New Mantle

For the longest time I've been encouraged to become a leader. I've been placed in temporary leadership roles to see how I would and asked a dozen times to be an alpha or to teach others. I've always abstained from being a leader or placed in such a role, because of an irrational fear few know I have. Somehow I got it into my head as a pup, that being a leader is like being a military leader. That others lives are in my hand and depend on me to make the right choice. Sometimes it will bring a military leader and their troop to victory and sometimes, most regrettably that choice will cause the loss of life. I never wanted to be responsible for the loss of lives ever again, although this lifetime I've never been near a battlefield or even in a fight. Finally, after Scotland, I had a Social Work class that I volunteered to be a leader. Well, okay not exactly. My professor said she chose 7 owners for imaginary agencies and before she told us the names, did any of us think we would make good owners. I like to move class time along, so I volunteered fourth after it was clear that she wanted up to 7 people to volunteer. She then told us to go to the front of the class and tell people why they should work for us as social workers. Then she said we were officially the new owners of a nonexistent agency. It was up to us to hire four employees, and for our employees to choose to work for us. We had to appoint CEO's and delegate positions to new employees. Then we had to come up with a name, policies, a group our agency would target for selling ideas to, etc.

My group was actually going to name me Owner and CEO of the agency, but we weren't sure if it was okay, so I appointed a volunteer CEO and our agency became known as Countries Apart, but never by the heart. My CEO came up with that. Although it's a fake idea, it sort of was like stepping back into a role that was made for me. I was a little nervous at first, because I didn't know if anyone would choose to interview me for a job, but once everything was settled, I felt better. Like ah leadership my old friend. Then I went to my job at the library to work out a new schedule and hours for the semester and my boss told me that he wanted me to take on a supervisor role. Again it's minor and just for students, but basically I'm going to be given more responsibility to fulfill the Student Supervisor role. Once again, I wasn't freaking out like I usually would be. I was happy to be back at work and surprisingly I haven't forgotten nearly as much as I thought I would. I feel calm, cool and collected in both leadership roles that were sort of presented to me and I could have declined them both, but I think I want to try to be a leader more often these days.

I don't know where it will lead in the long run. It's a position that I don't take lightly, because I have a slight tendency to consider myself all powerful in my domain after a while, but I think these small positions of donning a new mantle will be fine. So hopefully we'll see how it goes.