Second Quarter Progress Report

I was sooooo busy, I had to wait till I finished my series on using dreams and symbols to navigate your productivity before I could do my update.

So although I reviewed my second quarter in July, I did not write up this report till now. The first thing I noted was that I needed to drop several of my previous goals. Secondly, that several of my goals were essentially completed. And lastly, and this one is a biggie, I have substantially changed trajectory and I need to re-evaluate all my remaining annual goals.

I review my Long Term Goals every quarter. But I review my annual goals every single week. And the slow change in focus has been obvious to me for a while now. So of the goals that are left, I need to consider just how many of them reflect my current focus.

I could go back to my original annual goals list and modify it as needed. Or I could restart the process and determine new goals for the last six months of 2008. I have decided to do a little of both. First I have updated my annual goals list with the current status. Below are the remaining open goals.

Remaining 2008 Goals

I have added two major additions to my annual goals

• Teaching at Cherry Hill Seminary
• Active collaboration with P (a web guy) to produce major web site designs

Which when added to my existing major projects of …

• Psychology & Magick book proposal, final draft and literary agent
• 2009 weekend intensive for Presidents Day weekend 09
• Reflections Mystery School (+Plan 2009 school year & school portal upgrade)
• Connect DC (+Complete web site upgrade)

… gives me a rather full plate for the last half of 2008.

I am thinking with these major items on my already full plate, these two goals may be too much for me this year.

• Answer requests for short term Drupal assistance on local job boards
• Let more folks know that I am available for out of town classes, workshops, festivals and conferences.

But I will hold on to the following goals, since they represent items that could be generally seen as representing home, health and finances. And those three areas usually represent a challenge for me in terms of motivation and focus. Although I may trim back my list of home projects for this year.

• Walk 30 minutes three times a week
• Baseline weight closer to ~200 lbs
• Build up my cash reserves
• Will and Power of Attorney documents
• Repairs and reorganization – Maybe three items from the list below.
  • Kitchen (3 projects),
  • Bedroom (3 projects) and
  • Closet (2 projects)

The remaining goals concern advertising my classes, workshops and intensives. I will most likely advertise the annual intensive as planned, but I will reconsider advertising my regular classes. I will review this area again in September.

• Create a Reflections Mystery School brochure
• Advertise classes and rituals in local newsletters such as the Hill Rag, DC North, Takoma Voice, etc.
• Advertise annual Reflections intensive in regional and national publications

I have already dropped goals that represented my old business focus and goals that would be difficult to accomplish with the upswing in business and a full teaching schedule.

So now all that is left is rescheduling the remaining items and updating my project files.

Conclusion

I have accomplished an awful lot this year already. But if I did not review my annual goals and drop ones that no longer serve me, I would be setting myself up for disappointment. Because things have change substantially in my life compared to earlier in the year, re-examining my goals helps me to refocus the second half of the year.

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A Realization …

This is part three of an exploration into how I navigated a recent difficult period. The first in this series is, Distorted Nostalgia.

I awaken with the following listed on my internal chalkboard …

• Nothing is actually wrong.
• Web design is my business. And as a business owner, I have to step up to the plate and meet deadlines. It is my job. I am a professional, and this is what professionals do.

[… break to catch a design idea for one of my clients …]

• I am a priestess, shaman and warrior mystic – this is my vocation. This is my calling, my great opus. It is who I am.
• I am not missing out on life. This is my life. And there is nothing wrong with it.
• This is exciting times. I am in demand. I have customers beating a path to my door. This is the life I had hoped for all these years.

Yes, I am scared, worried, and filled with anxiety – but this is what success looks like.

[…break to catch an idea for a personal goal…]

And on toward my day …

…next morning … from my journal …

Whoa! Yesterday was really hard on me. The quick fix I had hoped for did not materialize and I feel as if my entire day was a wasted effort.

Omigod, can [you] stop already? … sigh …I have enough ideas … really.

next ... run away child...

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Distorted Nostalgia

I have been really busy with my business lately. Almost all of my time has been spent doing web design. I have paying clients and a ton of new design work on my plate. Almost half involves me learning how to do new stuff, which is exciting. But at the same time, I found myself stressed beyond all reason with the enormity of it all. I also had this nagging feeling that I was falling hopelessly behind in everything else.

And if that was not enough, I also kept beating myself up for being stressed out. Geez, maybe I would not be so stressed, if I wasn’t also stressing about how stressed out I felt.

My next few blog entries will explore my process for getting through this difficult period.

This first one follows weeks of waking up to a mental list of everything on my plate. Sometimes I woke up with a new algorithm or a new code fragment, but after a while the message was often just “… gotta go, gotta go, now, now, now ….” And throughout this entire period, I felt this deep regret at not living up to some past level of true efficiency.

... from my journal ...

Woke up thinking about coding again or at least that is what intruded immediately to my waking mind. But I somehow knew that I had not been dreaming of code, so I settled back to sleep after my bathroom run intentional walk. And slowly an image began to emerge.

The nostalgic car is impractical and impossible to maintain. So whatever I am imagining of my old ways of handling things is not only distorted it is non-sustainable.

After my chiro visit, I sat with my journal in my favorite haunt and pondered the meaning of my morning images.

I remembered hearing myself arguing with myself the day before…

“Ivo has a business along with all his teaching and counseling.”

“But I am not Ivo. He is healthy and still he works really hard at keeping up with it all. Plus his store has staff and a kick ass manager. And he lives with all these incredibly talented and dedicated people who are also pulling long hours”

And.

“I like having real deadlines to work toward.”

“But not if it means nothing moves forward for me personally. And the reasons these deadlines are real are because it involves someone other than you. What does that say about your commitment to achieving your own personal goals, aspirations and dreams?”

Later that same day, my healer elder said that I needed to listen to my water self during this fiery period. Which is interesting because in my system of elemental classification, my water self is also my child. So in effect she was once again calling attention to my child self.

I decided to listen to what all the parts were saying:

Parent/Fire
“You gotta work hard and keep commitments to get ahead in this world. All this lollygagging is getting you nowhere. Get busy, time is money.”

Child/Water
“I am tired of all this work. I need more down time, more rest. Even my playtime is filled with, ‘Do this! Do that!’ I can never have time just for me.”

Adult/Air
“ I am out of balance. Yes, there is a lot on my plate but the way we handle this is by getting enough down time, rest, good food, and by focusing on home and hearth. And of course taking care of my physical self. This is not the time to walk away from Radical Self Care.”

Beloved/Shadow/Earth
“Naptime!”

So I decided to take an afternoon nap. I also spent the rest of the day relaxing and watching some of my favorite TV shows. I think I also made myself a chocolate sundae.

Next time, the morning after…

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Ten Years

There are many accomplishments in my life for which I am proud. My academic accomplishments and awards were the high points of my childhood.

I am proud of my engineering and computer science degrees and my eight promotions/advancements at Bell Atlantic/Verizon. And in spite of how difficult it became at times, I am proud of my many contributions within YOBU, Revolutionary Workers League, National Organization for Women, Washington Peace Center, Sojourner Truth Congregation of Unitarian Universalists, and Reclaiming.

I am proud of Dark Flame Coven, Reflections Mystery School, and my web design company, Amber Eyes Solutions. Hell, I am even proud of this blog, Katrina’s Joy.

But besides my corporate career (25 years) and my coven (14 years), my longest running project is Connect DC.

Back in 1998, Dark Flame Coven was notorious only because we were public. This is surprising when you realize that we have never had more than six members. I am not sure, but I think we had already been on the front page of the Washington Post and had been invited to do ritual at several local Unitarian Universalist churches.

But it was after I attended the Reclaiming Spring Equinox ritual in San Francisco, that I felt Dark Flame could do more. So in the summer of 1998, I cajoled Dark Flame plus members of other covens, several Radical Fairies and a few radical feminists friends such as Dr. Loraine Hutchins to join me in Eric Eldritch’s living room to plan our public celebration of the Summer Solstice right here in DC. We pulled together a ritual on a rooftop with a few small theatrics ending with the presentation of the Sun cake by my coven sister Rose and her Radical Fairy brother Nicko. It was glorious!

It was after noting the discomfort of a coven member plus several of the invited covens, that I decided to pursue my dream as a separate public ritual group. And so it was after our public Summer Solstice ritual that I began to plan for what became known as the original working of Connect DC.

Next Spring will be Connect DC’s ten-year anniversary. But yesterday’s ritual on the mall was the ten-year anniversary of my test run. Next year we will celebrate in public, but right now, I am celebrating the manifestation of a vision and the realization of a dream ... my dream … come true. And for me, this is a source of great pride.

Thank you to Dark Flame and the entire DC community, and of course, a hearty thank you especially to the ancestors and the gods.

A grateful Katrina

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