How To Succeed At This
Being a solitary witch is incredibly challenging. I think many people underestimate HOW challenging it is. I don't mean to put you off, but to reassure you that you're doing really well at a difficult task.
Let's imagine you were to join the Church of England instead. You have a holy book, which you can read; and centuries of prayers and some really bangin' hymns to use; you have a lot of writers in your tradition to learn from; and most importantly, you have buildings and places of power, and once a week a polite man with a quiet voice will lead a ceremony he had all week to meditate on and write, because that is his full time job. All you have to do is show up.
Solitary Pagans must be their own vicars - a full time job, remember, a full time job! - plus doing the work of Mendelssohn and Leonardo in creating their own devotional art, writing their OWN BIBLE FROM SCRATCH, a task mortals have perfected over the past 2000 years, and so on. You're your own vicar, you're your own Pope. It's a LOT of work.
One problem with Paganism is, I think, the way it is framed as “work" and “practice” over “belief”. You can't really do wrong with belief. You're good in the eyes of the Lord, so long as you believe, and if you fuck up he'll forgive you. But you can neglect work, or do it badly, or less well than those around you. It's really disheartening to new Pagans, I think, to feel constantly like they are “not working hard enough” - oh great, magic is now one of the very many things in our success-driven society which is competitive, a job, something for winners, and if you do really well you can gain fame and money at it too.
So as I've written, I've tried to emphasise:
1. Making the work you do as easy as possible; most of what we do is straightforward, but when we go for a walk with the divine in mind each week of the year, the impact belies its simplicity. The tasks are not generally things you can be “good” or “bad” at, nor can you learn to be “better” at them - you just do them, and the act of repetition and experience brings insight over time.
2. Trying to recenter belief and faith as important parts of our tradition; I encourage you to sit quietly in the sun, and tell Penda about your day, or murmur the names of the gods, and feel like this is Doing Paganism Well, rather than feeling bad that you can't perform complex devotional rituals as often as the next chap.
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And here are some general pointers:
Use calendars
It's very important for you to make calendars and schedules. You can just show up on a Sunday at church. But if you don't plan anything as a Pagan, everything's on you. This website provides you with a basic suggestion for daily, weekly, and seasonal work. I use the day of the dark moon to plan out my coming month, and then break those tasks into subtasks.
Have A Routine
Routine is your friend. It's hard work to plan a Midsummer rite. Write something fairly generic as an outline, and then use it every year. Do the same for ritual calls, for invocations, for prayers. It reuses the effort and time you spent making a thing, and makes it more likely you'll do things more often - even if you don't have much time. Plus, it can help the brain become slippy - when the words of a prayer are automatic, your brain is released to do other things, and be open to contact.
Make special
Make things special. The last time I was in a religious house, I watched the family get dressed in clean Sunday best and head out for their morning meeting, then cook a Sunday roast. We can also “make special” by paying attention to small details. Having clothes which are the equivalent of a Sunday best, and getting or making special foods for rites are always, always worth the time you put into them. If you want a tool, make sure you do a spell over it before you begin work, and preferably stick some runes and symbols on it.
One thing that Ceremonial paths get right, while being ass-clenchingly pedantic and overly complex, is they make EVERYTHING special. You have to have a very specific robe, and a hat, and then you have to have this circle with these symbols in a language you don't understand, and you need to set up four guardians like so and make banners for each with the symbols of this and that. It's endlessly pernickety, but it helps program your mind subconsciously and makes you feel very Purposeful, as you're constantly performing little gestures which tell your mind “this is important. Focus, now.” And it gives you LOTS of ritual practice - you never hit the “...but what do I do now?” stage in high magic, because you'll likely never move past the first three months of requirements anyway - like enneagramming your sacred temple shoes with the third seal of Azura - because there's so much of it. I encourage you to make a lotus wand - it's got a lotus on the top, and coloured stripes all down the handle, and it looks Well Witchy. This is the level of manifestation were talking, here. The more effort you put in, the more important it is, the more real it becomes.
Use Symbols
So find symbols, and choose to see them as important. In the each level of Thelema, you must wear or aquire a robe with certain sacred symbols on it, and I'm sure Aleister Crowley pulled them out of his ass, but the time spent MAKING those robes nevertheless make you feel like you are Getting Somewhere. If you encounter a Grain Goddess, meditate on the image of the golden wheat-sheaf in her arms as if it was The Golden Wheatsheaf, as if there was something very important to understand about this piece of wheat. Create a sigil to represent Penda's crown, and sew it to your stuff. Focus on a rune as if it were a doorway to its wisdom. Take the name of a rune and repeat it to yourself as a mantra, empowering it with your breath as you slip into trance.
Slow down, these small steps are good steps. The subconscious works well with symbols. Symbols are more apt to follow you into your dreams, or to be found in unexpected placs.
This is a first draft, and subsequent drafts will include a wider lexicon of symbols to learn and other pedantic shit, not because they are necessary or objectively factual, but because this type of stuff is Good For You.
Celebrate Things
If you think about the important parts of Christmas, a lot of that will involve eating foods, listening to music, enjoying the atmosphere and partying.
It's a bit harder for us, as we have to create our own popular culture for many of our festivals. Still, finding low-key correspondences is pretty much the best for developing a consistent thing.