You know there are times every so often where no matter what anyone says or does it causes us to feel all alone! We do it to ourselves there is no one else

Ummm Zumba!

I have been trying to get into shape so I joined the YMCA! My buddy Bryan and I have been trying to do the spinning classes on somewhat of a regular basis...but yesterday I saw that there was an interesting class that I thought would be fun! It was called Zumba, and I thought that it was a dancing class, little did I know that it was a "Make Adam Look Like an Idiot Class!"

The instructor walks up to me before class starts and says "Hi, I'm Cindy, didn't I see you at this class before?" Of course I started laughing a lot and said "Yeah no!" She was a white lady who seemed nice so I thought that there would be no harm in trying out this latin inspired class. (If you have never seen or heard of ZUMBA youtube it right now!!)

I was completely wrong this little white lady could move her hips and shake her body like a persian belly dancer and the entire class was made up of 15 women and two men. The other man was close to 70 and just sort of made circles with his arms in the air thinking he was totally dancing! For those of you that know me, you understand that I take dancing very very seriously! ha ha ha So I was trying as hard as I could to get all the steps just right as I moved around the floor but everyone seemed to know the routine except me!!

I kept staring at the instructors feet and legs trying to know what I was doing wrong as I kept tripping over my awkward asic tennis shoes! Everytime I would look at her legs though she would turn around and look at me and I would make eye contact with her and then my face would turn to sheer horror as I was sure she thought I was checking her out!! I was too exhausted and beaten down to check anyone out! They started doing these jumping dancing lunge things across the length of the room and I felt like a ballerina who hit his head too many times and I just stopped right in the middle of it and laughed out loud for like 5 minutes. The reason why I laughed was because there were huge mirrors right in front of me and all I could see was this portly fellow jumping in the air while trying to look somewhat cool! ha ha ha

The whole experience was quite awkward and the instructor came up afterwards and said..."you did great...seems like you have had some salsa training in your background?!" I almost at that moment ran away like a 5 year old kid! So I told her "Well I was in the salsa club in college!" And she looked at me as if she had been joking all along...So I told her how dumb I had felt in there and she said that after 3 times I should have it down pat...I wonder if I will give it that many more times to see if I have improved. It wouldn't have been so bad if the class that was to follow ours (The super studly and hot lady kickboxing class) wasn't waiting just outside our doors which were wide open looking at all of us and pointing while they giggled! Stupid good looking college kids! ha ha ha Ah well whatever...at least as I get older I can still shake my hips better then a retiree!

Monday Monday...So good to me...

There is a book that I have been reading for several years now, yes I have read the whole thing but I continue to read it over and over again because it has little tidbits for everyday life. I love it because I often feel like it was written by me for me...So here is what I read this morning that blew my mind. The book is called THE INNER VOICE OF LOVE and it is by Henri Nouwen. (I'm like 85% sure that I spelled that right...ha ha)

"When people show you their boundaries ('I can't do this for you'), you feel rejected. You cannot accept the fact that others are unable to do for you all that you expect from them. You desire boundless love, boundless care, boundless giving.

Part of your struggle is to set boundaries to your own love- something you have never done. You give whatever people ask of you, and when they ask for more, you give more, until you find yourself exhausted, used, and manipulated. Only when you are able to set your own boundaries will you be able to acknowledge, respect, and even be grateful for the boundaries of others.

In the presence of the people you love, your needs grow and grow, until those people are so overwhelmed by your needs that they are practically forced to leave you for their own survival. The great task is to claim yourself for yourself, so that you can contain your needs within the boundaries of your self and hold them in the presence of those you love. True mutuality in love requires people who possess themselves and who can give to each other while holding on to their own identities. So, in order both to give more effectively and to be more self-contained with your needs, you must learn to set boundaries to your love!"

Resume

So...Saturday night comes around and of course I decide to go out to the club with my BFF's Aaron and Scott. Normally we go to the club on Friday and Saturday night however I hadn't gone in a week or so which made me even more excited to shake my groove thing. Something that you must know about me first and foremost is that I love and I mean absolutely love going to the club and dancing. I am not a big drinker so I don't go to get trashed or any of that crap and I really don't go intending to hook up with anyone. In fact I have only danced with strangers never more then that in the ten years I have been going out! I mean I may wink at an occasional lady but that's it. ha ha ha ha I just genuinely love to dance and have fun...

What I have come to realize and what totally hit me while I was standing in the middle of Dirty Pretty getting stepped on, danced on, and spilled on was that this club was a melting pot for what every single person felt and needed inside. I mean this was their audition for the rest of the world. I looked around and everything from what people were wearing to how they were dancing said so much about themselves and what they were looking for.

A group of girls danced next to us in a circle and several of the girls were wearing those 1980's sunglasses with neon pink or green on the sides of them! They were laughing and giggling which totally displayed the whole "If your not funny and quirky like us then don't come over here to talk or dance with us! We want someone who is going to make us laugh and be more zaney then we are trying to be with our "cooky" glasses." I know that this is an assumption on my part and for all I know they were actually looking for that guy that walks around staring at all the girls intently while trying to flex on the dance floor. However it was then that I realized that people's clothes and attitudes towards dancing say a lot about who they are. Not about all they are but a significant piece for sure.

I mean I know that with me when I go out and dance it says "Hey I'm a guy that likes to dance and I don't care what people think of me...even if I come off as gay because I'm dancing with two other guys and there aren't girls for miles around us!" ha ha ha ha I mean do I care what people think? Sure sometimes but when I go to a dance club I can put all that off and just laugh while I try out a new robot move! :)

As I continue to stand in the midst of the chaos of the dancing machine that I love and at times enjoy too much I realized that everyone is auditioning for the same role in the awkward play of life (which would be way better as a musical). That role is this...

"Someone who is desparetly searching for love, either short term or long term. Someone who wants to give others glimpses of how fun they are whether they really are or just faking it either way...Someone who can now give the excuse that they have 'put themselves out there' when they tell others why they are still single. Even though I have rarely heard of such amazing couples who met at Dirty Pretty. When myspace and facebook are no longer enough to quench my desire for belonging and community I go to the club because it is still a fake reality but at least by not sitting in front of the computer it makes me feel more sociable despite the drunken idiots, awkward music, and half naked people that hurt my body image, despite all that I love it"

This is what each of those people seem to be crying out...maybe it's what I am crying out as well...I don't know...I know that social environments are always prime places to meet actors who are trying to find their supporting actor or actress to star in their latest dramatic production. That I get because my life can be one giant dramatic interlude if I let it!

Here's to this weekend...dancing in VEGAS! ha ha ha Sometimes its easier to ignore the depravity of myself! :)

Art

So yesterday I was speaking at Remuda Ranch, which is the eating disorder clinic I speak at on Sundays. Well the worship leader and I were running late because we had been trying to adapt to a new schedule. We arrived at the last chapel which is the adult chapel and were setting up. The Mental Health Techs that are in charge of getting the girls from one place to another told us that they had not been made aware of the change in time schedule and dinner was still at the same time which only gave us around 30 minutes to do a 50 minute chapel. As most of you know, cutting out time or words for me is difficult. I am never concise and I never ever finish on time whenever I speak. This is just my curse as a speech communications major and someone who feels like words have so much power that if I just say enough of them maybe someone will be healed! :) So this is what I ended up talking about instead of the talk that I had planned...


(This is paraphrased of coure because I honestly have no idea what exactly I said yesterday)

I have never been someone who has been super creative. I mean I enjoy creative things like performing and acting and I have always done those however there are a lot of creative mediums that do not come naturally to me and I have to struggle through them! When I was in high school and I got a part in one of the musicals the choir teacher actually wrote me out of several singing parts because I just couldn't sing! I blame it on my squeaky ever changing teenage voice however to this day when I sing in my car with my windows down magically those cars around me start to roll theirs up! I wonder why? ha ha ha...

One of the creative things that I am attempting at this point in my life is Painting. Not like my room or house or anything but actually painting on a canvas. I started this last summer and really started to enjoy it but I haven't done it in quite some time so a few weekends ago I went out and bought some paint and an easel and started going at it. The hardest thing for me in painting is staring at a blank canvas. I am always so paranoid that I am going to "mess it up." I know that in my own personal life I refuse to take risks because of this same reason. I don't want to be hurt or hurt anyone else and I don't want to make any more mistakes in my life so I'd rather just opt out of making any decisions that may affect that. This is the reason that I am so timid in my life and why I am everyone's best friend because I am safe. I am safe because I am scared of being anything other then constant. I so desparetly want to know what would happen in my life if I took risks with people or with situations however they freak me out so I stand still and refuse to move at all.

Once I get the paint on the canvas I start to make broad brush strokes and then start adding different colors to my piece. The problem is that once in while I will add to much of one color and I feel like it looks bad so I will try to brush it away with a different color but because I didn't wait for the paint to dry I smear it all across the painting!!! Then my mistake is seeping into all the other cooler areas of my art work and people everywhere are guaranteed to see it! I spend so much time in my life compartmentalizing things that eventually my faults and mistakes seem to seep into all of the areas of my life even the ones that I have tried to keep separate for so long. I am paranoid that everyone will see the writing on the wall and pick me out of the line up as the culprit who lies and hurts others.

The whole key I am learning in any painting, which is not an original thought but one that I got from a great book called THE ART OF LETTING GO, is to keep on going! I truly believe that the author is right in this book when he talks about no matter how many mistakes we feel we have made on the canvas we just have to keep adding layers and layers to our painting. In life we have strokes made for us or we make our own strokes that seem to do damage to the painting but as we continue on in our life and add layers and layers those mistakes seem to surface as beautiful accents to the true essence of our art!

Things in life are going to intrude on our lives and we have to keep going and keep going because hope comes in the morning. God only gives us enough strength and hope to get through today.

We need to stop looking at the future and being scared at the unkown and stop looking into the past and being disappointed at what has happened before, we need to start looking to today and the present as an opportunity to see new and exciting beauty that is coming out of our lives!

We are God's greatest pieces of art because he tells us this over and over again. Of all the most amazing things he has created, the sunrises and sunsets, the moutains and the beaches, the most beautiful and amazing thing he made was us! All of us! That is a work of art we can work towards being proud of being!

Testing...

So I was having coffee with my buddy Henry and he was telling me that the best way to become a better writer was to believe it or not WRITE! So that is what I am here to do. I want to become better at writing grammatically correct as well as practice keeping the readers attention. So this is just an introduction! We will see how it goes!!!!