Snack Size. Giveaway Winners, 1 year Podbirth, New Voicemail

It's been a year. The giveaway winners are announced (at the end of ) this eposide! I also talk about how I feel about the past year, thank several people, and give you the number to my new voicemail.
Be sure you call in with questions, comments, or hot takes- you just might hear yourself on the next "snack sized" episode, between the full and new moons every month. 

youraveragewitch.com
cleverkimscurios.com
instagram.com/youraveragewitchpodcast
facebook.com/youraveragewitchpodcast 
Be sure to check the "contact me" section of instagram or facebook for the number to the voicemail!

Transcript

Welcome back to Your Average Witch, where we talk about witch life, witch stories, and sometimes a little witchcraft. I'm sure you've noticed that this is not a regular episode on the new or full moon, which is when they usually come out. I'm making this episode because my podcast has been on the air for a full year. It's its pod birth, happy birthday to Your Average Witch! It's actually kind of hard to believe it's been a full year, to be honest. It's, that's wild. 
At the end of this episode, I will be announcing the winners of the pod birth giveaway, so be sure to stick around for that. I guess what I want to start out with is thankfulness. I am thankful for listeners. I'm thankful for all of you. I'm thankful for a chance to be heard and to help others be heard. I'm thankful that I have gotten to meet so many new people and hear so many more stories and share those stories with you. It's super exciting to me because I'm a giant nosy nerd and I love hearing all this stuff. And I love that other people like to hear it too. 
I'm thrilled at how well received it's been, and I'm looking forward to speaking to a lot of new people and hearing a lot of new stories. I am astounded. I looked just before I started recording this. I have more than 23,000 downloads, and 44 episodes. What the fuck is happening? Well, that is insane. Some of the unexpected things that have happened over the past year that I just really wasn't anticipating are... I have new friends. I didn't think I would, I thought I would be friendly, but I didn't think I would actually make friends because of the podcast. I am meeting new people I don't think that I would ever have the chance to have met if I wasn't doing this. I didn't expect to grow a community of like-minded people. 
I didn't expect to get validation for what I do and what I believe. And I definitely didn't expect to learn something every single episode; because I do. I want to give some special personalized thanks to people who have helped me through the year. First, I want to thank Charlye and Macy of the Witch Bitch Amateur Hour. They have been so supportive and helpful. I consider them to be very dear friends and role models of how to do this, and do not contradict me, ma'ams. Just enjoy the fact that that's who you are. Let us love you. Let me love you. Audibly on the internet. Just let people love you.

 But also, thank you for introducing me to Lera. And thank you Lera, for taking my crazy idea that I drew poorly, and produced for you in a probably middle of the night Instagram message, and you produced the exact perfect logo that I was trying to explain, badly, and it's great. And thank you for the graphic design work that you've done for me, because I don't know how many of it works. But also, thank you for being such a great friend. I'm really glad that I got to meet you at Anahata's. I like you so much. Thank you for my logo.
I would like to also thank Melisa of the Ninth House and Summer of Beauty Markings for being my two first interviews. Melisa was in person, and Summer was the first online one that I did, and it was a learning experience to say the least. Both of them were. Thank you guys so much. Thank you both so much for being patient while I figured out how to do things. Stay tuned for possible revisits from past guests that I interviewed before I figured out the flow of the show. Because when I first started the show, I kind of thought, oh, it's going to be about witches with businesses! And I was going to interview people with businesses, but that's not the most scintillating of conversations. So it ended up being storytelling, which is my favorite thing. So Melisa, Summer, Tee, everybody. Get ready to look in your email and see an email from me saying "Hey, do you want to be back on my show so we can tell some stories?" Because it's coming. 
I want to thank all the guests who have been on and become friends, to whom I talk to and ask advice, specifically Cory B and Andrea of Appalachia. I talk to them pretty often. They have busy lives, and I am at communicating, but those are two people that I really turn to. Oh my gosh, this new mic can hear a lot. I couldn't hear the plane with my regular ears, but I could hear it over the microphone. Thanks to everyone who wrote in to recommend me for that grant, because I got this new microphone and new fancy recording equipment. This is the first time really using it, so hopefully it sounds okay. I want to thank my patrons, especially my Marco group. Thank you so much to Jayne, Kacie, Sarah, Alanna, Trey, Ashley, Adore, both my Ambers, Shelby, Kristen, and Lisa. I love y'all. You're my little beehive of craziness. And Amber R, we going to miss you so much. I'm going to miss you so much. And I hope you have a really good life in Germany. 
An extra special thank you to Kacie of Kacie's Corner, the creator of the monthly WBAH spells, who has become a dear friend and someone I rely on to tell me if I'm being extra crazy, bitchy or weird. Thank you, Kacie. I love you and I cannot wait to see you in September. Which brings me to Anahata's. And thank you to everyone I talk to at Anahata's Purpose in 2001. And I cannot wait to see you all in two months. And I'm also thankful to all the new people that I'll meet when I get there this September. 

And last but definitely not least, I am thankful to my husband Ken, who continues to push me to be more brave and more adventurous, more confident, and more trusting in my own abilities to get things done, in everything I do. Thank you, honey. I love you. And I can't wait to have you on the show. And that's coming soon, everybody. So listen up. One thing I have is a wish list of guests. So I'm going to run through them. If you happen to have any ins with these people. I would love it if you would drop them a line from me. So here are the people I would like to see. Fairuza Balk, number one. I love her. And I would freak out if she was on the show. Rachel True, Stevie Nicks, because hello. Pam Grossman, Matt Auryn, Aaron Oberon, and every other witch in the world who hasn't been on the show yet. Even you. 
Speaking of which... Now here's something new that I'm trying out, which is actually the point of this little episode other than the giveaways. I have a voicemail. And I'm hoping people will call in and ask questions and comments and with requests, either for me or for the guests. And as long as they're clear enough to understand, I will play the message on the show and then respond in a many episodes like this. So if you've ever been nervous about being interviewed but still want to be involved, here's your chance. The number is 520-230-3896. Please speak clearly, because it's not the best recording equipment in the world. It's Google Voice. And it's free. So in enunciate, people. Please speak clearly. That being said, here is the first message that I've gotten so far. 

Anne: So hi Kim. So in all of your podcasts, you ask, what are your daily witchy practices? And most of the response seems to be about like a daily spiritual practice to attain some mental and spiritual wellbeing. To start your day well, pretty much. So what do you do, you personally? What are your daily mental and spiritual practices that you think are making you okay? Thank you very much for responding. Bye.

Kim: Now I don't know if you can understand what she said, because it's like I said, it's not the greatest of recordings. Basically what is, she what she's asking is, in every episode I ask what is your daily practice? And most responses are how they maintain mental and spiritual wellbeing. What they do to stay well, basically. So what about me? What are my daily mental and spiritual practices that I think are making me okay?
Well, like I said in my interview, every morning I get up and I light a candle and I say thank you for this day. There never was a day like this before and there never will be another one like it again, and I'm thankful for all of that. And I do try to be thankful for it. 
Then I take the water that I leave on my ancestor altar and I say,  essentially, it's not always the same, but I say I drink this for my ancestors who live on in me. And I sort of salute them and then I turn around and I say I drink this for the spirit of the house who protects and shields us. And then I look out the window and I say I drink this for the spirits of the land who hopefully will work with me. And then I swig it and then I refill it and I put it back. And I drink it because water is precious, and we're in the desert and I'm not going to dump it out. And I want my ancestors to experience it through me, so that's why I drink it. 
And some of the other things that I do are, I'm the one who feeds the cats in the morning and it's like a little ritual, and I have my five because we recently, I've recently sort of adopted this feral cat who lives in my altar garden. And he's like my little garden cat now. And he... he's actually huge. He's not little. He's a great big cat. But he's feral and he hisses and every time I come towards the garden, and then he'll meow if he sees that I have food and he'll come over. I've finally gotten to be able to touch him a little bit, not too much. 
And he's bitten me a few times in a sort of "Could you not",  not in a "I will kill" you sort of way. Just sort of "Don't do that." And I say, "Okay, that's not what we're doing today." But I have all their food. There's all five bowls laid out because I have four in the house and then Amos who is outside. He is named after the character in The Expanse because he's a big, bulky... He's not bulky because he's starved and I'm trying to plump him up, but he's a big dude, but I think he's sweet. And I feed them all and I give my oldest cat, she's I think 14 now, 13 or 14. 
I give her her medicine and everybody freaks out because oh my god, it's canned food time. And I take Amos his food, and then I look at the garden to see how it's doing. Like if, is anything is my irrigation still working? Because I have to change the batteries periodically. And if my bird bath isn't refilled, and I know it's time to change the batteries. And is everything okay in the garden, and then I walk around the property if it's not too hot. Is everything okay here? Do I need to do anything, are there any messages that I needed to get from the land, or from the big Saguaro. How is the agave that fell? How is she drying out, because I want that stalk. It's like 30 feet long. And I just walk around and make sure everything's okay. And it helps me ground. It reminds me to thank my ancestors and everybody, to be thankful for what I have. It helps me ground at the beginning of the day. 
Make sure my plants aren't dying, and the cats are, everybody's still eating and nobody's missing. And if they're sick, they wouldn't come up there. So it helps me with that. It helps me get out of my head because usually I wake up and I immediately start obsessing over who knows what, whatever the OCD has chosen to obsess about that day. And it helps me get out of that. And it helps me develop a relationship with the land spirits, which I'm something I've been trying to work on. So thank you. I know who the caller is. It's Anne, It's my best friend. I asked her to do it so I would have an example for everybody to hear. 
And now what everybody's been waiting for, the winners of the pod birth giveaway. There were four, but I decided to throw in a bonus just because I was having fun. And I went through and counted everything, and put it into random.org, and this is what it came up with. Winner number one is BlueAdelines, who won the Candle Dish and Ancestor Oil. Winner number two is DesertGoddess520 who gets the monthly spell box. Winner number three is VanGoghsRightEar who's... that name is hilarious. Who won the Crystal Grid. And winner number four I cannot, I'm not sure how to pronounce it so I'm just gonna win it. BoituHaley, who won the Witch Bells. And the extra bonus that I just felt like giving stuff away because I was having fun, is Terrible Cunning Witch, who won another monthly spell box. 
Thank you all so much for participating and for listening, and I'm so thankful for you all. Everyone who, if this is in your ears, thank you for listening, especially if you listened this far, to this episode with no guests. Thank you. I appreciate you so much. And if you want to contact me, here are my socials. Get ready. Youraveragewitch.com. Youraveragewitchpodcast at gmail.com, cleverkimscurios.com, patreon.com/cleverkimscurios, Twitter averagewitchpod, Instagram @youraveragewitchpodcast, Facebook.com/youraveragewitchpodcast. And once again the voicemail number is 520-230-3896. Bye, and thanks for listening.