I think the reason why I want to start a religion is because, more than ever, I feel like what I'm really doing is starting a _monastery_: a refuge from the world where the rules are understood to be different from the outside and accepted as such.

It isn't necessarily that I want to frame what I do as religion, so much as religion seems to be the most likely framing under which most people will back off and leave me alone. They might point and laugh, but they'll do so at a distance.

This isn't to say that there's no spiritual bent to my working. There is, and a lot of it. But I fully recognize that there's a different one for everyone. We're all on our own paths together, trying to figure out where we're going. I don't want anyone thinking I'm trying to start telling them where to go or how to get there. I can barely find my own feet some days. Even if I were ready for an apprentice, it'd be in the sense of "teaching someone how to help people," not my path.