On Low Effort Offerings:
Low effort offerings can be great, but in my opinion they can’t be your only offerings. I see these posting going around, talking about how the gods and spirits and ancestors will love whatever you can give them, and they will, up to a point. Take me for instance - I just had COVID, you can bet your ass that in the worst of it my gods just got a cup of the same tea that I was drinking, and a promise of something more substantial when I was better.
But imagine this: You are in a relationship with someone, either a romantic or platonic relationship, it doesn’t matter, and it seems like they never put any effort into the relationship. Every hangout/date is the equivalent of Netflix and chill. That may be okay, maybe you’re a homebody and don’t want to go out. But in addition to that every meal is take out fast food, they never take you to a nice restraint or ever make you a home cooked meal. On top of that every gift giving occasion is met with a drug store card. Not even a nice home made card. Eventually you would start to feel unappreciated. Our entities can eventually feel unappreciated too, if we constantly ask for their help, or blessing, or guidance, and all they get is our “self care” or the occasional glass of water or tea.
It’s one thing to dial back effort to when we’re ill, or going through a difficult time. But consistent lack of effort can make the people and entities in our lives feel taken for granted and unappreciated. Now I’m sure that these posts on “low effort offerings” aren’t trying to say that the offerings they’re suggesting should be used all of the time, but I rarely see them discuss the fact that low effort should be the exception, not the rule. As always balance and communication is the key.
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This isn't the best screenshot I could have gotten; the colors are wonky, the lighting is bad, meh. But first kiss!! Yay!!
Oh and then this happened:
Your honor, let the record show that these gays have only been on one!! date!!! A date which, btw, wasn't even finished yet when Vanesha popped the question to move in together. This was only roughly 10 in-game minutes after their first kiss.
Riley said yes obviously, but still
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About your low-effort offerings post: what are your tips for if someone is closeted? /gen. Higher-quality offerings can be very difficult to disguise.
I think some people have sort of missed the point of my “Low Effort Offerings” post, and it seems like you may have Anon, so let me clarity . The point isn’t that there is high quality vs low quality, it’s not about quality at all, the key word in my point is very much “effort”. The people in our lives notice if they are frequently, or often, receiving our bare minimum efforts. And I believe that the incorporeal people in our lives notice too, and much like with corporeal people this can lead to some friction and decay of the relationship. You don’t need your offerings to be big and fancy, and you don’t need to put more effort in all the time, but every now and then a little more thought a little more work shows them that they aren’t your last priority.
Maybe a better way to phrase this growing dichotomy I see in offerings is thoughtful vs thoughtless, rather low vs high effort (though effort is how its always been phrased in the community). Since people seem to get caught up in the theoretical amount of physical work an offering requires. Really thinking about what to offer an entity, what they would like, what has meaning to them, what have you given them recently and would they maybe like something different - all of that is effort. Falling into a rut and plopping the same thing down on your altar every week isn’t necessarily effort, even if you make something really fancy and over the top, it just becomes routine. What I was trying to get people to think about with that “Low Effort Offerings” post was whether their offerings felt like thoughtful gifts, or bare minimum routines.
My own offerings are seldom extravagant. I often just put out a cup of something or a sampling of a meal I have made, but there is always a great deal of though behind what I am putting out. And that thought, is effort, that thought is work.
To your specific request for tips let’s use an example:
Let’s say you leave a glass of water every week as an offering. It’s easy to disguise as forgetting about it. What you could do is swap the water for juice, tea, or alcohol on special occasions. You either had to go out to buy buy it or make it, you can select the flavor/type based on associations with the entity or what you think they would like, and it takes just a little more work than filling a glass at the tap. You can put the cup in the same place and this time it’s just that you forgot you had a different drink.
And you don’t have to make this swap an all the time thing, it can just be for special occasions like holy days. Just a little something something extra to show that they are worth more to us than our bare minimum.
That’s the basic tip. Take whatever you usually do and add a little more thought to it. Personalize it just a little more for the entity in question, show them that you are thinking about them in specific when you put out this offerings. If you have relationships with multiple entities this will mean that you have to keep a balance, today is a special day for entity A so they get a special treat, but when it’s entity B’s special day they get something special. But it’s like your corporeal friends - you don’t get them all the same birthday present, everyone gets something they will like on their own birthdays.
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