This Warrior's Troubled Journey

As I begin writing in my blog again I realize there has, for a long time, been a large hole in the middle of the week. My Wednesday Warrior posts have been lacking greatly. In 2010 only 3 posts were under this category and I have a feeling I know why. In an effort to change the direction of these powerful posts I would like to share the reasons I used to keep myself from writing what are usually such intimate posts.

Rough Waters In The Job Market

I had a successful 2010. I increased my value as well as finally moving into games programming and back to the west coast. However with that came great turmoil. January of 2010 saw me move my family from Wilmington to Chapel Hill, NC to work in Social Game development. That company got bought by Playdom in March and Playdom got bought by Disney in August. While my job survived the acquisition by Playdom it only lasted a few months after the acquisition by Disney. I was able to take the opportunity to find a new job on the other side of the country working with Gaia Interactive. Its a great gig and all has ended up well. So why did this stop me?

First on the list is me just trying to manage it all - and with a positive outlook. Writing these posts tend to bring buried emotions to the surface. This is usually a good thing. During this time I just didn't want to face those emotions. Second on the list is guilt. Everything continued to work out fine for me and other people are completely out of work and not having the luck I did. What did I have to complain about?

The truth is I am in the same bucket as everyone else right now. Worried about the security of my job. How stable is it? What will it mean if I lose my job? That meaning got even stronger with the other big storm that came through my life last year - health issues.

Health and the Family

My wife and I had been through a lot financially, and we've made ends meet with very little as we've had to. The job thing wouldn't have worried us as much if it weren't for the bombshell that dropped in May. Our 4 year old got diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. All the sudden having stable, good health insurance became an all encompassing worry that hit me hard.

Context: Parenting with Type 1 Diabetes

I'm guessing people reading this don't know much about dealing with type 1 diabetes, because I didn't until I HAD TO. My wife and I have to check his blood sugar several ( read 5-7 or more if things are wacky ) times a day. This includes the multiple times in the middle of the night because we don't want him to run high all night and do long term damage or worse have him go really low and not wake up in the morning. We manage his blood sugar through injections of insulin ( we now have an insulin pump thank goodness ) throughout the day. There are no days off for this. This is our Monday through Saturday, weekends and holidays too. Traveling? We must remember the diabetes supplies, emergency glucagon injection, drinks and snacks to get the blood sugar up if need be. Of course we need to remember the stuff other parents have to remember too. [End Rant]

So I went along and I was coping, or so I thought. I was now running on similar sleep to when the kids were first born fairly consistently and I was getting worried about the stability of my studio so I was looking into other options. I guess the worry of this came crashing down on me one night when I had my first ever anxiety attack ( I thought it was more dire ) and went to the emergency room in the middle of the night.

It turns out my all the tests showed I was perfectly healthy except for one thing they wanted me to get checked out with my doctor, low blood platelets. Long story shortened, I ended up seeing a hematologist because this wasn't an errant reading. Normal range for platelets is between 150K and 400K and at one point while measured I was as low as 12K. The danger of low platelets is that your blood doesn't clot so you end up losing a lot of blood - especially if you have internal bleeding that you don't know about. Luckily I had decent health insurance with Playdom and it payed for the majority of a very expensive set of infusions ( well one is still outstanding but it should be covered ) that put me back in the normal range just before I got a new job and moved across country.

Do you know the way to San Jose?

In December of 2010 I knew my position at Playdom was going away and rather than get moved into a different position with the uncertainties of how long that would last I did something crazy and took a job in San Jose, CA working with Gaia Interactive. I started the week before New years. I can say this, the change has been really good. I love the job and I'm already loving the area but moving is a huge burden I don't want to do for a long time. Remember those health problems I spoke of? Well, it took some time to get records sent and new doctors set up for the family. I'm still having problems getting the hospital to send my records to a new hematologist so I can make sure my blood platelets are doing well - we think they sent my son's records instead. Getting my oldest in school took quite some time because of the doctors issues and California has some requirements that North Carolina didn't. I spent the first month splitting my time between work ( learning the code base mostly ) and finding a house for us to rent. My wife was still in NC so I was looking without her and relaying as much info, pictures and video as I could. That was very worrisome, especially as our move date got closer, but in the end it looks like we found an amazing house with a great people as landlords. As you can imagine, there was much more to the move than these things but those are the ones that stick in my mind as the big stressors.

2011 and beyond

Now that I am settled ( mostly ), what is the plan for the future. Well, that will come out through future Wednesday Warrior posts. The point is, with the air cleared, I am ready to create in the warrior space again. I hope this post will help other warriors see that the path is not an easy one but if you live your life through love and commitment your inner warrior has the strength to see thing through.

I have already begun some personal quests for my inner warrior and I will sharing those in upcoming posts. Also, my new home has centralized me to some great sanctuaries for personal growth. I will share those as well.

Do you have a rough journey you have been or are currently on? I'd love to hear about it. Post it in the comments or post a link to your own post in the comments below. Until then, stay strong and love on.

Awakening my sacred masculine - a powerful dream.

I've always approached my study of masculinity as a journey.  Many visions occur to me every time I read a men's studies book.  Some are dark and others are mysterious.  Either way these visions are powerful and often come in a dream.  Reading "The Hidden Spirituality of Men – Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine" has been no different.  Last night I had a dream that I knew was part of my journey.

The dream and the conclusions I come to are related to chapters I have not discussed yet.  I will try to share enough to explain the references.

The following dream actually came on a night when I fell asleep attempting to connect with "The Blue Man" metaphor described in the book. The dream is simple - I'm in charge of an alternative school of some sort that is being shut down by someone who has sent in soldiers to apprehend me. At this point I have the thought that if I can just get in a room and close the door they won't be able to get to me. I make my way down the hall towards my office. Finally, I reached my office and closed the door. Feeling safe from the soldiers, I look out the window. All the parents and teachers are standing outside in a group. They are standing in support of the school and me. They may be singing but I don't really hear anything. At this point my wife asks me the question,"Why are they shutting down the school?" My answer was this,"because Michael Jackson is running the music department and my second in command/right hand man is a woman or maybe I should say my right hand woman is a man." (I was trying to say my second is command was a gay man).

I don't remember anything else after that. When I woke up I just knew it was an important dream. I started wondering if I needed to open up some type of school.

After my run this morning I had a chance to discuss the dream with my wife and as I did many things became clear.  This dream did not say I needed to run a school but it was full of metaphors directly related to chapters of the book I had recently read.  First, the soldiers.  There is a distinction in the chapter on Spiritual Warriors between soldiers and warriors.  Soldiers do what they are ordered to do and warriors are instead guided by their values and their hearts.  The fact that soldiers were doing what they were ordered to do but did not have the heart to break through a simple door is not suprising.  Then there is group of parents and teachers who were standing up for me and the school.  This is my community, who are a stand for me to succeed in running my school.  My school is men's studies and Daryl Joseph Ducharme studies for that matter.  Seeing my blue man, I was studying the difference I could create in the world.

Then we come to the reason's anyone would want to shut such an important school down.  First there is having Michael Jackson as the musical director.  One chapter on the body began to discuss chakras.  The first chakra, located in the tailbone ( called the sacrum which literally means sacred bone ) is about vibration.  In discussing this chakra the sub chakras in the knees and the feet were discussed.  This brought up the importance of dance in connecting with Gaia.  So many religions throughout time relate dance with the sacred.  For my generation there was none more recognized for dance than Michael.  In fact, he was in my mind throughout the discussion about dance.  What about my second in command they didn't like because he was gay?  That came directly from the chapter on numinous sexuality.  In the middle section of this long chapter the discussion revolved around the spiritual connections that homosexuals tend to have.  In fact, many native tribes revered homesexuals as spiritual leaders.  While I have never considered myself homophobic, I realized there was a part of me that was.  It was the part that decides I didn't want to do something because maybe I didn't think it was masculine enough.  By cutting myself off from these experiences I cut myself off from the sacred and the spiritual essence of my masculinity.  Well no more.  Now I will allow myself to have experiences that will have me live life.

This dream was an awesome experience.  In the past, I have had dreams related to whatever ontological journey I was currently undergoing.  Almost always they have had a very dark nature to them.  This dream, while it had a dark nature, gave me more hope than any of the dreams I have had in the past.  It inspired me.  As I delve into the chapters that this dream touched on I will discuss these references even more.  I had to get the dream down while I still remembered it.

Awakening my sacred masculine - Father Sky

This post is my first follow up to my post about The Hidden Spirituality of Men - Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine.  In that previous post I said I would share my journey of reading this book.  This is part of that journey. The book itself is split up into 2 parts.  The first part, Ten Archetypes of Authentic Masculinity, covers the 10 metaphors alluded to in the book's title.  As I read this part of the book I will be making a posts related to each metaphor.  These posts won't be reviews of the chapters as much as they will be my own personal visions and conclusions gained from reading the metaphors.  At this time I have already read the sections on the first 5 metaphors so I may relate to some of the other metaphors.  This is expected, as these metaphors of masculinity are strongly linked.

Father Sky: The Cosmos Lives!

Father Sky is the partner of Mother Earth.  Religions have often placed the sky ( or heavens ) as the home to the gods.  Father sky is the air we breathe and the vacuum of space that is the universe beyond our planet's atmosphere.  Father sky is an obvious, but in modern times elusive, spiritual metaphor.

This first chapter didn't call to me as much from just reading it.  There was one suggested made in the chapter that I took, and that was to take a look at the Worldwide Telescope by Microsoft Research. This website has an tool ( both online and downloadable ) that combines images and data from telescopes around the world to give you an amazing view of space.  I spent a good chunk of time just looking around at all the different heavenly bodies available to me through this tool.

After using the worldwide telescope, I had a greater connection to father sky in the rest of my daily lives.  I recently started a running program, called Couch to 5K (C25K) out of both a desire to run and have a greater connection the The Green Man ( the 2nd metaphor ).  On my first run, I got connected more with my green man but I feel that I could finally see father sky.  I run in the mornings and the moon was still in the sky.  Instead of running with my head down, my head was up and I was aware of all the trees which reach up to connect the earth to the sky and the birds as they soar.  As I type this, I think I will pay more attention to my breathing while running as well.  After all, father sky represents all that is in the sky including the air.

This chapter also reminded me of something I remember seeing in the past.  I remember that a native tribe in Washington had been given the right to punish a teen through their own traditions.  This meant putting him, alone, on a small island for a length of time.  One of the elders was talking to him about praying.  He told him not to bow down and avert his eyes from the spirits above, instead he should look up and open his arms to father sky so that he may be connected to him.

The first metaphor, by itself did not make as big of an impression on me as some of the others already have.  However, in connecting with father sky I have gained connections that I have not had in a long time.  I once again look at the sky with awe.  The stars and the planets, the clouds and wind are all a part of me again.  In a world that tries to keep us grounded it is important to stay connected with the stars.

The next metaphor is The Green Man.  As I have already read that chapter I will be writing that one soon.  Until then, what does father sky mean to you and/or the men in your life?

The most addicting App on Facebook...

I'm on facebook just about every day. I play chess, mostly with coworkers, and due to my history I also play Wrestler with some regularity. I've also tried and stopped using all the popular apps my friends play.

What I find interesting is that the most common tag line I see for facebook game application advertisements is "The Most Addicting Game On Facebook." While on some level it disgusts me that this sort of advertising works, I am intrigued by the psychology of why it works. Is it because of the nature of facebook and other social networking sites? Is it just human nature? Why is addiction something we would knowingly chase? Is it the man trying to keep us entertained so he can keep us down?

Needless to say, one can spend a lot of time analyzing this simple phrase and why it is so popular. So, in an effort to crowd source with the 1 or 2 people who come across my blog :) I leave it to the comments for discussion.

Only because I mentioned the 2 game apps I use on facebook:
My chess challenge URL is:
http://apps.facebook.com/chessfb/?page=create_game&challenge_to_id=590273940
And for those of you who wish to see the facebook incarnation of Deacon (the wrestler) may go to: http://apps.facebook.com/wrestle/Wrestlers!show.fb?id=590273940