philosophy and personal space

[Portia]

Hope your day is okay H. I’m not sure personal growth is linked to having a spiritual teacher. There’s the search for spiritual enlightenment, and there’s the search for our true selves. Not sure they’re the same thing.

If we’re looking for the clues to our emotional well-being, to a way to relate in a positive way to other people (not harmful to them or ourselves), then I think that’s personal growth and is psychology based, or at least it is for me. The spiritual part comes much later, if it comes at all. But do we need teachers to show us how to understand ourselves? Not really teachers - but involved, caring, non-judgemental witnesses to our pain, be they therapists or friends. People who help us tell our own story and help us understand it – not people who hand a set of ideas to us. Maybe spirituality is linked to understanding our death, and personal growth is about understanding our life?? I’m just musing as I type here. Just ideas. 

Anyway back to you:

try to persuade them to improve my lot. Will take energy and I feel very burned out.

Great! It’s worth trying eh? And you’ll feel better for speaking up I hope. It takes a lot of energy to do this type of thing. And it takes a lot of energy not doing it too – putting up with the stuff that gets piled on us. Good luck H!!

[miss piggy]

Hello Hoppy,

Just checking in again.  I think I over-reacted in my post above.    Although I meant every word    it might not have been 100% relevant to the situation you are describing with your friend. 

I could go on and on about religion and spirituality, two topics that are related but not synonymous.  But a point I'd make here is that people have different learning styles and this would apply to spirituality as well.  Some people learn better on their own, some in "study groups" and some with "tutors", etc. 

Speaking of learning styles, my attention has been flitting all over the place so I may have missed some stuff, or be off target.  Apologies!

Anyway, good luck in sorting this out.  I often get a little muddled in wondering what friendships are, what they should "look" like and feel like.  I sometimes think I expect too much and get disappointed.  And other times, I shy away from people who are willing to grow closer to me (fear of exploitation!).  It's very confusing. 

Take care, MP

[Hopalong]

MP, every- and anybody...
heavens, don't apologize for trying to imagine a situation and doing your darndest to offer insight...doesn't matter one bit whether every commentary's a perfect fit! You weren't off at all, and even if sometime you might be, I promise...I'm not in the slightest offended by any time anyone gets something akilter (I'm sure half my posts are that way).

Because overall what registers with me here is a whole bunch of people sweating out their eyebrows to be helpful and supportive. That's just beyond wonderful and I'm poleaxed with gratitude, really.

My day was okay, got through it fine. A bit draining. Met with each of the 2 bosses separately and in subtle ways, they each pointed fingers at the OTHER as the "real" bad guy in rocking my life support. But I'm still in there, the new position description's kicking in, and Alphaboss (whom it turns out I'm correct not to trust entirely either) is making use of me in a new capacity, so he's happy.

As to N-ish good office friend, KP...well, I told the bosses that to train KP I would simply require clear boundaries of time, as he tends to get so focused on his goal of learning or being taught something that he can derail me.

Bottom line is, to make this new thing work I'm going to need to take full charge of it myself: develop a clear position description, keep careful documentation of what I do/for whom/and for how long...and generally try to keep it moving smoothly. For the next month I'm going to keep my head down and just try to please. After that I'll be launching into a bunch of training that will strengthen my position even if I ultimately lose this one.

Meanwhile, I turned down Part 2 of the enormous freelance job. Part 1 was very helpful and I'm glad I got to do it...but no amount of money is worth continuing the stress and exhaustion around trying to rescue/create/add onto (or whatever I'm doing) with my existing shaky job. That needs to be, no pun intended, Job One.

It was VERY helpful to have these posts and responses about my friend KP this weekend. It really does set me up to maintain better boundaries. (I don't begrudge him taking on the duties because professionally, doing the new things, editing and "shepherding" grants, is a better fit for me anyway.)

Thanks, all. And it's snowing!

Hopalong

[Plucky]

Hoppy this sounds pretty good.
I would just say, that the vocabulary 'boundaries' is a therapy word.   I would not use it at work.  You can say, 'parameters'.
Plucky