Ah my life. It pains me to say this, seeing as how you've been such a good blog, but you are being replaced. Not with a new website! Never fear, dear blogger, but you have already been replaced by paper. Literally. I have been using single printer pages and journalling a full page per day in the morning, with few exceptions, as well as journalling some evenings, such as today (yesterday...). I'm actually going to get back to it shortly, having been cheered/comforted by a friend who had a spiritual awakening. She's living in the center of life right now, hasn't slept in a week, is making progress on emotional and physical transformation for the better, and she was able to say just what I needed to hear.

There are two truths about me right now. The first is the primary reason that you (blogger) are no longer going to be my primary journal. This is because I need to acknowledge the power of my words and harness it, increase it and weild it. I need to be influential. And I need to be influential because of my words, my inspirational influence upon others, my moral not guidance but encouragement. And so I need to end my thoughtless public speech. This blog will now be updates about my life, stories about things that have happened to me, and in general, a form of entertainment for you, rather than a blathering place for me. Which for you should be a good thing [grins]. I like the way I speak, so don't expect me to become boring. Just expect that filter you all knew I would have to install someday.

The second truth has nothing to do with you, blogger, but I want to tell you anyway. You need to know that opening yourself to your own truths is the most important thing in your life. It is the only way to discover what you want, so that you can reach for it, to choose to define yourself by what you want rather than what you're putting up with. I thought I was making progress in my life, because I'm accomplishing a great number of things. And yet, what is progress that is not the direction you want? What is progress that continuously backtracks through your own fault? What is progress that does not achieve goals that you have set for yourself? It was brought to my attention that my progress was merely movement in an ambiguous direction. I have spent the last hour talking on the phone, and the half hour before that attempting to define my goals, which I'm going to get back to when I stop typing here. That attempt to write down what I want to do to define myself, goals such as where I would like to live, what I want to be doing there, and what steps it will take to reach it, these are all things that I have previously brushed aside. My excuses were things such as, "I don't need to think about where I want to be, because I'm fine anywhere, and I'm going to follow Lara to wherever she gets her job," and "Life always finds a way, so I don't need to worry about it all that much. I'm pretty charmed about that sort of thing." What if Lara wants to follow me? Will I even have a place that I want to go? What if I lose the things I want because I wait too long for them to come to me? These aren't acceptable. I kept telling myself that certain things were the most important part of me. What I was decieving myself about was that those things will always be a part of me, and they are not things that I can pursue without sacrificing other things that I do need to pursue. What does it matter if I have Lara's love and attachment if I have no life to give her and no life that makes me happy? What does it matter if I make enough money to support a family if I spend the rest of my life wishing I could have done something else? What does it matter if I spend my lifetime here on earth in comfort without changing anything or anyone for the better except in accidental nickels and dimes here and there as the opportunities present themselves? I was not given the gifts of strong faith, eloquence, intelligence, kindness, patience and charm just to squander them upon myself or a handful of others or no one at all. I kept trying to hold on to things, saying that this or that didn't count in how bare I become. But as Jesus said, if you cannot leave your family and possessions behind you, you cannot follow me. I don't mean that I'm going to sell all my things and abandon my family even more than I have (sorry, love you guys!), but that nothing is so important that we must hold onto it, for if it is important, it will come back to us, or it will remain with us on its own. I'm going to find myself, and I'm going to define myself. So this is a kiss goodbye, blogger, for while I'm not going entirely, our relationship is changing. Be well, and be safe, and be happy.

So some things are going well, and other things aren't going so well. Today I have a roommate and a girlfriend. The girlfriend you know. We're recommitted to each other, to being someone with whom the other can fall in love, each day, and each day looking to fall in love with the other. Blah blah blah, you think I'm just a drama queen anyway, so I'm not going to go into further details. The roommate is a guy named Tim, in his 30s, graduate degree from a NY college in advertising, worked for a good while doing internet stuff, now he's moving to Sarasota doing urban development. He's a really cool guy, and I look forward to becoming his friend.

Also, my paperwork is all sorted and filed, except my taxes, which are technically set aside, because I remember from last year that while you can do them online, you still have to print out something to sign with a pen and mail in. I did not buy a printer today, so that will have to wait until probably monday. Also, I'm recommitting to vegetarianism, because it's failing. I don't mean that vegetarianism is failing, but that Mine was, because I wasn't eating vegetarian...I was eating what I normally eat, minus the meat. Yah, so I need more protein. I'm going to get vitamins and a protein powder when I go grocery shopping, and I'm going to get Lara's recommendations on reading material on the subject. My cookbooks may even say enough, so I'm going to check into that. I've spent the majority of today doing paperwork either on the computer or around the house, so that almost everything is done, except a couple of things I have to take by hand to the post office. Speaking of the post office, my sword came in the mail today. I won't go on too much about it, because I'm a big nerd and could talk about it for a whole two paragraphs, but needless to say I was running around showing it to people, like the people at the bank, and coworkers, and the guy at the bike shop...yah, I'm a nerd. And I got a hold of a friend on the phone today who wants to go to the Sarasota Fair with us, and might bring another friend, so that will be exciting! We haven't seen her in a while because she was too sick to dance, and our paths didn't cross (even hers and Lara's). Fun people! I also had dinner with Megan and her new puppy, an 8 week old brown mottled puppy, so cute! It's a pit bull apparently, but it looked much like a small lab to me, except that labs never have the brown-and-black mottling. Ok, I'm going to shower now. Laters!

Again it has been a while. Life is very interesting for me right now. My apartment looks very spacious and cute, and I'm revitalizing the search for a roommate. I've realized that I want to be a "bard" and not a "vate" according to the Welsh tradition. I'm reading a great many interesting books, and I'm keeping a daily morning stream-of-consciousness (paper) journal. I'm researching cars to purchase one at an auction, possibly as soon as this Friday. I'm making plans to go to the Jungle Gardens and the Sarasota Fair this week, both outings being small or large groups. I'm teaching dance lessons out of my home. My friends are having relationship crises (one fell in love with someone with a terminal illness, one can't have a relationship in a mutually-loving situation because he's far away and injured so he can't move here). And I'm single.

Last things first (because it's what you care about the most), Lara and I broke up. I let her go near the end of last week so that she could enjoy being single over Spring Break. She felt trapped by the expectations (real or imagined) of being a girlfriend. Both of us are having difficulties attempting to support each others' problems, which are our own problems, and not the others'. Specifically, I have been spending too much time helping her and doting on her rather than getting anything done for myself. And it is not her responsibility to kick my butt to get things done, nor does she want that responsibility. Our love for each other is still strong and beautiful, and our friendship is still wonderful and exciting and inspiring, but the relationship was dragging us down, despite our best efforts not to allow it to do so. And so we broke up, to remain friends. I don't see myself dating anyone else any time in the near future, because I still don't want to be with anyone but her, and she feels the same. Will we get back together? Who knows, but for now, we're focusing on ourselves and the friendship. If anything else happens, it's going to be starting from scratch.

My roommate moving out was a wonderful thing, because it allowed me to move into his room. While I hate the standup shower, the extra storage both in the bathroom and in the larger closet allow me to hide away virtually everything, so that for the first time in my life, my room doesn't look cluttered. The living room, being a dance floor, is equally clear, though there is the possibility of more things moving around when I get a roommate, depending on their needs.

The three intellectual classes in Welsh tradition are the druids, who served as priests and judges, vates, who served as poets, seers and philosophers, and bards, who served as preservers and creators of oral traditions, geneaologies and stories. Druids had much power and were fairly uncompromising, leading the people by setting an example for them to follow. I have no desire to pit myself against the enemies of my culture and my beliefs. The vates were visionaries and were inspired by muses; they were prophetic, creating shards of beauty. I long to create beauty, but beauty that is not then inspirational is worthless, and our culture is so blind that merely presenting it with beauty will not be enough. And so, I will be a bard, an official entertainer, and an official creator of legend. It will require first gaining respect for keeping the stories alive, a task I long to do anyway, and then it will be accepting and using the cultural/political power of words to shape beliefs. I care not that my words will be remembered, but that the meaning of my words, based upon my belief in morals and nobility of spirit, will live on in men and inspire them to be greater than they otherwise would be. Storytellers are the creators of heroes.

So, Lara, Chris and I watched the movie, "What the Bleep do we Know?" and we're trying an experiment involving positive thought and determination upon a goal. If all matter is really only made up of ideas, then all we have to do is set ourselves a goal and fill ourselves and the world around us with the realization of that goal. I'm focusing on getting a job, but the side benefit of this is that it's caused me to start journaling and becoming more driven to accomplish the other goals in my life. I'm writing more because I'm inspired more. I talk about my goals more, and so I get help from people in unexpected ways. It's great!

I have to go now, but I look forward to both outings this week. The fair is extremely convenient hours for me, i.e. it starts at 2pm and goes until 11pm, so Friday afternoon, after class lets out at 3:15, Lara and I and as many friends as we can get are going to the fair. Wednesday morning (I switched work days with someone), we and Jesse and probably a couple others are going to the Jungle Gardens where we can feed ducks and flamingos and have lots of fun before she has class at 3:30. Yay! I'll talk to you laters, blogger. But don't expect it to be soon. I'm busy getting things done!