I am going to start filtering some of my more private musings. Since blogger does not have a tool for that, you will need to visit my Live Journal and ask to be friended there. I will continue to post Daily Gratitude and other subjects here. There is also a FAQ for my Journal at the same link.
on being "responsible"
| Sunday, April 02, 2006 @ 11:25 I believe this is the last post exploring the thoughts that led to my recent life changes I'm the oldest child of an oldest child (my father). Even though my mother wasn't the oldest child, she helped raise her younger siblings and was always held up as an example to them. Now add the fact that I'm a "genius" who learned fast and got great grades all through grade school. You can see that I was groomed to be "the responsible one" long before I even knew what the words meant. It wasn't all bad. As the "responsible one" I usually got to boss the other kids around. As a budding sadist with a dominant personality, being "in charge" of things was fun. However, the expectations I placed on mysElf (Virgos are perfectionists, after all) on top of those I assumed I had to live up to for my family, teachers, and community, were unbearable. By adolescence I suffered several bad bouts of depression. Given that my inner dreams involved an artistic life and an unconventional, nomadic existence, the friction against those external expectations created huge walls that it has taken years to identify and, slowly, remove. Somewhere along the journey, I latched onto the ideal that a "responsible Master" is one who has an established, successful career or job. He has health care and retirement plans. He has savings, investments, and owns his own house. All of this makes him qualified to take over and guide the financial and career decisions of his charge(s). I heard this implied and outright stated over and over in advice to both slaves and masters. I heard some of the most respected Masters caution against taking on the responsiblities of mastery when you're not really qualified to do so. And I believed that I wouldn't be qualified until my economic and professional lives were in order. So, I moved to Arizona and found a job with benefits and retirement and slowly rebuilt my credit score. I quit that job and found one with better pay and benefits. That level of stability did help my bank balance. I acquired a slave, lived in steadily "nicer" homes, and even qualified to buy a brand new car. Maybe I was miserable, but I was definitely responsible. When I was laid off from the mortgage job last year, I told mysElf I was lucky. I had a good severance package and COBRA. I got sucked into the outplacement agency's model of how to find my next job. I actually imagined mysElf happy returning to HR or non-profit work if I could 1) get a higher paycheck and 2) have more challenging duties. Luckily, mysElf resisted and I didn't do everything they taught me to do and the "perfect job" didn't materialize as the months passed. However, I still wanted to be "responsible" so I kept looking and I procrastinated following through with my artistic plans. Last year boy said something that stuck in my head: this model of the "ideal Master" that I carry around in my head is largely based on the ideas of a group of gay men of a different generation than mine. I realized that this view has been picked up and mirrored by a group of heteroseuxal men (and women) also wanting to recreate a model of the "traditional" household of the past (whether that past is the Victorian era, the 1950's, or a military or other model that they cherish). While they may be more enlightened about consent, spirituality, and transparency than the originals they hope to emulate, they still want to create a world with an authority figure assuming fiscal responsbility for the charges. In fact, those who choose to be supported by their slaves in order to pursue intellectual or other goals are branded "lazy" or even "abusive" -- and that's the last thing I would want to have said about me. One of the reasons the Universe brought boy to my life is that his view is much like mine -- just years ahead. All the things I've been exploring about jobs, the economic system, creativity, nomadic urges, he worked through in his own life over a decade ago. So the lightbulb went on (finally!) as I realized that if neither mysElf nor my slave believes the status quo is sane, productive, or healthy, how is it responsible for me to insist that either of us participate in it? Why should I force mysElf into job after job that saps my energy, my spirit, my creativity when boy could care less how much money is in our bank account? Why do I try to prove I can be a "responsible member of society" (financially speaking) when we both disdain that society? Why should I try to attract other slaves that cling to the status quo when my ultimate goal is to subvert that and create my own model of life? I need to break the model of "responsible" that I carry in my head and work on creating a new one. A master needs to be ethical, moral, spiritually-grounded. A master needs to guide and mold her slave to the best life possible within their own belief structure. I need to find other slaves who are creative, intuitive, and nomadic (and if any of them are independently wealthy, so much the better for our collective creative goals!). I need to find slaves who will value my vision, commitment, and ability to provide the type of life we need, rather than the type of life society tries to dictate to us. It would be irresponsible of me to lure slaves with one vision and then slap them with the reality of life on the road. It would be irresponsible of me to force a creative, independent-thinking individual into a 9-5 prison for the rest of their life to live up to someone else's ideal of what a "productive household" looks like. And, thanks to the nudging of the Universe, I have to take responsibility for opening discussion on the subject of "responsibility" within the larger leather and M/s communities. So, do you think you can guess the next topic I'm developing for presentation and workshops?
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