Ocean

After the swim meet, we drove out to the ocean.  Hello, my old friend!

May 31 Calendar

May 25 Calendar

Words That Follow Me

Yeshe Rabbit asked on Facebook:

My dad Dick Matthews has a felt scroll that always hung in his closet that says, "The glory of God is man fully alive." My mom Linda Matthews has a plaque on her dresser that says, "Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them better." Personally, I have two blocks of wood that have mottoes painted on them, "Kindness matters" and "Be extraordinary." These little phrases we choose to have in our spaces are interesting to me. What mottoes do you maybe have hung up somewhere for observation in your own daily life? What are the words that follow you around from room to room?

On Facebook I answered:

Since YesheRabbit asked, I have too many to list here, but maybe my favorite is: 

Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them and new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaknig your truth, and that is not speaking. -- Audre Lorde 

But this isn't Facebook, and I can ramble on as I please without length limitation so here are at least the ones that live in my work office with me (which includes the above).

"I always try to come from a place of love.  But sometimes you just gotta break it down for a motherfucker." -- RuPaul.

"Incremental Goodness: what small step can we take today to make things better?" A.C. (an awesome woman I work with).

"Content Strategy: a shared set of goals, guiding principles, and success metrics that guide the creation, delivery, and governance of content across an organization."  I don't have it attributed on my whiteboard, but I believe it's Christina Wotke.  You can replace "content" with anything else and it still holds true.

"Breathe. (pri 1) [gratitude, compassion]."  That's a reminder to myself when things are getting stressful...
"Drink water too."  What can I say, sometimes when things get crazy I forget some of the basics...

"Real, radical change happens when someone in a position of authority turns to a blowhard and says, 'You are wrong. Stop talking.'"  Bee Lavender.  I have a whole post linking to the article this is from.  It is Required Reading.

"Stop not being awesome."  From the Discardia blog.

"ISO: 21st Century -- Information wants out of three ring binders.  ^And microfilm!"  I can't remember where I got the first part, the second part was something I added.  Though, given the rapid shifting still in digital content formats, they may become unreadable faster than microfilm, and I acknowledge it was sort of tongue in cheek as my inner archivist whimpers sadly off in a corner.

"No one can go back and make a brand new start but anyone can start now and make a brand new end."  Can't remember where I saw this one or who it came from.

"Assume the best!"  One of our directors used to say this, things are better when the group culture assumes that everyone is trying their best to do the right thing.

"Ownership is not making the decisions.  Ownership is being responsible for the results."  I think this is another Christina Wotke thing.

"You don't have to attend every fight you're invited to."  Dorothy Parker.

"Before a revolution, a revolutionist leads a daring and romantic life.  After a successful revolution, she must erect a distribution system for olives." -- Sparrow.  Sort of the same idea of  'before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water - after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water' but I think this captures the anticipation of big achievement, and the sense of pragmatic, practical efforts, *work!* that must still take place afterwards better.

Aaand, now that I mention it, 'Before/after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water' is also represented.

Lots more words in here.  "Keep calm, carry on." (I put googly eyes in the crown, because reasons).

"Every day is a good day in library automation." -- Richard Jost

"Do not get distracted by teh dum.  FOCUS."  Work politics gave rise to this one. I was having a very bad day and there was so much to do.  Doing the things that need to get done gets everyone further than getting caught up in the drama and politics...

All sorts of meme stuff that is amusing ("When life give me lemons, I squeeze them over life's eyes" & "What which does not kill us will regret not finishing the job," etc.).

I also have our company mission and values which are too long for me to go into here, but it's important for those things to be visible to my teams and to me as those are our organization's guiding principles & they're good solid ones.

So many words.  I think the last one that I'm going to type out (because I am a word collector and this is getting long!) is something I got from a friend about assessing what work to take on, because I think these things are important to consider.  All four of these will ideally be complementary.  :

• How do I like to work (within an organization, and does this project/job/etc meet these qualifications)?
• What is success (for the project, for the client, for the organization, for the team, for me)?
• What do we get out of it?
• What do I get out of it?

On Safety and Warding

I will likely need to come back to this.  CAYA has such a nice pragmatic approach to safety and warding.  I really appreciated the introduction to the concept of 'throwing shade' in terms of negative jabs at others, that kind of bitchy, gossipy, negging stuff that happens as being something that needs warding.  Makes total sense.  Lots I liked about Rabbit's presentation.

In class itself, we did a nice visualization to see/create our 'shields.'  I am sort of grappling with the idea that I don't have one cover-all, and what I need for work is very different for the ones I have outside work and how/do I integrate.  

I had two very strong images one of which blurred into the other, that of kaleidoscope with vivid colors and fractaling/fracturing of images (from my perspective looking out through it, not sure what that looks like trying to see in from it, but need to consider that and probably do some significant work there given my various roles), that eased into dappled sunlight through green leaves with blue sky...   

So many complex thoughts that I am not sure I'm at the point of articulating yet though I think ties pretty clearly into the faceting of self and social constructs merging into location/space-related stuff.  I can access kaleidoscope easily, here at work, but the location-based is significantly more industrial than anything so natural as dappled sunlight through leaves!  Sort of makes sense, in my head...  There will, I'm sure, be more thoughts as I continue to process the things I've been introduced to think through.

May 18 Calendar

May Mother of the New Time

I dance at the edge of the world

Like my Ancestresses before me.

I am a sacred vessel.

My blood is indomitable.

Cradling the Now at my breast.

Nurturing the future unfolding.

There is nothing to fear.

I am a Mother of the New Time.

Mothers of the New Time

April Homework

In your journey in finding a coven or a Pagan organization to join what are some of the things you personally are looking for in a group. What are the things you watch out for. Please write a summary on each.

• I'm looking for a group of generally like (but open) minded folks who are diverse, yet traveling a similar-ish non-mainstream spiritual path.  I think I'd be merrily on my solitary way, except for Jaina speaking so highly of the inclusiveness of this group, and thinking it would be nice to travel this path with some like-minded folks for a while.  I'm also looking for a group that allows me a significant amount of autonomy in my practices as [working, parent] put my "me" time to where I can fit it in between that whole working, homework, school events, extracurricular activities, etc stuff.  I also really like online communities -- the whole sense of Indra's net connecting bells or jewels that ring/shine all over an extended geographic community.
• What I watch out for -- "True Believers"- anyone whose way is The Way.  Like one of Indra's jewels, I believe we all facet/reflect/refract the Universe's experience in a unique way.  What works for one sometimes works for others, but it can't be an assumed "universal" experience because we're all coming to each experience with our own histories, cultures, interests, and connections to the Universe. I watch for other intolerances as well.  As I get older, my yellow flags of caution have played out often enough to be red flags that I'm taking any flagging of slow down/caution as srsly caution, and needs substantial justification rather than 'that's interesting, I'll have to keep an eye on it..."

Fun Question! Yet a serious one. If you would form your own/new coven today. What will be the focus of the coven and why?

•  I think if I were to form my own/new coven, it might try to look very similar to what CAYA looks like in terms of inclusive diversity of paths, tied to my answers to Chapter 4 questions.  It's possible that coordinating disparate geographic locations for ritual might play into that somehow as well...

I would like you to take time and think about your ideal coven meeting place. Will it be in a forest? Or at a friends house? Or every place just seems right. Please share your thoughts of your ideal meeting stop.

• My favorite gatherings have been fairly spontaneous outdoors events.  There is something very comfortable and connecting about being outside.  I find inside not to be quite as connected, perhaps a stronger influence of "civilized" that makes it more difficult for me in a social, "civil" setting to access that part of me which is pretty gleefully feral.  That said, I'm pretty comfortable online as well.

Calendar May 11

The Unexpected

That... was not quite what I anticipated my afternoon to be. And after thinking I was going to keep a minimal altar... I suddenly have three. Each one has less than I used to have, but as a whole... it sort of all spreads out.  Which.  Was unexpected.  It's alright. I'll see how it goes and make adjustments as they seem necessary and relevant.

So that happened. And it's pretty.  And it's good.

More On Ethics

"Happiness does not come from a job. It comes from knowing what you truly value, and behaving in a way that’s consistent with those beliefs.

Many people today resent the suggestion that they’re in charge of the way the feel. But trust me, Parker. Those people are mistaken. That was a big lesson from Dirty Jobs, and I learned it several hundred times before it stuck. What you do, who you’re with, and how you feel about the world around you, is completely up to you."

http://news.distractify.com/people/mike-rowe-crushes-a-mans-hopes-for-finding-a-dream-job-and-i-agree-with-him-100/?v=1

-- Mike Rowe

Calendar May 4

On Stuff

I am trying to put thought into what I put out -- I no longer need to put All The Things On Display To Tell The World Who I Am.  I'm trying to find that balance of having key things out and having the rest have an appropriate place so that I can access with ease when I have need for them.  I've also reached that point where, I can't quite let go of something (some of those books) because they were so important to me and informed me at crucial stages... but they don't necessarily inform me now.  Sometimes I want to find specific things in them, but I've grown past their use as a tool I need to have immediately on hand.

It's a very conscious process of trying to figure out what gets put out as something that I want to reflect Me - Now, vs Me and 4+ decades of baggage that maybe doesn't represent Me - Now, much less Me - Going Forward.  

Distractions

New computer arrived today. Named it Theogony. Because reasons.