You guys, I suck. As a general rule, I am kind of terrible at hearing/following/adhering to the rules. Which is to say, I am not good at general guidelines either. I happen to be working in a capacity at this time that is largely about rules and general guidelines. You can imagine how well that is going. I am learning a lot about rewriting and redoing and re-listening and revisiting and pretty much re-everything in this role. Here is a working list of the guidelines I have broken on this fire assignment so far:

1) no open toed shoes in fire camp
2) remain at least 10 feet from open water without a personal flotation device
3) don't use the word "monitor"
4) don't use the word "watch"
5) don't use the words f*** s*** d*** or b*****
6) sleep within fire camp perimeter
7) don't take food out of the kitchen area
8) don't throw food scraps into the bushes
9) don't feed the animals
10) don't scare the public
11) practice good hygiene
12) be nice to people

I would like to say how sorry I am for my transgressions and offer proliferating regret, but since I am working on self-love and self-acceptance, Ima just roll with it and accept the occasional hand slap and look of profound exasperation from my immediate supervisors.

Not following guidelines has garnished me a whole collection of rejections from several places where I submitted writing samples in the hopes of a payoff. Part of me wants to blame my homeschooled renegade background, but really, I am just more excited about what I have to say than I am about instructions. It could be that I am resisting the hardcore overdose of rules that I grew up under, but even then I was pretty intolerant of being corralled between the lines, as my parents will attest.

Maybe guideline follower is one of those things that I have never been and I should work on, but sometimes then I feel like I would just be like all of the other lemmings marching toward the cliff of conformity without ever asking why.

Guidelines are created by and for a litigious world, where individuals refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of their own actions, i.e. wearing flip flops in fire camp. Everybody wants somebody else to pay the price for their poor choices. But if there are rules, then nobody else can be blamed, right? I don't see that working very well. Humans are messy animals that will find a rule that has not been made yet, break it, and cost others so much that it will demand the recourse of a new guideline the rest of us are stuck with. Too many rules are just a symptom of a much bigger problem, I think Ima keep bucking them, and working to solve it.