I've gotta wear shades...

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. - Charles Dubois

I've been thinking about what I want. Not in the new Jordana Paige bag/a cute pair of earrings/a new desk (yes, still with the new desk) kind of way.

Rather in the long term, life goals kind of way. The whole drifting through the next 35 years sounds like something I would end up regretting.

I like plans. I love lists. So I did a little exercise for myself and I thought I'd share it with y'all.

It's hard for me to share. I said this on Thursday night and Monkeygurl was pretty surprised. She knows me from Stitch n' Bitch WeHo and I do a lot of sharing there. Actually, I'm kind of a blabbermouth. Not generally about the big stuff though, about mostly superficial crap like how much I love alpaca. It's hard for me to share big stuff because sometimes you get hurt and sometimes you hurt others. Telling the world you love alpaca is pretty safe though. Ever since I started the NSA, I've been working on the sharing stuff. Because even though sharing can hurt, not sharing, I found, makes for one very depressed, catatonic, medicated Faith.

Anyway, a lot of this is just dreaming. I don't know how anything is going to work out. No one does but can it hurt to dream?

In 2016 my niephew (like that? - maybe nephiece?) will be 10 years old. In the middle of 4th grade.

I will be 45. Where do I want to be in 10 years?

I'd like to:

1. have a master's degree
2. be able to look at myself in the mirror and see something I like
3. still be working at "mama UCLA" building up my retirement
4. be fully ensconced in recovery from my eating disorder
5. have BBQs in my backyard where my peeps can come, grab a beer and a rib and chill on my adirondack chairs.
6. be able to knit a cabled sweater, which I can't currently do and am not too afraid to admit
7. have run a half marathon (because a full marathon? really necessary?)
8. be published, with my name on the front cover
9. take a road trip without a plan
10. attend a writer's retreat
11. take a dance class with Michael
12. get the rest of my back tattooed
13. take up painting regardless of how hideously unartistic I am (at least in that way)

I am working on some of these things. I'm not quite ready to work on others but if I want all of these things in 10 years (selfish little girl), I better get crackin'.

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. - Anais Nin