Category Archives: Personal Development

Gender and Sexuality, Introspection, Personal Development, Society

Let there be equality, and let it begin with me

Leave a comment

As I’ve considered thinking about Wednesday’s post about the way various women are portrayed in the book “Destiny,” I started wondering what I had hoped to accomplish with the post.  After all, it’s not like I expect future authors of the Rogue Angel series to read my post and try to improve the series’ portrayal of women.  I simply don’t have that level of influence.

In many ways, I think I was engaging in a bit of navel-gazing, though I consider it much-needed navel-gazing.  You see, I’ve never picked up a book and given much thought to how many female characters there were, how those characters interacted, how they were portrayed, or what other notions about women were being reinforced — implicitly or explicitly.

Having spent many months learning more about feminist thought and how society perceives and treats women from fantastic bloggers like Personal Failure, Fannie, Ana, and Mmy, I felt it would be a good exercise to step back, try to see past my own privilege, and consider my reading material in a different light.  In effect, I was seeking to become a better ally to women.

I must say, it was an enlightening experience.  In the course of seeking to recall the book and write a post about it, I found a number of problematic themes to write about — more than I even originally expected to find.  These are things that I would have overlooked normally.  Or if I had noticed them at all, I would have shrugged them off as minor things, rationalizing that with such a powerful, independent woman like Annja as the main character, such things couldn’t possibly matter.  The kickass woman made everything alright, right?

Well, no, I don’t think so.  Positive and negative portrayals of women — or any marginalized group, for that matter — are not mutually exclusive, and the tendency to ignore the latter when the former is present only allows the negative ones to flourish in the culture.  So learning to spot these problematic themes is important.

I think for me, the best example of my normal oversight of this sort of thing came from when I went to write the post and could not remember any women in the story other than Annja.  I had originally boldly declared that the book failed the Bechdel test on that grounds alone.

And yet, as I mined the book for quotes and details for my posts, I ran into two other women in the story.  One woman (Maria) I had forgotten completely.  The other woman (the unnamed server), my brain had surreptitiously rewritten as a man, demonstrating that I’m still perfectly capable of assuming that a man is the default human.  That was not a comfortable realization, let me tell you.  I find myself wondering how many other women in the story I have invisibilized simply by forgetting about them or remaking them into men in my mind.

It would be easy to blame the culture and say that I only did these things because it’s the way my upbringing and experiences have conditioned me to think and behave.  While that’s certainly true, I think that’s a terrible excuse.  After all, I am a part of that society and my actions contribute to the same conditioning of other people unless I do something about it.  And ultimately, I am the one person in the world I have control over.

So writing the post has further awakened me to something about the society and myself that I don’t like.  So now I’m looking to change things by changing myself.  I am currently in the process of reading “Solomon’s Jar,” the second book in the Rogue Angel series, and I’m choosing to read it more mindfully.  I am looking out for female characters so that I can remember them.  I’m looking for problematic themes while reading them, rather than thinking about them after the fact.  I’m keeping an eye out for whatever messages the book might try to send me.  It’ll be interesting to see what I have to say about the next book and my reaction to it.

If I can raise one or two other reader’s awareness, that’ll be a bonus.

Emotions, Grief, Love, Personal Development

Old Diary Entry: Tears of Gold

2 Comments
"Freya" (1901) by Johannes Gehrts. T...

Image via Wikipedia

I wrote the following entry and posted it to Bloopdiary (when I was still there) on 19 August 2005, when I was still processing through my breakup with Mike, who I had been with for four years.  I recently mentioned this entry to someone else and realized I no longer had a copy online.  So now it’s online again.  Enjoy!

As I’m getting settled into my new apartment and finding ways to establish myself in Rochester, I find myself realizing just how little I think of Mike. In some ways, I find myself in that strange state where it just doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve cried my tears, and while I feel the slight ache of being alone once again (and not getting any younger), I have a strange peace about having lost him.

It was a rough journey getting here. I found myself emotionally distraught about the whole thing. I cried so many tears. To be honest, I never realized I could cry so much over the end of a relationship when I was the person to end it. But there you have it. And I think I learned a lot about it. I came to understand one of Freyja’s myths a bit better.

When Freyja lost Od, she cried tears of gold. Indeed, according to Snorri, this is why “Freyja’s tears” became a kenning for gold. I always found the fact that her tears were gold a mild curiosity. Now I see it as an incredibly profound mystery. And I have a much greater appreciation for the value of grief. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that true grief is a sacred act in its own right. Hence the tears of gold.

I wanted to quit being sad over the breakup. I kept wanting to “move on already.” I didn’t want to shed any more tears. I was “wasting time.” But no, the tears, the sadness, the grief kept coming. And my sweet Lady kept telling me, “No, you need this. Cry your tears. They’re my golden tears.” So I did the only thing I could do, I cried, and I explored my grief.

Then I realized why I cried so much. I was experience true grief, the kind that only comes when one loves so freely and without reservation, only to lose that love. In effect, I wept bitterly because I loved fully. And there is a certain beauty in that.

You see, I think that’s the mistake we too often make. We’re too afraid of that kind of grief, so we avoid being so vulnerable. We only love grudgingly, often holding back and never truly letting go. We do that because we think that sense of grief is bad and to be avoided.

After the past couple months, I’ve come to a different way of thinking. As painful as such sorrow and grief may be, it is in its own way a celebration. My tears were bitter, but they were born of my precious love. I came to understand that as I cherished my love, I could cherish my grief which came as a result of it. In that view, they became bittersweet, and I could see how they really were tears of gold.

I’m not sure many people would understand that. But that’s okay. I guess it’s one of those things you have to experience and come to understand yourself. Me explaining it just won’t do. But for those who do understand, I can just imagine their reaction to reading this.

Paganism, Personal Development, Witchcraft

Video: Personal Power and Silence

Leave a comment

I figured it was time for another video.  I took a break from ethics because I wanted to talk about personal power and silence.

Personally, I think that we as a society tend to forget that personal power comes from those deep recesses inside ourselves that usually get drowned out by the noise of the world around us and even that of the more active parts of our conscious mind.  By starting the journey from a place of silence (or by plunging into such a place), I think we have a much higher rate of success.

I also couldn’t resist putting in a bit of a plug for Psychic’s Thyme and mentioning the fantastic Ostara ritual held there last night.

Friends, Memories, Personal Development

A Bad Leadership Fit

1 Comment

I remember how frustrated Diane, our old IVCF staff worker, used to get with me my sophomore year in college.  I had decided to get involved in IVCF leadership that year and had taken a position on the chapter’s executive board.  It quickly became apparent that I was not well suited or that kind of leadership.  My outlook was simply more relational.

The scene played out several times, varying only in details.  The day of a meeting would roll around, and I’d be talking to someone.  The conversation would be deep and personal, as I was never good at small talk and people tend to spill their guts around me anyway.  I’d note the time and decide that continuing the conversation was important than getting to my meeting on time.  Often, I wouldn’t make it to the meeting at all.  This would frustrate Diane to no end, adn she’d try to get me to understand that while relationships were important, always breaking my other commitments for the sake of a conversation wasn’t entirely right either.  I don’t think she ever got very far with me on that score.  Eventualy, we agreed to muddle through the rest of the year.  We also agreed that I’d take a role the following year that would be better suited to my nature.

I’ve grown a lot in the fifteen years that have passed since then.  As a more mature person, I can now more readily see Diane’s point more clearly.  And I’m more likely to judge a relational need more carefully these days, taking into account how immediate the need is, how serious my other commitments are, and other such factors.  Today, there’s a real possibility that I’ll say, “This is important.  I care and I want to be there for you.  But can we talk about it in a couple of hours?”

But I’m still mainly relationally oriented.  I’ll keep my commitments to activities like meetings to a minimum.  The difference, however, is that I’m less likely to take on sucha  commitment in the first place, rather than taking it on and then breakign it later.  Because I’d rather have my time free so I can listen to people.  I understand that now.  And I allow for that preference reponsibly.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Personal Development

Freedom to err

Leave a comment
Statue of Mohandas K. Gandhi in Waikiki, Honol...

Image via Wikipedia

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

–Mohandas Gandhi

I never heard of the above quote by Gandhi before.  That’s a shame, as it encapsulates something I’ve been thinking and saying for a long time.  We have to be free to make mistakes.  We have to be free to be wrong.  Until we can grant ourselves that freedom, we cannot grant ourselves any freedom.  Because any course of action we might take will be bound up by fears.

When faced with a choice, there’s always that chance we will make a bad choice.  It’s a fact of reality.  We may do our best to make the most informed choices humanly possible.  But there’s no such thing as total knowledge.  There’s no such thing as being perfectly informed.  So sometimes, we make a bad choice on our imperfect information.  We either accept that possibility, or we rob ourselves of the ability to act at all, out of fear of doing exactly that.

And truth be told, why not allow ourselves the freedom to make a wrong choice?  Is making a wrong choice really such a bad thing?  Certainly, wrong choices can cause problems.  (But then, so can right choices.)  And wrong choices can hurt people.  (But then, so can right choices.)  But in my experience, there are few situations where the the choices and their results are so awful, so irreversible, that it would spell the end of the world, or the end of anything at all.

In most cases, a wrong choice leads to a mess that can be cleaned up.  So we clean up the mess, we repair the damage the wrong choice created, and we learn from the experience.  What’s more, we’re probably better equipped to make better choices in the future because of that learning experience.  That’s the gift of allowing ourselves the freedom to be wrong.

I would rather make a thousand mistakes then never make any choices because I’m frozen by the fear of being wrong.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Personal Development

I must be geting vain as I get older

3 Comments

NailsLast Tuesday evening, a woman working one of the kiosks stopped me while I was headed out of the mall. She asked me if she could ask me a question, and I foolishly answered in the affirmative. She ended up grabbing my right thumb and began to work on it with the “miracle three step nail smoother and polisher” she was trying to sell. So she spent three to four minutes going through her lengthy spiel (which I admit was quite entertaining) while she smoothed, buffed, and shined my thumbnail. When she was done, she had me hold my thumbs side by side and compare the nails. Sure enough, my right thumbnail was much shinier, smoother, and nicer to look at. Of course, at this point, the woman encouraged me to buy the whole nail care package she was offering for $40. (When I said no, she offered to go as low as $25.)

The woman made one critical error in her pitch. She was trying to convince me to buy the kit for my sister or my mother. (We had already established the fact that I’m single by the close of her spiel.) It never once occurred to her that I might like to have smooth, shiny nails. In fact, I would encourage anyone selling any sort of “beauty product” to never overlook the possibility that the man you’re talking to is either a metrosexual or a gay man. (Okay, in the latter case, it also helps if said gay man also happens to be a bit on the “girly” side.) Had she managed to appeal to my own sense of vanity, she might have made the sale.

Single NailAs it turns out, she made a sale for Wal-Mart instead. As I walked away looking at my shiny thumbnail and thinking I really did like the way it looked, it occurred to me that just about any department store probably carries a similar product. So today after lunch, I wandered off to Wal-Mart and looked through their nail care aisle. Sure enough, I found a similar three-step tool for working on my nails. (They had a seven-step tool as well, but that just seemed way to complicated for me. I’m not that vain — at least not yet.) And the silly thing cost me $1.05 rather than $25.

Granted, the $25 kit the woman tried to sell me had much more in it. But she didn’t really demonstrate or otherwise do a good job of selling the rest of the kits contents. So I got just what I was looking for and did so inexpensively.

As soon as I got home, I gave my new toy a try. I actually think my nails turned out pretty well. They’re not perfect, and I suspect that’s because I need a bit more practice (and patience) to get everything just right. But they certainly look better than they did.

And there’s just something about making my nails look nice that makes me feel good about myself. I guess it’s a pampering thing.

Daily Life, Online Life, Personal Development, Sexuality, Spiritual Development

Life gets interesting

3 Comments

This afternoon, I decided to go to the psychic fair at the Henrietta Holiday Inn. While there, I decided to get an aura portrait reading (that’s where the psychic sketches the colors in your aura and explain what they mean and how it’s affecting your life) by one of the people there. The theme of my reading was that I need to begin working more on integrating my spirituality into the rest of my life. This wasn’t a surprising message, because I’ve been getting it from different angles. In fact, over the past couple of weeks, I’d say the gods have gotten more aggressive about this message. In fact, I think they’ve gotten to the point where they’re basically saying “do this or we’re going to do it for you.”

For example, a couple Saturdays ago, Marina invited myself and Rudi (a former dancer in the company) to come to her home for lunch after the beginner’s jazz dance class. While there, I mentioned that I had to run to Psychic’s Thyme at some point that afternoon. Of course, the other two asked me what that was, so I told them. I ended up telling them about my spiritual interests, which fascinated both of them. I ended up telling them about a couple of my experiences with seeing spirits (to my credit, I’m getting better at being open about the fact that I’m developing my abilities as a medium). By the end of the discussion, they both decided they want me to give them a reading after next Saturday’s class. And Marina has gone on to tell at least one other person (a student in her intermediate class) associated with the company about my interests. I suspect that by the time she’s done, everyone in or associated with the company will know. Hopefully, they’re all as open-minded as Marina and Rudi were. (Actually, I’ll be happy as long as no one tries to perform an exorcism on me.)

The second example of this came during this past week. When I got a break from work, I decided to quickly check my site stats for this blog. While checking them out, I discovered that someone visited my site from work on Thursday afternoon. I was quite surprised by this, and quickly confirmed that it wasn’t a visit I made myself. As I dug into this (I even downloaded the server logs for that day so I could check the parts of my domain that my two Sitemeter accounts don’t cover), I discovered that my visitor must have found my site at least somewhat fascinating. While they read only a couple of archives and two individual posts from this blog, they also visited my Dear Lover, Journey (I guess I’m out at work now!), my main site, and my photo albums.

I’m not sure how they found my site. The logs indicate there was no referring site, which suggests they typed the address in directly. I asked the two people at work who I thought it could be, but they admitted that they didn’t even know I had my own website. So I’m completely mystified. I really don’t care that someone from work read it all. They didn’t really find out anything I’m trying to hide. (I’m smart enough to avoid posting anything I want to keep secret.) Though I do hope that they talk to me about it at some point. I’d like to know who it was, especially considering the significant amount of surfing they did.

So yeah, it would seem that everything in my life is coming together. I think I’m okay with that, though. I’m just a bit shell-shocked.

Personal Development

Turning into my father?

3 Comments

As I began my trip back home, yesterday, I stopped at the Acorn market to refuel. After refueling I stepped inside to use the ATM and restrooms. While standing at the ATM, I overheard a small group of women talking and looking at the map hanging on a nearby bulletin board. They were trying to find where they were. I tried to tell them where to look and then offered to show them as soon as I was done at the ATM. Once I had my money and receipt in hand, I stepped over, did a quick scan of the map, and pointed at the cigarette burn that used to be the intersection of Rt. 15 and Rt 328 on the map.

“Oh, so we should be in New York soon!” one woman said in relief. I agreed and asked them where they were headed. “Niagara Falls,” she replied. I asked her about the route they were taking, and she confessed he didn’t really know because they were using a GPS. (This is a somewhat common side effect of using a GPS for travel that I simply don’t comprehend.)

We then spent a few minutes talking about their plans, and I recommended a few things in the Niagara Falls area I enjoy doing. We then talked about their larger trip, which includes an earlier stop at Hershey and a future excursion into New York City. The conversation lasted about five minutes as we all waited our respective turn to use the restrooms.

As I thought about it later, I was amazed at this further evidence of some of the changes I’ve gone through. While my father has certainly been the kind to strike up conversations with random people on the road, it’s not something I’ve ever shown either an interest or ability in doing. And yet, here I was, engaging in a conversation that would come perfectly naturally for Dad, and I was finding it equally natural and comfortable for myself, too.

What happened to the shy, socially incompetent guy I used to be? How did I become this self confident, only slightly socially incompetent guy who spoke with ease to a group of perfect strangers?

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It’s just surprising.

Family, Personal Development, Religion

Struggling with the collision of faith and family

3 Comments

This past Saturday, I took my parents out to dinner at TGIFriday’s. While there, our waitress asked me about my pendants. I normally wear two pendants:

  1. A silver pentagram which is a little bigger than a dime. It has a bear at the top point, walking on all fours.
  2. A brass spherical cage, which contains a piece of amber resin.

Both pendants are religious in nature and are deeply personal to me. I’ve had a handful of people ask about them, and I’m usually quite happy to answer their questions. In fact, the only two times I’m hesitant to say anything are as follows:

  1. When I’m at work (or a work-related function) and there are customers around
  2. When I’m with my parents, especially my mother

Sadly, this situation falls into that second category. And I could already see my mother’s expression when the waitress asked about it. The problem with being the sole witch in a family that consists mostly of evangelical (and even fundamentalist) Christians is that it can certainly strain family relationships a bit.

After a brief hesitation, I simply told the waitress that they are religious symbols of significance to me. I think she realized I was being somewhat avoidant (and I hated that I was being avoidant) and let the matter drop. Fortunately, the subject quickly changed.

Then again, maybe that’s not so fortunate. One of the messages that I keep getting over and over is that I need to be more open with my family. I need to let them into all aspects of my life. The problem is, that’s difficult when there are certain aspects of it that they don’t really care for. Certain subjects cause hackles to raise.

In fairness to my parents, it’s not just them, either. Any time the subject of my faith comes up around family, I get defensive. I automatically expect a problem. And that’s not fair. Not only that, I’m beginning to wonder if on some levels, my own family is unconscioually reacting to my own defensiveness. It wouldn’t surprise me.

But at the same time, I still haven’t found a good way to overcome my first reaction in such situations.

Gender and Sexuality, Personal Development

My pride contribution

5 Comments

Pride Flag

Through Benton Quest, I found out about the yearly efforts of Kelly Stern to spread a bit of pride on the blogosphere during Gay Pride Month. In addition to supplying his yearly picture, Kelly has also asked everyone to post a story — their coming out story being the most obvious choice — with the image. As I have an entire subdomain dedicated to my journey to sexual acceptance (And I hope to update it in the next couple months), I won’t reproduce my coming out story here.

Instead, I’d like to take this moment to talk about why my coming out story matters to me and the implications that my coming out has had for the rest of my life. You see, to my mind, my coming out represented the beginning of a much larger process, my journey to freedom and self-discovery.

Before coming out, I was trapped in a certain self-image, one built on ideas of who I was supposed to be, how I was supposed to behave, and how I was supposed to interact with the world around me. I had accepted others’ (and many people were part of that group) expectations and limitations, and tried to fit the mold set out for me.

Coming out as gay was the first step I took in breaking and rejecting that mold. It was the first time where I said, “No, this is not who I am.” And in that moment, I was able to ask the frightening, yet liberating question that followed, “Then who am I?”

At that moment, the journey to answer that question began, because I gave myself permission to seek that answer, no matter what. It started out slow and certainly was rocky at times. Indeed, there were more than a few times when I looked back at that broken mold that I hadn’t entirely discarded and worried that I was drifting too far from who I should be. But as time went by, I realized that I needed to let myself discover who I was and not worry so much about who I should be.

Years later, I’m still working on answering that question. But as time goes by, I’m finding that I like the answer I have so far more and more. And in that, I have found increasing freedom.