Queen of Swords

I had a long-overdue realization yesterday, one of those "Well doh!" moments.

I've always thought of myself as someone who wasn't particularly interested in "helping others" as a goal. There's some irony to this, given that I've been working as an administrative assistant most of my adult life. For those who really like helping others it's a great job, for those who are called to serve it's a great job. Me? No. I'm good at it, but I don't enjoy it.

But I realized the other day that I do enjoy taking calls from members who need help and don't know what to do or where else to go. About a decade ago I was temping at Nintendo and enjoyed being a help line rep. A few months ago on Facebook I joked that "I answer phones and I know things."

My realization of yesterday was that while I don't enjoy scheduling other peoples' meetings, or ordering catering, or taking notes for meetings I don't have another role in, I *do* enjoy helping people with my knowledge. I enjoy eduating them. I enjoy helping them connect with who or what they need. I enjoy 'teaching people to fish' so they can do things themselves.

I don't like helping people with mundane tasks. I do like helping people with my knowledge.

It feels like an important realization.

I know I said I was going to fast from online communication, but I've found that in releasing myself from feeling the need to keep up with all my online contacts, I'm freeing up the space for personal reflection that's been missing for a long time.

Thinking more about dreams, meta-story, goals, life choices. . . And stumbled (perhaps not for the first time) on the idea that "embodiment" is a concept that I should be applying to my dreams.

My dreams of what I want to be have almost always been safely projected into "somewhere else" -- fantasy locations that freed me from any obligation to take them seriously or do the work required to make them come true. I've already blogged to death the possible reasons behind that, but shied away from really getting into the antidotes.

The idea of embodiment brings a more wholistic attitude to it than simply "well, just start visualizing things in the real world." The gap is too big for that. Grounding the dreams in my body somehow feels more powerful. It's more immediate that visualizing something that is still yet to come.

Still working on this, obviously, but wanted to jot down the thoughts while they were fresh in my mind, before I go out for lunch with an attractive older gentleman I met at the sacred sexuality meet-up. . .

A couple of my friends have recently posted the "10 Things I've Done (That You Haven't)" meme.

It's been a couple of years since I've done this one, and I'm not sure whether to be reassured or concerned that I'm having a hard time coming up with a good list.

On the one hand, I could feel frustrated that I'm not living an interesting enough life to generate unique experiences. On the other, I seem to be in good company with other people who share what might once have been unique experiences. Some of the more "way out" things I might put down aren't unique among my friends.

I'm going to continue to ponder this and see if I can come up with 10.

I very much appreciate the responses to my identity posts. You've given me a lot of valuable food for thought.

watcher457's comment was especially helpful, on a paradigm-shifting level:

IMHO, I think trying to define your identity under one name is as restricting, if not more so, than using other names. You are not trying to disown the work you do under a different name. You may be doing it for reasons of protection, but there is something powerful about creating your own identity. It is not creating something that is fake to hide behind. It's allowing another part of yourself to shine through, and I don't believe that this self has to be identified under your given name. I believe, and I'm just going on intuition at the moment, that the name you use for X spiritual purposes can be, could be, the name of your Shadow self, and then there is you, and they are both you, and learning to accept them both as equally valid parts of you allows you to decide how much of that you really want to give to the rest of the world. Not everyone deserves every part of you. Some only deserve a small part of you and just aren't worthy of knowing you as anything else.


Other people have made similar observations, and/or covered part of this at other times, but there's something about the way she put this together that's resonating especially deeply for me.

Maybe some don't "deserve" to know more than a particular section of myself. But I think that part of what's driving me to wrestle with this issue with the intensity I am is the desire to be known, respected, and loved in all my parts, not just the "socially acceptable" ones -- and there is something about doing that as a single person, under my public name, that feels very compelling.

It may also be an unrealistic desire, and I need to grapple with that as well.

I've seen some pretty sad consequences of individuals (one in particular comes to mind) insisting on being totally open with the wrong people, people who should never have been expected to be able to understand or accept -- much less appreciate -- the things sie wanted to share.

I'd never thought to compare myself with that person before. . . It puts a whole new perspective on this for me.

I didn't run a lot of games during the decade-plus that I was a member of a regular group, probably a half-dozen or so.

One of the unexpected challenges I ran into when creating a scenario was how bad to be.

Our games were almost never fatal, so it wasn't an issue of how hard I was going to work to try to kill the characters, it was more an issue of how evil my main antagonist was going to be, and how much of that evil I was going to need to play out in character interaction. What would the NPC body count be? Would I do terrible things to the PC's if I had the chance? How far would I take it? I would have visions of possible encounters, then flinch back from them, certain I could never actually play them out, even across a tabletop.

You see, I was afraid of how much of my own shadow might come out. I was afraid that if I tapped into my own darkness, even for the sake of creating an adventure scenario, it would reveal too much of a part of myself I didn't usually admit was there at all, much less put on display for others.

I don't think I'm a particularly bad person, and I don't want to overstate this. . . but as I've been working on "old business" I started thinking of this.

It made me wonder if other GM's ever worried about this, or has it always been so much "just a game" and/or "just a story" that it was never an issue?

I think the issue was heightened for me because my old group was very self-conscious about the degree to which our characters expressed different aspects of ourselves, whether we planned it that way or not. Perhaps with a different group I would never have worried about just how much of my shadow I was letting out to play. I don't know. . .

I was struggling with an emotional issue earlier this morning, and had the following insights:

1. Whatever problem or pain I'm facing, feeling like I don't understand makes it even more painful. The hurtful thing itself is layered over by stress and frustration about my lack of understanding, which often contains seeds of guilt or a sense of failure. I tend to flay myself with thoughts like If I could just understand, this wouldn't be a problem!

2. The quickest way to undercut my pride, my independence, my self of personal responsibility, is to make me believe that someone nearby understands the situation, the task, the concept, better than I do. I will turn to that person instinctively, seeking the information and understanding I lack, looking to them for leadership based on their understanding (or my perception of it). Sometimes this is a perfectly appropriate act; sometimes it is not, as my priestess teacher keeps trying to get me to understand when I ask her to tell me things I'm supposed to be figuring out by myself.

The converse is also true. Nothing is a stronger prompt to me to step up and assert myself than the belief that I understand more or better than the others present. I try to have a sense of humility when processing these perceptions. . .

Both of these insights are consistent with my Enneagram type, which is Five. The "holy idea" of the 5 is "I will understand."

This tendency toward self-affliction when I do not believe I understand certainly undermines my entrepreneurial efforts. If my sense of self-worth, my sense of confidence, my sense of fitness to lead, are strongly grounded in my sense of how well I understand what the situation is, what needs to be done, what is appropriate and called for, then going into new territory puts me at a significant handicap, one I don't yet understand how to deal with or mitigate. This, of course, triggers a cascade of self-doubt.

Friends who use Tarot may rightly suggest that the energy of the Fool card would be appropriate to this issue -- but really looking at that card with the intention of applying to my situation makes me feel like breaking out in hives.

Mentoring is probably the best solution, it suddenly occurs to me. I've been reluctant to reach out, not wanting to bother others. . . but I've also had a couple of people come to my attention recently who could be helpful in at least giving me a sense of orientation to the territory.

As far as my spiritual work goes. . . This is probably something to bring to my vigil next week. . .

It was only after I'd posted that declaration yesterday that I started to understand its power.

My former MyCo colleagues and my family are thinking of me as "unemployed."

I am thinking of myself as "self employed." There is such a profound difference in the implications of those two labels.

If I were "unemployed" the power to shape my future would lie very much in the hands of the companies I applied to. I'd have some responsibility, of course, but ultimately it would be the company/hiring manager which decided whether or not I would have a job again.

"Self employed" puts the power and responsibility entirely in my own hands. Yes, I need to find more clients who want to do business with me, but no one person or organization will hold the lion's share of the power over my destiny. That lies squarely with me.

"Unemployed" means that I don't have a job.

"Self Employed" means that I do have a job and that I have the responsibility to work at it consistently.

Now that I've gotten through last week, I can finish answering the questions left in response to this meme. You can still ask questions there if you'd like.


Someone asked:

What is your strongest compass?

After knocking this question around in my head for a while, I'm coming to the conclusion that this is one of those symbols that for some reason just doesn't work for me. But I'll give it my best shot, and the person who asked the question is welcome to clarify or follow up here or on the original entry.

I don't have a single philosophy or goal or commitment that motivates me, or which I turn to for guidance more than anything else. When I was growing up (until age 22) I would have said that Christianity was that compass. Obviously my spirituality is still a powerful, fundamental force in my life, but I'm not sure I could call it a compass.

However I have two values which -- as I look back on my life -- virtually always outweigh everything else.

The first is responsibility to my family. When I was growing up, this meant that I was always conscious of the impact my actions would have on my family's reputation. (My father was a public figure.) Good behavior started at home. When I didn't live up to the expectations of good behavior, I "knew" that if my actions might hurt my family in some way -- either the external reputation or the feelings of my parents or sister -- I needed to be sure that I shielded them from those consequences. Even when my marriage was breaking up, I felt deep responsibility to my about-to-be-Ex to continue to treat him as well as possible, to not take advantage of him, and etc. Now, as a single mother, Wolfling's well-being is a fundamental concern. So is the well-being of my now-aging parents.

In short: I always consider the needs of and impact to my family when I make decisions. And I usually place those considerations very, very high. Even now, some of my decisions about how open and out to be about my "alt" beliefs and sexuaity are driven less by concerns for my own reputation than by how it would impact my parents.

The second value is passion. When my passions are engaged, just about everything else -- except responsibility to family -- goes out the window. And even the family responsibility usually gets compromised down to shielding rather than upholding.

I've made most of the major decisions in my life based on passion -- and when I haven't felt passion, my decisions have been ones of convenience and expediency. Which goes a long way to explaining the state of my career, since I never felt passion around any job opportunity or career except the rocket company. The biggest ethical violations I've committed have been driven by passion -- all within the context of personal relationships.

Passion is the fuel of my creativity as well, whether that be writing or gaming or other activities.

One of the huge downsides to being passion driven -- and smart enough to have most things that I want come easily to me -- is that I never developed discipline or persistence. So when my passion flags, it's hard for me to keep going. Where others bootstrap themselves and continue on, drawing on values of faithfulness, persistence, discipline, duty, ambition, or etc. I simply go dead in the water. Not all the time, but much more often than has been good for me.


So I don't have an external, objective compass, I have Jack Sparrow's compass: it points in the direction of what I want the most.

Which means that right now, when I don't have any passion in my life, my decisions and sense of possibilities are being framed primarily by a sense of duty to a dependent child and aging parents whose sensibilities are not in line with my vocational dreams.

No wonder I'm having a hard time motivating myself to step outside the boundaries of what they raised me to consider acceptable and responsible -- and which they continue to reinforce when I mention my ideas about pursuing additional opportunities. My father immediately tells me not to do anything that might compromise my position at or commitment to the day job and the financial security it gives me, and my mother expresses worry and concern that time spent pursuing my vocation will have a negative impact on Wolfling because I won't "be there for her." And those warnings go straight to my gut.


I guess the deepest question right now is: why don't I feel passion around my vocation? Do I feel too much fear? Too much inhibition? This is something I want. It's something that gives me deep pleasure and satisfaction when I engage in it. Why do those feelings seem to vanish shortly after the experiences?

An hour or so ago I sent an email to "Nick" asking him how he perceived I had changed in the decade or so since we'd last been in regular contact.

I'm not going to post his entire answer here, but it can be summarized as "more peaceful, more centered, more humble, more open."

Which isn't so bad.

In my response I found myself writing the following: I think I've achieved a certain level of graceful (as opposed to belligerant) not giving a damn.

I liked that.

When I was growing up, I was taught to be very aware of the expectations of society and church, and to be sure that everything I did was appropriate and would meet with the approval of the authorities of family, school, church, and community. I worry far less about that now. In fact, most of the time, I pay attention only to the degree that common courtesy and professionalism demand.

At the same time, I would hope that at those times when I do stand against expectations I do it in a way that doesn't cause gratuitous conflict or drama.

A certain level of graceful not giving a damn.

Last night at around 8:30 I was lying on the couch writing in my paper journal. My partner was sitting in the rocking chair in my bedroom with his computer on a tray table doing his homework. My daughter was sitting up to the dinner table in the living room doing her homework. The tv was turned off. There was no music on. The upstairs was quiet.

I just stopped and savored the focused silence of the house, the peacefulness of the quiet that had other people in it. This is how my house should be, I thought.

Not all the time, of course. I want evenings of laughter, of games, of friends over, of movie watching too. But this evening of focused silence has been all too rare -- and it was deeply nurturing to me.

The journal writing was difficult at first. I spend so much time at a keyboard that I've fallen out of the knack of hand-writing -- but the more I relaxed into the silence, the more easily the words flowed from my fingers.