It's Been A Week

[qos]

It’s been a busy week. My primary challenge has been trying to integrate and balance my various roles. In no particular order, I am a mother, a seminarian/graduate student, a temp employee, a member (and board member) of my church, a friend, a member of an RPG group struggling to re-create itself, and chatelaine of my home. Once I've been to work and to class, there has not been enough time to get my homework done, get to church, keep the house clean, support my friends, and spend sufficient quality time with my daughter. Much less pray/meditate, work on my novel, and get enough sleep.

There was a major change at work yesterday.
I originally came to TMO as the temporary administrative assistant to the director of this department, stepping in to fill a gap left when the previous holder of the position simply walked out one day. I was here for about six weeks, then, in the middle of the interview process, the director was promoted, and I was asked to remain in my position to provide support and continuity for this department. (The director hired someone else to be her assistant as she went on to her new role.) Yesterday, a new director was appointed, but he won’t assume his new duties until February 1st. He is the person who will eventually decide whether to hire me permanently. I started the courtship process shortly after the announcement came out, emailing him to introduce myself and offering to assist him in the transition in any way possible.

The members of the department continue to express strong support of me, which is nice, but it doesn’t guarantee that the new director will feel the same way. There are plenty of competent admins out there. A good personality mesh is what makes the difference during the selection process. We’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, I’m glad it’s Friday. I’m looking forward to getting caught up on my reading for my classes this weekend, wreaking more order in my home, playing with my daughter, and going to see “Master and Commander.”

Comments

[gothic-coop.livejournal.com]

I am sure you will get along with the new director. You are very easy going person.

A note about your titles.
You for got one of yoyur titles.


Princess.


Have a great day J.

Royal Titles

[qos.livejournal.com]

Ha!

Actually, I'm working on moving beyond "Princess" to "Queen."
And that's more serious than it sounds.

Princess Leia aside, on an archetypal level, a Queen is a Princess who has grown up and accepted responsibility for the leadership and nurturing of her realm, not just focusing on her own needs and priorities. As a mother, homemaker, and priestess, I've been needing to stretch beyond the comfortable self-centeredness of my earlier life.

That's a big part of the struggle for integration I mentioned in the journal entry. I've spent most of my life living a virgin (one-in-herself) lifestyle. I'm learning now how to live in a web of relationships and mutual responsibilities beyond what I've ever experienced before. And it's not easy. But it's essential for my continuing growth.

Re: Royal Titles

[gothic-coop.livejournal.com]

This sound like Jungian Archetypal personal development to me. I read a book years ago called King, Warrior, Magician, Lover : Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine discusing this type of thing. In this book and others of jungs books that I have read disscusses the movment from the child archetype from to a more self-actualized adult archetype.
Jung's psychology is based firstly on his own experience with human beings, normal, neurotic, and psychotic. It is not a kind of psycho pathology, though it takes the empirical material of pathology into account, but his theories are in his own words 'suggestions and attempts at the formulation of a new scientific psychology based in the first place upon immediate experience with human beings'.

You probley know all of this already and I am just babbling.

Re: Royal Titles

[qos.livejournal.com]

I was introduced to archetypes through Jean Shinoda Bolen's "Goddesses in Everywoman -- a fascinating book which I still turn to as I work on personal growth or try to understand other women. She uses the Greek goddesses as her models, and they work very well.

The Queen archetype does not come from Bolen (who focses mostly on relationships), but is something I've developed on my own over the years. It started out almost as a joke, with the princess bit, but became a useful tool as I reflected on who I was vs. who I wanted to be.

Re: Royal Titles

[gothic-coop.livejournal.com]

I find that archetypes are fascinating tools to look at self as a measurement. I find Jung’s psychology to be too much about what he thinks of things, instead of self-exploration. He like to pigeonhole people emotions and issues.

I find the goddess concepts of archetypes a very interesting avenue to explore. Most of the Greek and Roman god where just (I am not a pantheonist) concepts to explain there own issues they had with women (mostly men) designing what the goddess would look like and what they represented.

Just what I need is another book for my backpack.