Revision. Satisfaction.

Things changed when I went back to work on Monday.
Apparently there had been an "inaccuracy" in the work schedule. I actually have three days off: Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

A day to play. A day to run errands. A day to rest.
Very nice. :-)

Also, there is only one operator leaving for sure.
The others are staying (for now) and/or changing shifts.

So, crisis averted - which is always a good thing.

This, I can deal with far more easily...

Timeshift. Acceptance.

Well, the promises have been realized. The schedule has changed.
I wasn't happy.

I wasn't happy because they've made me into a full-time person. Uh, excuse me, but what part of "part-time" do y'all not understand??
And I have to wake up rfe - really freaking early - two days a week: Friday and Saturday. My fellow night-owls will shudder in sympathy, I'm sure. ;-)
I still have a "split" weekend...now I have Sunday and Tuesday off. Que quirky.

My initial reaction to this was annoyance, the "mother is being stubborn and resistant again" annoyance. I even, briefly, considered quitting the job and finding something that would actually honor my request for part-time work!
Two things, however, dissuaded me from doing that.
First, there's the turnover factor...two operators are leaving in short order, and at least one operator is following suit - perhaps as many as three. So they'll be short staffed - and, being the "highly ethical" woman that I am, I won't leave them in the lurch while they are. I'll wait until things settle down again before I revisit the possibility.
Two, and more importantly, there's the issue of my True Work. There's no CD yet. There's no book yet. Nothing I can bring forth in a coherent lecture yet. Only three real clients, with a possible fourth yet to be determined. (Somehow, I'd forgotten the assistance I'd provided "Lady K" with in January. Yup, she's a client too!)
Quite frankly, I can't make my Work my sustaining vocation in this moment. I haven't been motivated to move mountains in manifesting my dreams. Moving mountains in my own healing, though, has been going on this year...

So, instead of striking out again, I'm staying the course and considering my new options:
I still have Friday and Saturday evenings off, along with all Sundays. That, at least, Special-K honored when he redid the schedules, and I am grateful for it. These are the times when I plug in to my spiritual communities and restore my "sanity," however one chooses to define it. ;-)
Now I have Tuesdays off. Hm, perhaps that can be my new "play day." I am, after all, a mere 30 minutes from the ocean... :-)
I also see an invitation to reinvest time and effort into cultivating my dreams, then Work*ing to manifest them. The start of the Harvest season is right around the corner, after all...

I have become aware over these past few that I am not working on "my" timetable, but the Divine Timetable instead: Fallow rest-time in the spring, after freeing myself from the place I could not be anymore...Deep Healing time in the summer, to open my*self still further, to Receiving and Channeling Divine Love and Miracles. What will this fall bring me? Very exciting to consider!!!

If nothing else, I'll have more time to read and write at work. Maybe I can finally make some headway against the stack of books that are waiting patiently for me to open them and consume their stories. Ah, well, one can dream, right? ;-)

Thusly do I shift out of annoyance, and back into acceptance. C'est La Vie.

Loose Ends #1

I went back through my entire blog the other day and found a couple of spots where I said, "more on this later," and later hadn't turned into "now" yet...so here's a "now" for one of those loose ends.

Emptying out stuff. Processing Super Highly Intensive Transformations.

The first half of summer has seen me clearing out on the material level, moving into my DNA and finding old scars there - scars that my lineage has been carrying for centuries.
My father's ancestors were deeply affected by the Inquisition. It warped the ways that their descendants related to each other; parents, children, sibling, spouses, were all taught to stuff their true feelings, their true natures, deep within, lest they be found out, Judged, and killed.
There was a lot of their anger that I'd been carrying within me - anger at "the system" that demanded Conform*ation, Or Else.
It fell to me to find the source of this anger, this repression...and use my techniques of Spiritual Alchemy to transform the source, liberate the repressed. The wildest part of the process was removing a long string of stagnant, toxic energy from my third chakra; my scientific mind observed the extracted string and recognized it as a "tapeworm." It has since been destroyed and recycled into Grandmother Earth.

The second half of the summer has been devoted to clearing out on the energetic level, as I have contemplated the block I've had against Receiving Love Generously, and manifesting a partner in this life.
I have found wrapped around this block a significant portion of Mom-Energy. Not terribly surprising since, a) I live with her, and b) she carried me in her womb as I was forming the body I am using in this lifetime.
In acknowledging her energy as separate from my energy, and releasing the bits of energy that have ceased to be of service, I have defined the exact nature of this block - a Defense Mechanism Against Loss.
I have also found the origins of this mechanism in two separate incidents, both related to Loss:
Loss of my sovereignty, when a piece of my soul was torn from me (between lifetimes) in a direct violation of my free will;
Loss of one whom I loved so deeply, I almost did not recover from the passing.
Thusly have I been keeping folks at arm's length, not letting anyone get close.

The material clearing was easier, in a sense, than the astral clearing. I am still in a healing phase with the latter.
I am en*couraging myself to move past the hesitation and open myself unto Receiving.
I am remembering that Divine Love fills me now and always...and is something I can count on, regardless of whatever else is going on in my life.
And in both of these journeys, I am very grateful to have the assistance of a wonder*full, intuitive masseuse, who co-creates Radical Transformation with me, and is happy to do so.
If you come across this in the near future, lovely one, I bow to you and say, Thank You, from the bottom of my heart. :-) <3

Being Helpful

There's one place I want to work on this, and one place where I'm just fine where I am...and they both have to do with my workplace.

Where I want to work on this is when I'm talking to someone on the phone, and I'm sympathizing with the caller. I want to help them reach the person they want to speak to right away!
Problem with that - we're answering the phones for our clients. They all have very explicit directions with who they want to talk to, and when they want to talk to them. Many don't want to be bothered with anything except emergencies after hours. This, of course, can lead to discrepancies...what I call an "emergency" might not be what a client would call an "emergency."
My point is: I need to sound a little less helpful on the phone, and work within the guidelines that the clients have provided to us. When it comes down to it, though, I'd rather be "too" helpful than not helpful enough - there are plenty of operators who just answer the calls, and let them sit there, doing nothing with them. Follow-up, people! ;-)

Where I'm just fine in my capacity to be helpful is tied to my Work:
One of my co-workers called recently because I would "be the only one who would understand this, and not think I'm going crazy." She had a visitation the other night from a canine spirit. It doesn't fit in with any dog she'd had, or any dog her partner had owned. I advised her to go ahead and ask the dog why it was there - couldn't hurt, now, could it?
Another reason, revealed unto me, as to why I've returned...to help soothe startled nerves and provide the one explanation that might be way outside the box, but fits to a tee. :-)

1,001 Stories

Today I went to Balboa Park with a friend of mine.
We visited the Mingei Museum.

It was a most interesting experience...from the moment we began our official tour of the museum, I was picking up the "stories" behind many of the objects on display. It was a day of psychometry!

A sampling of some of what I picked up:
~There was a very large woven Apache basket. I saw it filled to the brim with corn during a harvest celebration. Each member of the tribe took a handful of corn and used it to make special cakes that were consumed with the onset of Winter.
~Another large woven basket, this one from Mexico, was used to hold sweetbread during a Pan de la Vida (Bread of Life) ritual.
~There was a painted (Italian) pony cart depicting the arrival of Cortes in the New World. I saw it carrying either an effigy or a young boy in an elaborate costume during a parade.
(then we went upstairs to gaze upon the jewelry!)
~I walked through an array of Tibetan caps/boxes worn around the neck and heard the monks and priests chanting. I thought of my friend D., who had purchased a box that she'd owned in a previous lifetime.
~There was a necklace from Yemen that had been worn by a priest who taught an interesting mix of Kabbalah and Islam.
~I saw an elaborate headdress that had been worn by the bride-to-be of a sheikh in Saudi Arabia. She was being taken to the Temple in a screened carriage that was carried by two strong men. Rose petals were scattered on the path before them.
~There was a very simple necklace consisting of a green jade disc with a hole in its center, suspended on a black silk cord. I knew it had been used by a Japanese/Hawaiian doctor as a pendulum in her practice. Don't tell anyone, but I used the Force to make it move, ever so slightly - twice!
~I passed between necklaces worn by Native Americans, and heard the drums pounding, and the medicine men chanting around the fire.
~There was a "femur" from Northern Africa. (It looked nothing like a bone, btw.) I saw it being worn as a belt by a very wealthy Caliph who had been born to Kabbalist parents, and had used the Numbers to rise in power and status. He gifted this belt to his Beloved when he was upon his deathbed.
~I stopped at an "amulet necklace" from North Africa as well. It had been worn by a Wise Woman, a Priestess of Oshun. She had cast bones for divination; she could send hexes and remove them as well. She was very power*full.

And then there was the portion of the museum where various items from China, Japan, Thailand, and Tibet had been gathered. I sat there for a few minutes and felt "right at home." Things that make you go hmmm, eh?

I think I'm going to do this more often. This was a fascinating experience!

Reasons...

Heidy-ho.
I've been processing a LOT of inner stuff for the past little bit; I'll save that for later.

In between all this processing, reasons as to why I've been led back to the answering service have started to arise...

First, apparently I was a case of Divine Intervention. I had experience, they were desperately needing someone with experience - and half a brain - to answer their phones. Synchronicity. :-)

Second, they're seriously in need of a heavy dose of The Four Agreements. Yes, as in don Miguel Ruiz. Too many drama llamas shuffling about in the background, just waiting to cause scandals and "forcing" people to leave. :-p I'm working up the chutzpah to speak to "Special-K" (the owner) about doing a quick presentation of TFA in the next staff meeting. We're damn good right now. With a helping of Synergy, we could be outrageous. Since it's all but impossible to do one of those group retreats - someone has to answer the phones, after all! - this might be the next best thing...

Third, and perhaps most important in this moment: I re-connected with one of my former co-workers, who is now working for one of our clients. She was the daughter of a mother-daughter team who answered the phones together during my first "tour of duty." ;-) It seems that her mother has fallen on hard times, health-wise, and is undergoing a Healingway journey. In the very near future (hopefully this weekend!) I will connect with Daughter and offer my services to Mother. If she adored me half as much as I adored her, my presence alone should be a very help*full tonic! :-)

Stay tuned, friends...