With added responsibility comes ...

Axiom: With great power comes great responsibility.

Ergo, the implied inverse: As responsibilities are added, so too is the power to accomplish these responsibilities.

Therefore: You are never tasked with a goal that you cannot achieve.

Yay! That's great. Words to live by and remember when times are dark and you feel overwhelmed. Tasks can be daunting. Remembering that you have the power to accomplish the task at hand can relieve the pressure you might feel when you see how big the problem really is. Take a minute and remember your power if you get nervous.

And also, remember that with great power comes lackeys who will do the work that you can't or don't know how to do. You just gotta look for them. Kids, volunteers, employees, clerks of the court, public servants, family members, friends who help you move for pizza and beer, elected representatives, someone somewhere in the flesh can help. You just have to figure out who the lackeys are.

However, there is administrative overhead to take into account. You haven't really integrated the powers you've been bestowed until you've updated your resume. An old joke goes, if a woman says something in a forest, does anyone really care? Take out the misogyny, and it's basically an observation on the human condition: people will ignore everything they don't think is important. You've got to be able to tell people what you've done that demonstrates your ability to succeed.

In magic, we don't have a resume. But we do a lot of shit in this Great Work thing. Take some time to write it up using a Resume template. They're free online, and the MS Word 2007 versions are compatible with Open Office and Google Docs, so there's no reason you can't get started filling in the blanks on a template. Keep it secret, keep it safe, but keep it.

When faced with a crisis, pull it out and review it. You'll have forgotten about a trick you used in a previous situation that was similar. You'll see separate occasions that required seemingly unrelated skills that now would combine perfectly to solve your immediate need.

We use resumes in our careers to tell people what we've done and why they should hire us. In magic, your "Curricula Vita" serves as a reminder to you personally that you can do what needs to be done, and that you're the perfect person for the job.

And sometimes, that reminder is all we really need.