I got back from a 4 day retreat near Petaluma with Veriditas today. I lot of time walking the labyrinth, talking, sharing, blah blah blah. It was really good. Which is sort of sad because right now I feel like I never went. I am right back where I was before the event. And it had a large effect on me. I wish it could have lasted longer.

I didn’t learn what I went there to find out but I got a lot more questions and ideas to ponder. Loads of ideas and insights. I might have connections, I might not. I will go with the flow if the flow shows up.

A few people will recognize this one blessing I received and understand why it totally cracked me up. I was given this blessing like it was an insight and something new to me.

The trickster god might actually be sane. (not the exact wording but the idea).
Of course the trickster god is sane. It only appears to be insane because we don’t know what it is up to or why. I will admit I prefer to do things so that the trickster god doesn’t have a need or desire to get involved in my life but that isn’t always possible.

Change or be changed.

Mentally, I didn’t really show up and plug in until this morning. It took 2 and a half days to get in sync. An interesting side affect of this was being able to watch what others were trying to offer from an objective point of view. I don’t know how much of the advice I was given was because they were projecting onto me their issues or if I was appearing to have a different set of issues than I honestly have.

I was told to not worry about what others think of me. They did note that I did carve my own path. I think maybe they thought I wasn’t happy with that fact. I think the main reason I am concerned at all with what others think of me is that I don’t want to deal with the consequenses of them thinking something about me. Yeah, that doesn’t make a lot of sense so lets try an example. If someone at work thinks I act too childish and therefore don’t take my work seriously, they won’t assign me juicy jobs. I want to be able to control how I am treated by what I present. A lot of times I don’t care but sometimes it is important. I like knowing how I am perceived. Also, I have issues with boundaries. I don’t have a guideline of where it is that I need to stop before others thing I have gone too far and stop being entertained/appreciative and start reacting negatively. I want the positive so I watch for reactions. My personal sense of value is not often measured by other people’s yardsticks.

I think they also were a little surprised at how I own up to my weaknesses and almost always follow that up with they are also my strengths. When I first started on laying out my idea of how to work around my tendency for flakyness, they tried to get me to do positive affermations and push me into making a commitment. Then I explained the process of owning my flakyness and my resistance to being obligated and how I have figured out a way around it so that I am more likely to follow through and if I don’t, there is a back-up so others don’t have to lose out if I am flaky. They shut up pretty quick. From comments later on, I think they were surpised and impressed by this out of me. It really makes me wonder how I was perceived early on and how that changed by the end of our time today. I have a feeling it changed a lot. I am not even sure those two versions of me could be said to recognizable as related to the same entity.

I am probalby talking in circles. It is late, I have had a very full week of some serious digging deeper into myself and there is a whole lot of babbling stored up because I had to sit on my tongue many times. And this is my spot to Babble!!!!Bwaaa haaa haaaa haaaaa.