Love in Dark Settings

"For discipline is the channel in which our acts run strong and deep; where there is no direction, the deeds of men run shallow and wander and are wasted."

--Ursula K. Le Guin: The Farthest Shore.

Topics in this post: family responsibilities, serving as a role model (or not), my leather fiction.

Background to my Mentoring Life entries (please read this first if you haven't done so already).

*** 11 April 2008

My apprentice's winter health problems seem to be over, thank goodness, and he's gotten through a bleak mood from earlier this week, but he continues to have to shoulder heavy family responsibilities. On top of that all, he's had to take over the tasks of a housekeeper who had been helping to care for the disabled family member he lives with. My apprentice seems in good spirits so far, but I worry that all of this extra work is going to crush him. At any rate, we agreed that his regular schedule needs to be cut back on; we've changed his two-hours-of-art-daily requirement to one hour of art daily, that being the amount of time he reports he's currently spending on artwork. There's no need to worry about him meeting his daily requirement for housework, alas.

I told him, "I was standing in the kitchen the other day, thinking, 'Darn it, my boy is doing more housework than I am. I should do some housework.'"

He laughed and said playfully, "Don't you realize that housework is boys' work?"

"Unfortunately, I'm the sort of mentor who tries to lead by example," I replied dryly.

(*Makes note to clean the humidifiers tomorrow.*)

*** 8 May 2008

Discovered in one of my old letters to my apprentice, when we were arranging our first meeting:

"At the risk of starting off on a totally unmasterish foot, I think the safest way to ensure that you identify me [at the airport] is for me to bring along [my stuffed animal] Julian. I've found that, for some strange reason, when I have a small black octopus perched on my shoulder, it's hard for people to miss me in a crowd.

"(Regarding the unmasterish part, Julian suggests that he simply be one of my leatherboys for this trip. I told him I am not prepared to teach walking protocol to an eight-legged creature.)"

*** 20 May 2008

At times, there is nothing more humiliating than holding a conversation with my apprentice.

". . . so congratulations on not giving in on the temptation to stay up late. Just continue slow and steadily, the way you have been."

"And how was your day, Sir?"

"Um . . ."

(Bad sir.)

"I slept in late because I'm still recovering from my Internet addiction binge two days ago and--"

(Bad sir.)

"--I went online again today tonight."

"And how is your mother doing, Sir?"

"Um . . ."

(Bad sir.)

"She wanted me to visit her in the hospital today, but I was tired out from grocery shopping, and so--"

This has been happening so often recently that I get the definite feeling that I need to rehaul my life. I mean, there is something horribly hypocritical about me lecturing my apprentice about how he should keep to his schedule and be respectful to his father, at the same time that I'm informing him that I'm not keeping to my own schedule and am grumbling about my duties to my mother.

Not to mention that actions speak louder than words. It's good for me to share my own struggles with my apprentice, so that he'll know that others are in the same situation as he is, but there comes a time when leadership is needed. "Do as I say, not as I do" is not a good approach to mentoring.

So I need to do a better job of living up to the standards I set for my apprentice.

*** 21 May 2008

I made my daily call to my apprentice and found that he had done something he shouldn't (reading online stories without a timer on; he's required to use a timer because he loses track of time otherwise). That forced me to discipline him (no online stories for a week). Then I had to say, "Is this the point at which I confess I was online today for two hours?"

He laughed, but I was shamefaced enough after that episode that I didn't do what I'd been tempted to do: make up for lost time by staying up further past my bedtime. Really, my apprentice is a wonderful influence on me. I just wish that I could be sure that the opposite is true.

*** 24 May 2008

On the night of May 23-24 last year, I happened to mention, in an e-mail to one of the readers of my fiction, that I'd been persistently seeking, for over two years, someone to mentor within the context of a nonsexual relationship with clear hierarchy and formal protocol. I told my reader that I'd just about given up hope of ever finding someone who wanted that sort of mentoring.

By return mail, Jo/e asked to become my apprentice. In celebration of our first anniversary together, I'm publishing Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers, which Jo/e served as a technical consultant for. (I consulted him about the bootblacking scene, in case you're wondering - though I doubt that he's ever had a bootblacking experience that was quite as unusual as my protagonist's.)