yule ritual bops around the internet this time of year. Which is a daily burning petition that takes place over the week and a half after the winter solstice. You write 13 wishes down on little scraps of paper and burn one each night until there’s only one left. That remaining wish is yours to make happen, while the rest are given up to the ambiguous forces of the universe or fate or the gods.

I’m pretty sure this ritual was something that just popped up online, but I really like it as an excample of a repeat action spell. Plus, with spells that gain traction online, there’s a degree of flexibility about that. Almost an encouragement to riff, which I think is so crucial for spellwork, especially around things like wishing.

You have to be creative and crafty, in my experience. Otherwise it won’t have your signature.

I can already tell that next year I’m going to start it on Christmas instead of Solstice. Not for any reason other than I really like the space of time between Christmas and Twelfth Night. I like Epiphany and all the lore that happens in the the days of Christmas, which culturally we celebrate in the consumer period of Advent rather than the darker season after Christmas. Because while Solstice is the longest night, it’s not like the sun doesn’t need a warming up period to get fully operational. It’s dark and will be for another month at least.

When it comes to the 13 wishes, I like to leave one blank as a wild card. Mostly because coming up with 13 wishes can be a bit nerve wracking, but also because there’s a joker in every deck. If I get the blank, I get to write my own contract. I write them on rose scented paper so that their possibility fills up the room with sweetness, and then I mix the ashes with perfumed water to use as a booster of good luck throughout the year.

But this year is a year about data; I’m accepting that I’ve been alive long enough now that things slip away. That the witch must keep her records. I have my processes for spells and oils and crafts, but recording wishes has felt somewhat like bad luck. Like they are shameful secrets to keep so that no one knows them and so if they don’t come true you won’t feel witnessed.

Some of it is the shame that feels cultural around hope. Like the act of wishing and hoping are in contrast to the effort that any of those things take. It’s very Protestant, actually.

But wishes are the sort of thing that require a bit of outside help. Promotion has taught me this… You can believe in your writing all day, but it’s nothing without readers. Without people to share with. So in the tradition of trying to live more vulnerably I’ve started my own Book of Wishes.

Some of it is to track all the things that come true, so that when I get down in the dumps I can look at all that’s come to pass and accept joy (read: buck up). But also I want a record of the sort of things I wished for. Like this year, I wished to “try to go viral for something positive.” And I’m looking forward to the version of me that looks back on that and says, “Oh my god, lady. You were so focused on that damn internet.”

My Book of Wishes is an act of past, present, and future, pulling them all in at once towards the energetic achievement of hope. In a year that has felt like a brutal test of emotional regulation, I’m looking forward to having a space in my magical craft that’s just for the things I want. No matter how frivolous future me finds them, nor how desperate present me pines for them, or how stunned past me would be by my audacity. We’re in this together, the three of us.

In January I’m teaching a virtual generative poetry workshop with the Poetry Society of New York that focuses on ancestor work and ancestoral storytelling. Tickets are available now!