You’re the Firestarter, Twisted Firestarter

I had an epiphany at work today about the different people that I encounter in my life. Catalyzed almost entirely by my CoStar horoscope which is habitually scarily accurate. 

I was having a bad day because I was super tired. And a super tired me = I have even less sympathy/empathy for the plight of the fucking Karen’s in the world. The super bitch version of me that shows up isn’t happy unless the other person is weeping into their bad life decisions. 

So imagine my surprise when one of my coworker friends was trying to cheer me up and make me laugh. It was a valiant effort to lighten the mood especially since the topic of the soup sandwich came up again as the section manager requested my report detailing what impact their lack of attendance has had on the workload.

Not too shocking since the soup sandwich topic came up recently in a team meeting, but still validating since at the time I felt my words had fallen on deaf ears. 

Firefighter vs Firestarter

There are two different kinds of people one will encounter in life, and these types will also encompass the people that you surround yourself with, such as family and/or friends.

One type is the firefighter.

And I am not referring to the hunky civil servants protecting the local populace from danger. The Firefighter refers to the people who show up in your life looking like they are there to help but instead end up putting OUT all the fires of motivation, creativity, inspiration, and forward momentum that you try to raise. Firefighters will pee on your parade. Firefighters ACTIVELY will demotivate you.

The other type is the Firestarter.

Not Firestarters of the pyrokinesis variety, although they would be incredibly handy to raze the land of your enemies.

The Firestarters are the people in your life who see the tiny ember of motivation you have and build it up. They get you fired up to be better, more awesome, more present, more yourself. The Firestarters fan the flames and get them going.

I want the Firestarters in my life. I have enough people trying to stomp fires out, number one Firefighter is my mother. If there was ever an tiny seed of hope she would pour acid on it with her illogical worries and never ending doubt that anyone aside from herself is capable of doing anything right. You want someone to Debbie Downer you? Call my mother.

So yesterday I realized this one friend trying to cheer me up was a firestarter. When I started at this new job she was slow to take a liking to me. I don’t blame her, I would be wary of outsiders coming into positions with a lot of influence too. However, I won her over in the end. I’d like to think it was my cheerful personality, but I know what actually won her over is my never ending reality. I keep it real. I also don’t play games, and when I come to work, I work. I don’t fuck around and waste time like so many other people.

So back to the early days — she took me aside one day and gave me some advice. She saw that I had mentioned a good idea, and she told me that I needed to get hot on implementing my idea, and then telling the section manager that I did it. She said otherwise, other people would have no qualms stealing my idea and taking the praise for its implementation even when they knew they had nothing to do with it.

I was a little hesitant, but she said that she knows it seems counterintuitive to what I had been doing so far of laying low and just learning the job, but that she saw that I was a good worker and she didn’t want to see me screwed over. I was like, okay, took her advice and it worked out fantastic.

She is definitely a firestarter. We might go together like oil and water sometimes, but that’s more a personality thing than anything else. At least I know that she means well overall.

Not all Firestarters are going to look the part. Some will get on my nerves occasionally, or they may be my best friend in the whole wide world. The basic point is that I have to identify their capacity to fulfill the firestarter or firefighter role in my life. It is easy to discount someone who I would have a throw down argument with about the right of eating cashews when there are so many women mistreated in cashew farms around the world.

I could have easily discounted this person as a firefighter because we clash on some issues. But in the end it turns out she is not putting out fires, instead she is helping me light them up.

Because ultimately the people in my life will fill one of those niches and I’d best not wake up one day and find myself surrounded by firefighters unless it’s of the kind that work a firehose. I think you know what I mean…