The Fanstastic Ms. Fox

Change what I can
Accept what I can't


Over the last four years or so, I've been wrestling with the question:
   what are the limits of my ambition to improve the world?

1. Since I was a child, I saw the world as a thing to be fixed. My role was to fix it.
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2. You can't think your way out of everything.


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3. Until then, where's the limit? When are we - when am I slacking off and letting the world down? Better set that limit high. I mean, what's theharm in overshooting? What's a little stress - or a lot of self-destruction - in the face of being able to help people on a wide scale?
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I would like to thank the people who helped me come to this. Alex, Samo, Este, Michelle, Jordan and many others

Very, very glad to be back in Vancouver. Wow. CFS = dysfunctional. More details available in person.

Being in Ottawa gave me the chance to think about anything other than the CFS, such as my career plans - a topic of some ambivolence. After some consideration, I think that this post-bac and student union work is actually a good thing to be doing with my time. The main problem is a perceived lack of respect that comes with the "failure" to "leave school and get a real job."

Waitaminute. This is a real job. It has real responsibilities such as the  UPass, clubs, making staffing decisions, dealing with the CFS and running a grants committee for a nonprofit with a membership the size of a midsized town. It just happens to attract incompetents, pays poorly and required me to re-apply four months after getting it.

And I'm in school for good reasons - I like the material, it feeds into my career plans, better qualifies me for an MBA, and even provides me with the knowledge to do my current job better.

My neighbour (in the full meaning of the word) came over for a chat and we discussed careers and intentional communities; dreams and visions of various forms. I have trouble listening because he's talking so slowly, so carefully. He tells how he could drift, waver and float forward in the currents, unbearably light.

Flying in the face of my Western life. Protestant Work Ethic and Homo Rationalis spirit of independance stirs with egalitarain upbringing and produces bother. Should I feel the need to look up to an older man. But I do and he's there.

And so, this I should: make a mark (or not), but fight the urge to drive pitons into the stream-bed. Or don't fight it, understand and transcend it. To change, to be changed, is courage.