In 2018, I wrote a post about Personal Mission. Re-reading this post I see that my mission changed shortly after that, and recently, it changed again. As it stands right now, my mission is: “I offer up energy to build reciprocal relationships and create the community in which I wish for my grandchildren’s grandchildren to live.” While my mission changed, the reason it is important hasn’t.

It is like a budget. Before the month begins, you are the boss. You decide where every penny goes. Once the month starts, you look to the budget to tell you what is ok to do. I decide my mission, and then I live by it, up until I realize that my mission needs to adjust.

I have been reading, following tutorials, looking into the why’s and how’s of making a logo for one of the groups I volunteer for. And when following the process of making a logo, I was reminded of the North work on my path where we reviewed the roles we have in life.

One of the things that is said to be helpful in making a logo, is to make a Mind Map of key terms. If your logo is for a company that roasts coffee, we shouldn’t be too literal. It is better to look at various ideas that are similar to find some key phrases/ideas that get your mind in the right direction.

Then we could look at a larger group of ideas to produce a logo that is simple and memorable. In North Work, we do something similar with the Roles we carry in our life. We want to look at all of the Roles we hold, review them, and make some decisions about what we want to keep, need to keep, and do not wish to keep. This process is hard. For the ones we do not want to keep, and we do not need to keep, we have to find a way to respectfully, and carefully set them down.

This got me thinking about all of the various things I have been doing to uphold my mission, I realized that I would love to have some way to identify me in context of that. And after a lot of trial and error, I found something.

What terms would I want to use?

Looking at these terms, I went through many ideas. And here is the logo I landed on. And I love it!

This symbol fits so much of who I feel like I am trying to be. The main outer shape is called a Chakana. It is also called the Andian Cross. This talks to my shamanism. It talks to faith. It is a symbol of ancient Peru, and symbolizes balance, light and heavy energy, the three (lower, middle, upper) worlds, the 5 elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Ether). It talks to me about caring, connection, and reciprocity.

The 2 colors of that background are white and black, and those two colors are selected because I want it clear that I honor both light and heavy energy without judgement. Good and Evil are only judgements on things that have factually occurred. And they are balanced.

The Cherry Blossom, or Sakura, in the middle is a symbol of Samurai. It symbolizes impermanence and fragility, but also of strength and beauty. Did you know that kamikaze jet pilots from Japan would put a Sakura (Cherry Blossom Petal) some where on their jets when they flew out? It symbolizes my love for culture, and also has some symbolism for my home town of Traverse City.

It is not perfect. But neither am I. So in a way, that is also a great symbol. This was a great exercise for me, and it might be a cool thing for you to try. What would your logo look like?

Caveats: Most of my friends are not neurotypical. And sometimes, it is hard to not call out things that are not 100%, to the letter, accurate. I generally call this pedantic, but in reality, it is like an unexpected bump in the road. When you are listening to an amazing story, and they use a word or reference that doesn’t fit, it can be incredibly jarring because it is out of place. For those of my friends who are here, let me clear.

I am not a Samurai. A samurai was a person that fit into a specific class of people in Japan in a certain time period. They were often supported by a lord and were the best warriors they could be to defend that lord. I do train in a martial art that comes from a Samurai Family Style. I have my black belt in this art. If we can equate things back to Samurai times, I would say that at the age of 15, after 10 years of study, a person from a samurai family would have the “Moku Roku”. Or the curriculum of the style. They could teach most of it, but it would take their lifetime of effort to become their best. So, as a black belt, I am the equivalent of a 15 year old student in a Samurai Family. (Which I am pretty pleased with.) I use the term Samurai because people pretty quickly hear it and associate with the meaning I have.

I am not a Shaman. A shaman is a person who does very much what I do, but the term comes from Mongolia. My path is not from Mongolia, nor Asia at all. My path comes from Peru. The official label is Paq’o. I am roughly the equivalent of what people would associate with a Shaman. I use the term shaman because people pretty quickly hear it and associate with the meaning I have.