All I want but on the West Coast?!?

There's a new Juan in my life. Make a wish... will it come true? It's one of those wait and see kind of things.

What do I want in a relationship? What is my ideal? I don't have a dream guy per say. I've been more focused on who I want to be and how I want to feel in a relationship. What kind of dynamic do I wish for? What do I wish for my world to look like? These are the questions I want to define answers for.

""It requires two unambivalent people -- people who don't need that merging to feel secure. You know the person is with you and don't have to prove it." I want to be involved in a partnership where the mutual trust is so strong that we just know deep down in our souls that we have someone who's going to has each other's best interests in mind. I want to be someone dedicated to not only my own personal development, but also supportive of the development of those around me. That is my true ideal romantic relationship. I want my freedom and sense of individuality maintained. I want laughter, delight, and wonder to be part of my daily life. I want to experience obstacles and have experience the exhiliration of achievement and not pain too long when failure comes along. Overall, I want to be reverent in the fact that I'm human --that I'm blessed with the ability to sense my surroundings, create an inner life, forever evolve and adapt, and most importantly, love.

During a salsa workshop he was giving, Eugene once said that it is important that within a dance, both the leader and follower maintain their own center and when moving together try not to knock each other off balance. I think overall that's wonderful advice for any relationship in life.

List of Dreams...

Well, you may or may not know this about me, but I make a new year's resolution every year, and for the past three years, I have kept it.

My resolution has been the same, and the reason why I've always kept my resolution is because it's a very flexible goal. I have a list of goals and dreams that I want to have achieve and experience in my lifetime, and my resolution each year is to complete four of them.

Well, it's almost the midpoint of this year and I think it's time that I update my list and do an inventory of the things I achieved.

Dreams Achieved.

1. Join a dance company: I joined Salsamania Dance Company in Jan 2003 and danced with them until mid-2004
   
2. Perform at LA Salsa congress, the largest salsa conference in the world: I've performed at LA congress twice in 2003 and 2004!
   
3. Learn a computer language and build something with it: I taught myself Php and made a calendar program with it that I used for one of my clients in 2003.
   
4. Run a marathon: I ran the Honolulu Marathon in 2003. Yep, 26.2 miles in 7 hours!
   
5. Raise funds for a good cause: In 2003, I trained for the Honolulu Marathon with Team in Training and raised $3,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
   
6. Fly on the flying trapeze: I've wanted to do this since I was 12 when I found out that the Pickle Family Circus moved into the building next door to my cousin's condo. They offered me a chance to try it out, but I was too afraid. It was one of my biggest regrets, but I finally had the opportunity to remedy that last year. In 2004, I flew the air with the greatest of ease and even got caught by the catcher and was dropped into the net!
   
7. Climb a rope.: I didn't have the kind of PE class where they made you climb a rope and do agility exercises. I've always wanted to know how, and I learned in 2004, at the Circus Center.
   
8. Hold a handstand: 2004, with training from the instructors at the San Francisco Circus Center.
   
9. Be more financially intelligent: I hate living paycheck to paycheck, and I wanted to learn what I needed to do in order not to live that way. In 2004, I started reading various personal finance books which helped me develop a strategy of getting out of debt, saving and investing for emergencies, my dreams, and my retirement. My favorite author is David Bach. I no longer use my credit cards, and I'm a lot more savvy in regards to the tax laws and all the deductions that I qualify for.
   
10. Kiss a grammy winner: This is one of those toss away dreams that you just put in there for fun, but you never think will happen. Well, lucky me, I gotta kiss a cute one! He's a musician and some of the recordings he played on received grammys, and thus, he's a grammy winner.
    
11. Live in an industrial loft: I crashed with my high school friend in his loft for 6 months. It was a converted steam engine factory and had 20 foot ceilings and a huge freight elevator. Nov 2004 - Apr 2005
    
12. Visit New York and see the Statue of Liberty: Yup! Just did that! May 2005
    
13. Attend the Collegiate A Capella finals: April 2005. It was one of my main reason for going to NY.
    

Staying.

August seems so far away. I wish massage school started sooner. I'm itching to learn.

A major factor in my decision to stay in San Francisco was Glide Memorial, the church I go to... the place I weekly go to celebrate life.

I was raised Catholic in San Francisco. I mention San Francisco because it's one of the most liberal cities in the nation, and the politics and the reality of the city cannot be ignored. They affect the brand of religion that is spouted.

I went to a parochial school taught by Jesuits. My most memorable religion class was ethics where the outline of each class was: "Here's a controversial topic. Here's the pro side, this is the viewpoint of those against it, and this is what the church says. You've been informed. Make your own decision." I think that's how it's supposed to be.

Unfortunately, the liberal open attitude I found in my education was not always duplicated in brick and mortar of church. Catholicism in reality failed me, because on every turn, my stand on the ethical questions of the day were contrary to what the o' Pope in the Vatican supported. After awhile, the hipocrasy got to me, and I stopped going to church.

Last year, I found myself at Glide Memorial. I was pretty much drawn because of the music. It's a touted as a SF tourist spot, a must-experience, so the weekend of Valentine's day weekend last year, I wandered over. It was fantastic! You could feel the love. You could feel the joy. It was that palpable. Then, the pastor gave his sermon and I was floored. Finally, I found a church whose teachings were in line with my beliefs. Unconditional love, self-healing and recovery offered to any person of any background -- socioeconomic class, creed, colour and sexual orientation. In a lot of ways, I found my home.

It's taken me awhile, but now, I'm quite "religious" about attending celebration at Glide. I want to get more involved in their community programs -- serve food to the homeless, be a mentor to a child from the inner city, join the choir. So, that's why I have decided to stay in the Bay Area. I'm not done with Glide.

Well, I'm committed...

I start massage school at the National Holistic Institute in August! It's a year long evening/weekend program, and I'm very much excited to go. Going to massage school has been on my dream list for over a year, and now I'm finally doing it.

I had hoped to attend school in Santa Fe, NM, but it was proving too difficult to get myself to move and relocate and deal with financial uncertainty. NHI will work. I can keep my current job, live at home and go to class. It's a good school, federally accredited which means I can defer my student loans, get more financial assistance, and get a tax break on my tuition. Hurrah!

My hope at the end of this is to work at a spa part time, then eventually build a small clientel for myself. It's not going to be my primary source of income; just an additional one. Though, when I think more about it, I would love to be a master teacher one day and teach...