I just wrote a note to myself to make sure I buy a label maker and grain jars this weekend. So, I guess I really don't have a life (I'll blame it on hormones).

Just for today, I accept my obsessive compulsive nature.

Occasionally, I get asked to dance by really great dancers (aka, "salsa ninjas") and it's a rare opportunity for me to raise the bar on my salsa. I have to try and focus on not getting nervous and doing something stupid like punching said person in the face (it's a dangerous salsa world and besides getting pillaged in the foot by spiked heels, sometimes people get whacked in the face...by me). It's a threat I'm willing to live with, but would warn others about.

Anyway, one particular great dancer happens to be blind in one eye. He's a wonderful dancer and a great spirit and his eye is not something that seems to hinder him in the least bit. So one night he asked me to dance and in my excitement I executed the faux paus of injuring him in the most insulting way (so ashamed)...I poked him in his blind eye...! Of all the things I could do (step on him, hit in the face with my flailing arm, spiral out of control), it had to be this very creepy unconscious Freudian way of being very rude.

Talk about sabotage...

Just for today, I'm aware of my salsa sabotage.

During the day I work my self to the bone in the frenetic mostly caucasian highway of corporate America. At night I dance myself into a whirling dervish (as my salsa chica calls it) in the largely Latino world of hyper LA salsa. The harder I work, the more I want to dance. The more I dance, the more energy and passion I can bring to my work. Perhaps, at some point, I'll explode and there will be nothing left but some salsa shoes, glitter, and project schedules. But for now, my vida loca is definitely more interesting and and exciting than ever before. If I've learned anything (and chances are good that I haven't), it's that life is too short to play it safe and wait for the right time, the right perfect circumstance, or the right age to do what brings me joy and to give all I have.

Just for today, I feel alive.

Some days (who are we kidding?...every day) I wish that some benevolent female Godess spirit figure (Cate Blanchette in "Lord of the Rings" would do just fine) would come down from the heavens and put up a billboard in my apartment with an agenda starting with the bullet point "Next Steps" (this is how I've been trained to end all meetings at work...). It all started when I got bored with college in my sophomore year and realized that I could no longer look to anybody to help me figure out what the next move in life would be. Since then it's been a perpetual struggle between The Program that the "normies" got (go to grad school, meet husband/wife, travel the world in Euro Disney fashion, buy house, have children...you know the drill...) and weird artist people who wander around cities like Los Angeles and New York (and maybe some in that stuff in between). Forget about making a living and having relationships, nothing prepared me for the sheer anxiety and confusion that groping around in the dark of life's choices would bring. If only someone had sat me down and told me the truth, "You're going to be alive for a period of time and unless you're willing to commit to some type of addiction, it's going to be really #$%&* confusing...so just deal with it." Trust me, that would have been much better preparation than Catechism, SAT Prep, and Drivers Ed all rolled up in one...

Just for today, life is confusing.

I had lunch with my friend and her new infant this morning. It always happens when I'm around new mothers. My attitude towards child rearing swings dramatically from a pat "She's cute and all, but I just don't get it," to "I wonder if ______ would be interested in being a father?" It must be hormones because nothing else could explain how my feelings towards children could change on a dime. One time, I woke up in the middle of the night and made a mental note to call my favorite Gay Boyfriend and ask him if he would like to have a child with me. When the morning came, the idea seemed ludicrous. The hormonal surge must have passed. I guess it makes sense. What else but biology would compel anyone to sacrifice their personal freedom and the next twenty years to the care of another?

Just for today, I'm contemplating having children.

Just like I'm not a mechanic, or an electrician, or a make-up expert at the MAC counter, I'm not a dentist and unless I'm willing to take a crash course in one of these areas I am, therefore, at their mercy (I am, however, getting much better at putting on eye shadow). Of the aforementioned, I trust dentists the least (I trust MAC Counter People the most...though, they often have some scary lookin' eyes), and the fact that dentists have the highest rate of suicide, doesn't make it any easier. Due to insurance changes, I had to stray from white sanitary office of my old dentist whose only two utterances were, "Everything looks good!" and "You should really get a mouth guard" (then how could everything be looking good?...at a certain point, it's time to change professions). Suddenly, however, I was thrown into the jungle of Los Angeles dentists who judge anything that's not a white straight line as a monstrous defect that is doing nothing short of holding me back from my wildest dreams of love and success. I'm not saying I want to be a snaggle tooth English person (nothing against the English personally), but I didn't wear headgear for four years for nothin'....I've paid some freakin' dues!

Anyway, on top of the challenges of holding down a stressful job and searching for a life partner, I have to deal with the trauma of dealing with a densist who insists that I spend $200 on a special toothbrush and my life savings on five crowns and and ten veneers (OK, I'm exagerating...it's been a long week)!

I know this is an overused expression but...WTF?!

Just for today, dentists in Los Angeles are evil.

I'm planning on writing a screenplay based, in part, on my salsa experience (I'll think of a better name, but "Slutty Dancing" works for now). It's the story of one woman as she navigates the fun and perilous world of salsa dancing in search of her true self, a sluttier wardrobe, and boundaries on the dance floor (or something like that...).

I've been researching a plethora of dance movies (via Netflix) and have found three thematic features common to this genre: 1) the struggle between dancing from the heart vs. society's dictates (this includes women embracing their sexuality through dance) 2) an inter-racial love story that crosses social classes, makes others uncomfortable, and to which dance proves a transcendent force and 3) a really crappy script. The genre seems to badly suffer from a relentless lack of irony (i.e., "Nobody puts Baby in the corner!"...need I say more?).

In addition to the first two elements, I hope to inject some of the less touted, but equally predominant challenges and joys of salsa dance culture, such as: Stiletto Impalements (spike heels that cut right through the cartiledge...one of the most perilous aspects of salsa for women), White Men Who Can't Hear The Beat (but who feel strangly compelled to enact an array of mime facial expressions...another perilous aspect of salsa for women), Cheap Slutty Dresses (And Clothes) that fill up your wardrobe (even if they turn you into a glitter-spraying machine), Weird Older Asian Twins who gyrate in a convulsive spasm, Financially Prosperous Single Women (who can't imagine finding a guy who would be worth giving this up for), Salsa Rapists and Other Freaks who use the dance to enact bizarre sexual rituals...and much, much more (could "Lord of the Rings" been any scarier?...didn't think so).

Just for today, I can write a new dance movie.

A former co-worker liked to walk around to different cubicles and inform everyone about his "level of relaxation." Planning out the amount of work I have in the next few months, I have to say my L.O.R. is not very high at the moment. And no amount of coffee, chocolate, or trashy cheap salsa tops from Forever 21 (love that store!) is going to fix that.

Just for today I feel stressed.

...because if I've seen one mountain, I've seen them all. I managed to come away from my ski trip with all my limbs intact despite one major backward-back-sliding, snow-up-my-back-and-down-my-pants, face-to-face intimate moment with the snow. To be fair, it was a black diamond run. But still, there's no denying the dose of humble snow pie that comes with eating it (no pun intended). Other than that, my only ailment has nothing to do with skiing. I have some eye fungus that I got from cheap mascara (don't ever buy 2 for 1) that has made my lids red and itchy and kept me from wearing any make-up. It's either that or allergies. Anyway, I am walking the world sans make-up for the first time since I was 11!

Humility is the word for the year so far.

Just for today, I accept my humanity.

I'm up in the mountains with my family. Last night my dad and I went out with his friends who have known me since I was born. While I enjoy seeing them, I dread The Question that I inevitably get asked by my parents' friends. The wife portion of one of my dad's couple friends (at a certain point, they become a unit) did the honors:

"So, are you married, yet?!"

What am I supposed to answer? It's really a rhetorical question at this point.

I was ready to drown my loserishness in my turkey dinner when her husband suddenly opened up about the mating practices of their own children. Child born out of wedlock, divorce, and chronic bad choices...whew! I felt much better. These are my kind of people (not that I been divorced or have had children out of the institution of marriage...but hey, there's still time).

However, despite this respite of truth, the fact is that I feel a tremendous amount of pressure from Society (mom?) to have, at the very least, one of three things: husband, child, and/or property. I was considering the latter (it seems easier at this point), but got discouraged at the prospect of paying three times the amount of money I currently spend on rent for a place across the street from Target (my realtor tried to make this sound like a huge benefit by telling me about the fabulous end tables she found for half of what she was planning to spend...as if you have to convince me that Target is a temple to the Shopping Gods...doesn't mean I want to live there).

As my therapist would ask (because it's her job), WHAT DO I WANT?

One word.

Salsa.

Just for today, I can resist conforming to society's expectations.

I told my therapist that the guys that I'm attracting these days aren't "appropriate." She says that there's no such thing. Whatever. Everyone knows that it's against the law for a therapist to judge...

When I was in my mid-twenties I seemed to attract a "different" type of guy. I won't say better or worse (because I'm in therapy), but I will throw out some words like "job" and "functioning car" and "financial independence" to describe the guys I dated. In general, they tended to be older and established in their careers, or at the very least created the aura of being established in something worthwhile. They paid for dinner and stressed about their very important seeming jobs. They were "appropriate," [i.e., resembled some idea I had - and many people share - of the sort of person a single woman should seek to marry and settle down with (which is odd because I had no intention of doing that then nor do I seem to now...)]. I had friends who liked to fall in love with unemployed musicians or actors who maybe smoked pot and/or borrowed money and were possibly smokin' hot, but I just didn't get it. Poor them, I thought. They had to buy their own dinners.

Well, flash forward ten years and suddenly not only would I rather pay for my own dinner, but the men popping up in my life are two things they've never been before "young" and "very young." I rarely liked guys my own age, let alone younger. Their cars don't have all the original parts (or any) and they are struggling to figure out what to establish themselves in. While every other aspect of my life (career, health, happiness) seems to be thriving more than ever before, I'm suddenly faced with this weird lack of interest in a rational choice of men...(hey, at least give me kudos for my honesty). Like the song says,..."What's going on?!"

Just for today, I have no answers, only questions.

In my entire life, I have never experienced anything so all consuming, gratifying, and mysterious as my passion for salsa dancing. If the FBI had any inkling of how much fun it is, it would surely be illegal. In the past six months, my life paradigm has taken a complete 180. While life used to be a dark, confusing wilderness of external pressure to acquire crap and look good (job, marriage...you know the drill), now it's nothing more than a mere structure to support the salsera lifestyle. While there used to be such things as ambition and drive in my life, now there is the time and space between my presence at salsa venues. Goals? To become a good enough salsa dancer so as to attract the best partners. Priorities? To eat, sleep, and rest well enough to dance as many nights a week as possible. Relationship...? No comment (it's not an option anyway). Books? Movies? Theater? Only, if I'm REALLY tired. Shopping? Salsa outfits. Drinking? No, screws up my salsa. Coffee? Yes! How else could I function at work? ! Money, fame, fortune? Oh, you poor folk who still buy into that...

I know, it sounds crazy (even to me). But I guess I've never been in love before because nothing has possessed my life in the same way, brought so much fun and joy, and allowed me to feel so fulfilled (not to mention helped me burn so many calories). So, I'm leading some weird vampiric life with my whole "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" approach to the work week and don't have much to say to non-salsa friends...at least I'm happy.

Just for today, soy salsera.