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Witchcraft gets romanticized a whole lot.  Just look at my picture of the Charmed sisters.  They're off solving problems in mid drift tops living in a huge house, learning about love and sisterhood.  My first reaction is much like yours, it can be summed up as sigh.  But.  If it wasn't for Charmed, my mother and I would be locked in the same stalemate we had been locked in since I was 22.  Charmed made modern Witchcraft accessible to my mom and made her less afraid of whatever I was doing.  

Romantic witchcraft isn't reserved for non-Pagans though.  In Paganism, being able to be a career Witch/Occult Shop Owner/Pagan Writer/Special Shaman Who Talks to Ponies/Whatever has become the dreamy eyed ideal.  And why shouldn't it be?  There's enough of us now to actually support career minded people who want to support themselves off their Craft.  I know a few people who I'm incredibly jealous of who are doing that very thing.  It's not exactly a new concept, communities generally supported an occultist who lived on the fringe of society/in the weird house at the end of the block for ages.  

So before we get too glue gun intensive, it occurred to me that you don't know me very well yet.  

Things You Need to Know (in no particular order):

This time last year, I was looking for somewhere fun to take my sweetie Albert for his birthday. We ended up heading up to Chico for the World Music Festival there. It was a really fun weekend and I highly recommend the event for those who like diverse music and don't like huge crowds. It's smaller and more intimate than other festivals I've attended, and I really felt like I got to connect more with the performers, vendors, and other attendees.

While we were visiting for the festival, an open-air market was happening just outside of town in the more rural farming community where the almond growers make their trade. This was a proper "Hoes Down" kind of affair that felt like a throwback to the festivals of my youth in upstate New York, with folks selling their handmade quilts and rag rugs and knit items, jewel-toned jars of homemade jam and pickles, whimsical yard decor, and a classic car show. I grew up going to events like these in the rural areas around my small hometown of Olean. It was fun to touch that country energy again. Urban farmer's markets in the Bay Area, with highbrow marketing, rapid turnaround, thronging crowds and long lines, are fun and exciting, but they are not quite like these homespun, slow-moving events. Different birds altogether.