Tag Archives: creativity

The princess puzzle

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In the beginning was a princess. When she was a girl her pretty princess clothes and tiara were stolen by the evil king and her heart was pierced with a cold, icy fear.

Left alone to face her pain, she bravely built a fortress around her heart so she could keep to her studies and grow up to become proud and independent.

And so she did.

When she grew up, instead of waiting for her prince, she kissed too many frogs. The fortress around her heart, although serving her well previously, had also shielded her ability to discern honourable motives in her suitors. With each frog the princess grew more weary and secretly bitter, but instead of giving up, she kept allowing frogs to court her, hoping that someday true love would find her.

As time passed, she found only a very few frogs turned into princes, and when they did, the princess could not believe who they really were, because she could not tell they were princes and not frogs.

Thus, on those rare occasions when a frog turned into a prince, she would make him go to extraordinary lengths to prove his worth, putting him through tests and plying him with impossible riddles. She made herself into an exasperating puzzle no man could solve.

If a prince protested that he was really a kind and honourable man, she would pout and cry and scream at him to keep on proving himself. Once, when she was still young, a prince came along who passed all the nastiest tests she could think of. In disbelief, the princess sent him away. Only many years later would she realize he really was a prince. But by then, it was too late.

Still waiting for my Dread Pirate Robert, who will say "As You Wish" and really mean it.

So the princess kept kissing frogs, looking for a prince, each time thinking she must be close to finding another. The few other princes she found would become exhausted at all her silly tests. Eventually they gave up and went away, and only after they were gone would the princess realize what she’d lost.

But instead of tearing it down, the princess fortified the fortress around her heart with her ever-accumulating grief.

However will this story end?

The princess stops kissing frogs. She tears down her fortress, moves to a new kingdom, builds her own castle with an open floor plan and lots of windows, heals herself, and invites her friends for dinner to celebrate her new, frog-less existence.

 

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Water-torture test of character: passed

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Um – obviously yesterday’s was one of those posts I thought twice about before hitting the “Schedule” button. Poetry is – uh – raw, innit? However, I’m boldly going there. Yep. I am. This is me, and this blogging project is designed to open up my writing mojo. I think it’s working.

I think I’ve discovered through this blog that people will forgive you for being raw and intensely personal, as long as it’s a half-decent read.

I’ve discovered that writing and relationships can be like the water torture: the constant drip drip drip of “what-if” and “could-be” that eases up when you finally realize the legacy of all that pain.

Yesterday’s poem was about a relationship from several years ago, written about a year ago. I stumbled across it and though “Hey – that’s not bad is it?”

I go with my gut a lot. However sometimes (like my last relationship, the wounds from which are still raw) I can talk myself out of going with my gut, hoping the outcome will somehow be different from what I know will happen from past experience.

Never works.

So here, without giving too much away about the other party, are my lessons learned from failed relationships, particularly this latest one:

  • Trust your gut.
  • He did it to you once, he will do it to you again. Unless there’s a hell of a lot of soul searching going on in the meantime.Water dripping
  • He won’t change. Especially at his age. Love him as is, in this moment, right now, or walk away.
  • Love is everything, but it’s not enough. Commitment is something else entirely, and few people are really up for it. When you love someone, you either are willing to make it work or you aren’t. I’ve been married and know all too well how that magic “soul mate” feeling gets lost over the years. That’s where true commitment kicks in.
  • Speak your truth. It’s possible to still be in love with someone who is being a jerk to you. It doesn’t mean you have to take it.
  • If he uses the term “soul-mate” or “The One” in reference to you (either you are or you aren’t) it’s a sign of spiritual and emotional immaturity. Lasting deep love only very rarely comes effortlessly. Sure, there is chemistry to ignite the spark, but there is no deus ex machina that makes everything happy-ever-after. “Soul-mate” thinking is magical thinking. A healthy relationship means adjustment, compromise, effort, change as well as happiness, great sex, passion, laughter, respect.
  • Be willing to change. Notwithstanding the “speak your truth” above – if you recognize your baggage sneaking in on your happiness then by all means use that self-awareness to become a better person.
  • See every relationship, romantic or otherwise, as an opportunity to become the person you are meant to be.

 

 

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With freedom comes…

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You’d think installing a driver for a brand new printer for a brand new laptop would be easy for a geek girl like me.

But Friday afternoon, two weeks into my new job, raring to go, with 3 tasks left on my Top 5 for the day (including assembling, printing and mailing my expense forms), I still had not managed to get my new printer working after two hours of frustration.

Flummoxed. Laid flat. Humbled. Defeated.

I mourned the lost hours I could have spent writing the strategic communications plan, a job description for the co-op student I want to hire, or mapping out a schedule of internal and external blog posts.

I sent a pleading email to my new boss in Vancouver: “do we have any tech support at all?”

Answer: no, not really. We have software engineers and geeky techie people coming out the yin-yang at BCcampus – we’re all supposed to be highly computer literate. Maybe somebody in Victoria can help you, he said, and if you’re really stuck yes we can bring in someone to look at your system (and if you’ve figured out email for iPhone let me know, he added sheepishly.)

At first I was aghast: all the hours I’ve “wasted” when I could have been doing My Very Important Job – does it make sense to leave my computer workings to me alone? Why can’t I just call someone and have them deal with it?

Later that day I met up at the pub with some of my old colleagues from government. “How’s your new job going?” they asked.

“Great!” I said, “I’m writing the comms plan and there are so many cool, innovative things I get to put in place: linking the strategic plan within the very fabric of the internal and external web site, real-time measurement, interactive calendars, blogging functions, a stakeholder survey — all the stuff I couldn’t do when I was with government!”

Then it hit me: the reason I was so frustrated with my computer and printer issues. I had been domesticated.

For over four years (in contrast to my career before that – a blog post for another day) I was never my own systems administrator. My computer, blackberry, software, printer and LAN connections were provided to me within the strict confines of Policy. I couldn’t download the tools I like best: Skype, Evernote, Scrivener, Skitch, Tweetie, etc. At one point, for a brief time, even shortened URLs were blocked.

Don’t get me wrong: because of the people I worked with (including my incredible boss) I was able to do some of my best work while at government, and I was able to innovate, to a point. I implemented the very first Facebook group from the BC government three years ago; and in the process contributed in a concrete way to the discussion about whether to block – or use – social networking sites within the public service.

But still – I had been coddled and grain fed and confined to my cubicle and the Help Desk line for so long I forgot what it means to be self-reliant.

Now I’ve come fill circle. I’m back in a small organization with no Shared Services or Help Desk to come to my rescue. When I came on board I was asked what hardware and software I needed in order to do my job, and I eagerly took the iPhone, MacBook Pro and HP printer. I installed Office and got it working (after 2 tries); I configured my work email and calendar and sync’d to my iPhone.

I am NOT alone, not really. My new coworkers are ready to help – I need only ask. Besides, it’s early days and I’m still getting my feet under me in my new role. It’s OK for me to relax and get settled comfortably, to let the process happen and not feel like I have to Perform, Right now!

More importantly: I have a measure of autonomy I longed for but did not have in my previous job. I had forgotten – with freedom comes responsibility.

If having freedom to work creatively means being more self-sufficient, then I gladly embrace the trade-off.

Photo by Kodomut (licensed under Creative Commons)

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