November 21, 2005

• From challenge and adversity…

  …come chaos and destruction.

  I’ll bet some of you thought I was going to have some high-minded,
  inspirational stuff about adversity building character and challenges
  leading to growth.  It’s not that I don’t subscribe to that
  paradigm, but right now I’m more likely to come off as high-handed
  rather than high-minded.  Maybe it’s because Mercury is
  retrograde, or maybe my brain chemistry is out of balance, or both, and
  a few other things as well.

  This Is My Life, Rated
  Life:	7.9
  Mind:	8.9
  Body:	5.7
  Spirit:	9.6
  Friends/Family:	6.6
  Love:	8.2
  Finance:	6.9
  Take the Rate My Life Quiz

   I
  took this quiz and scored so high on the spirit part that they asked me
  for a bit of wisdom to share with those whose lives are deficient in
  that area.  I looked at some of the “body wisdom” from those whose
  physical lives excel, and got nothing of any use to me.  I would
  have scored higher on friends and family, but my dearest old friends
  are dying off faster than I’m gaining new intimates, and that quiz goes
  by numbers.  Ah, well, life is good.  It beats the
  alternative, anyway.

  ---

  I had a mini-epiphany about my preparations for Thanksgiving.  I
  need to keep it low key and not bustle around here cleaning house so
  that I’m so fatigued by mid-week I can’t cook.  It should be
  enough to just move the boxes and baskets of mongo toys from Greyfox’s
  front-room chair into some out-of-the-way corner of the back
  room. 

  It has taken me months, since bringing them home from Felony Flats
  where Greyfox dug them out of the dumpster, to get around to sorting
  them for distribution, no point in knocking myself out to finish the
  job before Thanksgiving. 

  Both my current husband and my former one know just what kind of
  housekeeper I am.  I have nothing to prove there.  (I decided
  to invite Charley after all, since both Doug and Greyfox indicated that
  they’re over their hostility.  Now if Charley can maintain his
  usual chivalrous front, we’re okay.)

  ---

  I’m weighing my options in relation to some changes I think I may need to make at KaiOaty,
  to the guidelines and the screening process.  As it now stands,
  the screening process is a clever (maybe too clever) but time-consuming
  maze of linked pages that function, when the client is willing to take
  the time, to inform people of the types of issues I’m willing to
  address there, while answering many of the more common questions I have
  been asked over the decades that I’ve been doing that work.

  I am well aware that when someone consults a fortuneteller he or she
  does not want to be handed a Xeroxed one-size-fits-all answer to
  his/her personal question, but, dammit, I am not a fortuneteller and in
  the majority of cases the questions I am asked have common answers that
  I can reel off by rote, and did for many years in my booths at fairs
  and festivals.  When I started doing readings by mail, I used
  Xeroxed sheets, and on Xanga I use the FAQ pages. 

  For most people, it may be humbling or irritating to realize that they
  ask the same questions a lot of other people ask and that the answers
  are the same to all of them.  The delusions of the naive are not
  my concern, except insofar as I can dispel them.  My true concern
  is to use my limited time and energies to address the serious and
  unique concerns of people who have a real need for guidance or
  advice.  If I were in this for the money I’d do as many of my
  professional colleagues do and charge just as much for the stock
  answers to stock questions as I do for a challenging and significant
  reading.

  What I have done is prepare a set of FAQ pages for the information of
  everyone, free of charge.  The ones who don’t find their answers
  there can then have a personal reading and pay for it whatever they
  think it has been worth to them.  It works quite smoothly most of
  the time, that system I devised.  Once in a while, though, someone
  stumbles onto the site and asks for a reading without first going
  through the screening process. 

  It’s a minor inconvenience for me to delete requests that they drop in
  the comments to the latest reading I’ve done for someone else, and
  that’s how I handle most of those misplaced requests.  Depending
  on how I’m feeling at the time and the vibe that the person making the
  request is throwing off, I may react to them with anything from
  annoyance to amused tolerance to bemused incredulity that someone could
  fail to notice and follow the directions in the header.  “How,” I
  sometimes ask myself, “can they be expected to read and heed the
  reading if they don’t read and heed the directions for getting one?”

  Sometimes, however, when business is slow and I’m in the mood to work,
  I follow up on such requests by going to their sites and repeating what
  it says in the header of every page:  “If you want a reading,
  click on the coyote image….”  Most of these people never get
  back to me with a request placed where it needs to be placed to get my
  compliance.  Most of the time, I understand why.  I am
  psychic, after all.  I know that some of them do go back and read
  the FAQ and learn that my paradigm is so different from theirs that it
  baffles them.  Those are the ones who thought I was a
  fortuneteller.

  Some of them might benefit from a reading, might actually need
  one in the sense that their well-being could diminish without it. 
  And here is where we get to the crux of the matter, the reason for all
  this keyboarding.  If you’re a longtime reader here, you may
  recognize this as just another instance of Kathy talking to herself
  trying to get her act together. 

  If  you’re one of my newer readers, you should by now be up to
  speed on who this Kathy is who has to talk to herself to get her act
  together.  If I thought it would get me any help, I’d ask for your
  input, but experience has shown me that when I ask for it, (except for
  dingus, who always has lots of lame or screwy advice)  I usually
  get assurances that you all know I’ll work it out for myself.  Fat
  lot of help you all are, y’know?

  The issue is ethics.  On the one hand, my ethical code doesn’t
  allow me to chase someone down and give her or him a reading against
  his/her will.  On the other hand, thirty-six years ago when I
  started doing this stuff, I made a deal with Spirit:  my part is
  to serve and help people, to tell the entire truth as I understand
  it.  Spirit’s part is to speak through me and give me insight, to
  guide me in my life and provide guidance to others through me. 
  Cassandra of old Troy would understand, but not many others do. 
  Old Man Coyote understands perfectly, with his own peculiar
  twist.  Coyote and I feel that when someone asks for a reading,
  they are giving me permission to do a reading, even if they aren’t
  going to like it.

  It is inconsequential to Spirit, to Old Man Coyote, and to me, whether
  that person likes, appreciates, or even believes and accepts what I
  say.  The important thing is that I tell it truly and tell it
  fully.  This was less of a problem when my readings were all
  face-to-face and in person.  I could lay the ugly and unwelcome
  truth out for the client and he or she could react in whatever way he
  or she chose.  My ego isn’t invested in this work.  My
  self-esteem can be hurt only if I fall short of my own standards.

  Being the bearer of unwelcome but accurate information is interesting
  sometimes.   Early on, people would come back to me after a
  few days, weeks or months and tell me, often ruefully or with
  embarrassment, that I had been right.  Some of those who had
  over-reacted initially had come back to apologize.  When I began
  working by mail, it was initially frustrating to me that so few people
  gave me any feedback at all to my readings.  I got paid by the
  ones who appreciated what I told them, but I didn’t get any response
  from the ones who didn’t like it.

  Then, after a while, the delayed feedback started coming in, and the
  apologies, and the inflated payments made larger by the guilt or
  embarrassment of the ones who had decided to blow me off until events
  had forced them to acknowledge to themselves that I’d told them
  truly.  When I started working here on Xanga, I wanted to avoid as
  much of the bullshit as I could.  Part of my screening setup is
  designed to prepare people for readings they may not like.  Of
  course, it only works when they go through the screening process.

  I did say I was going to get to the point, didn’t I?  Well, my
  point is, sometimes it benefits both me and the client to read for some
  of the lazy or self-involved ones who cannot be bothered to follow
  instructions.  I understood this at one level and yet was
  unwilling in most instances to go ahead and read for them.  One
  exception I made a year ago, for misunderstood47,
  seemed at first to have been a mistake.  She reacted violently and
  threateningly, and her daughter jumped to her mother’s defense even
  more vehemently.

  Then with the passage of time, my reading sank in as so many people
  have told me theirs had done.   Prissy found some value in
  it.  We are friends now, and she is no longer blocked from
  commenting on or subscribing to my sites, although I think KaiOaty is
  still blocked from hers, since my effort to sub to her and add her name
  to my list of clients failed. [You gonna fix that, Pris?]  My
  delayed success with her encourages and emboldens me to want to take
  any and all requests for readings as tacit consent, even when I know
  that the potential client doesn’t know what she is asking for.

  By an odd cyclic synchronicity, the subject came up again just one year
  after the previous incident.  Someone asked me some fortuneteller
  questions before she had bothered to go through the screening process,
  working on the common but mistaken assumption that I was an amateur
  fortuneteller.  I urged her to allow me to do a real reading for
  her, on questions that could be of use to her in achieving her aims,
  but once she understood that I would not undertake to predict whether
  she would by magic or fate achieve those aims without any effort on her
  part, she withdrew the request.

  I am bereft.  I had within my grasp an ideal subject and she
  slithered away.  I do so want to cheat on my own rules and read
  for her anyway, as I did for Prissy.  You see, I have no scruples
  on one level there because I am sure that the reading could only
  benefit and not harm her.  My scruples are in that she withdrew
  the request.  Even more than not being a fortuneteller, I’m not an
  ambulance-chasing fortuneteller, to mix metaphors horrendously.  I
  can in good conscience sit here and wave my flags and say I’ve got
  goodies for you, but my conscience won’t allow me to force my goodies
  on you unasked.

  Since I made up the rules and built that screening system at KaiOaty, I
  can change them.  I want to make some changes, and I’m not sure
  how to do it.  The only concrete idea I’ve come up with so far is
  this:  the text in my header that urges people to go through the
  screening has been changed several times.  The latest change left
  it saying that cooperation will be rewarded.  I’m considering
  changing it again to something more like a threat than a promise, that
  makes it clear that any requests left in the wrong place, or
  fortuneteller-type questions, will be dealt with at my whim by
  rephrasing the improper questions and answering them as I did for
  Prissy, or by substituting a “Reality Check” reading as I was tempted
  to do for the Xangan who chose to weasel out of the deal she made with
  me.

  I’m not asking for help with the ethical issue.  They’re my ethics
  and it’s for me to decide, but if anyone has any input on phrasing my
  threat of dire consequences upon those who fail to follow instructions,
  I’m open to suggestions.
  

  • 10:33 pm
  • 5 Comments