Dear Friends,

So I have had some things come up, as readers here and my friends who follow me on Facebook know.  An extended period of frustration and disappointment with my involvement with a local Pagan community organization/group, where my every idea and suggestion and utterance met with negative reactions and resistance and dismissal finally came to a head recently as while I am still a member and still willing to perform the Imbolc for the group if they wish it; I have taken a huge step back from my active involvement there.

I also have had the very deep disappointment of personal betrayal, as you already know.  A friend, someone I trusted enough to help them find employment with my company, has been fired for the first of what has turned out the be several incidents of credit-card fraud and embezzlement.

As frustrating, painful, and difficult as these have been; they have also made me take some steps back and re-evaluate where I am and where I want to be in life and also where I am investing my time, talent, education, experience, and energies.  So I am making a few changes and some of them may affect things here.

I am in the process of creating a secondary Facebook page, and e-mail account for my professional life and goals and communications.  I am also revamping the current FB profile, a little, to emphasized that one as my private/personal one and the one I use as an active member of the online Pagan community.  Do not think, however, that I am closeting.  I am just trying to sort out my personal and professional contacts and images, I am also trying to open up space in my life to write and contemplate things from my professional and educational experiences… I am for example thinking of starting a blog from the P.O.V. of a longtime student and worker in the Hospitality industry, with a possible spiritual angle.

My LinkedIn profile (which, note to self, I have got to work on) is going to include my professional and ‘extra-curricular’ experience as well as my education…. so the work I did in the Pagan community of Anchorage assisting with the first Pagan Pride in Anchorage, AK and the co-coordinatorship of that same event in 2005 will be included as will my work with The Last Frontier Men’s Club in Anchorages Gay community.   Including these is partly a conscious choice in that I would really rather not work someplace where I would need to be closeted from my associates, although I am also trying in my current job not to push any envelopes and haven’t really brought up the Pagan thing too aggressively… although I think my boss knows or suspects cause she kind of gave be an amused grin when I asked about using some of my Vacation time for the Winter Solstice…

Including such experience on my resume/LinkedIn profile is also a luxury of working the Hospitality/Restaurant Industry where you kind of have to be open to cultural diversity in all its manifestations.

I am also planning on re-vamping the Pagan Values Blog.  I am thinking a group-blog format with articles from various contributors on the theme of Pagan Values (and Virtues and Ethics) and some regular writing contests/ events in addition to the Pagan Values Blogging Month.

I am feeling… hopeful and enthusiastic… like I have found my footing again for the first time in a long time after the last year or so of wandering and grieving and upsets.   In some ways these most recent disappointments and the one active betrayal have been the ‘kick in the seat of the pants’ I needed.

Peace,

Pax