Jack of Many Trades

Gauge Check: You've Gotta Be Kidding Me

Originally posted: 2012-02-18

This week, guys. This week.

Wealth is kicking my ass this week. An unexpected and unusual car problem is going to run us close to a thousand dollars between the repair itself and getting around in the meantime. My office had a pretty shocking reorganization this week, and there seems to be the lingering impression that there will be more in the near future. I had to do a ton of paperwork while office drama swirled around me because as much as possible had to be done before I spend next week training.

Yes, they're finally going to train me in the job I've been doing for a month.

Somehow I've not had any unusual compulsions creep up, just the usual obsessive thoughts that circle around about money and work. And then there's the fear that I'm not worried enough and that's a sign that something's really wrong and I just don't know it yet.

Health is... still in the same place it always is. I should do something about that.

Creativity was almost entirely a miss this week - I wrote drips and drabbles of fiction but nothing grand.

And magic, well, I was going light on it but see above. I gotta do something.

I've been chewing for most of the week on Gordon's post about fighting dirty. I've gotten burned by really negative magic once or twice, and so my reaction has been to shy away from anything at all that could affect other people. And I'm talking about the Buddhist definition here, the "don't step on insects, worry about microscopic life" kind of thing. It was a real struggle for me to do any kind of job-related magic because if I got a job, it meant the other people interviewing for it didn't get it. The fear was that affecting other people in any way made me vulnerable to outside magical influence.

I never said this was logical. This is the same fear of "magical contamination" that I've been cycling through, with more or less success, for seven or eight years now. I shield, and I ward, and it's not good enough. It's never good enough.

And it's never going to be good enough to keep all bad things from happening. If unpleasant things are going to come into my life, as they come into every life, then I might as well deserve them. I might as well do the forward-facing magic, throw myself out there, and take the fallout as it comes, right? If I'm going to have to deal with fallout either way...