Okay, yesterday’s blog was a little too cheerleadery even for me. So here’s the latest development.

When I told my EditorExtraordinaire I was considering moving to LA, she told me she’d see if she could get me a writing contract for Pasadena and surrounding areas.  I put that information in the back of my mind for consideration and went to see the Fire Dancers show at Dante’s on Sunday night. 

While I was there, a curious turn of circumstances put a guy at my table who mentioned he was from LA. So I picked his brain a little to see what types of things there were to do and what I might find.  He was very adamant that the only cool people were the “real locals” and not the “imports”, and just as a matter of interest said, “there’s a lot of dark history, lots of hauntings.”

Interesting. Again, I put the strange coincidence at the back of my mind and went on with my week.

Two days later, I was sitting at Chance of Rain when a good looking thirty-something guy in a pea-coat with the most spectacular blue eyes walks in.  He made eye contact with me once then went to get a beer and came back to my table asking to sit down.  Hot guy asks to sit at my table? Uh, yeah, weird. So I nod and he sits and begins to tell me in an adorable Russian accent that he’s from LA. Wow!

Okay, Universe, I’m listening. What’s up?

He then tells me – with no prompting what-so-ever – that he used to work as a haunted tour guide on Hollywood Blvd.

WTF?

That’s so awesome. So he gives me 8 places to check out, a couple of personal accounts and his phone number (in case I have questions, because he was wearing a ring).

This, cluster of unexplainable coincidence left me a little dazed.  The combination of deciding I need to go to LA to finish the dream, the random strangers with bizarre and valuable information, besides the possibility of a book contract that could give me other “valid” pursuits only 40 minutes from LA… put me right back on the computer to email my EditorExtraordinaire to let her know, I was officially interested in the contract.

She wrote me yesterday and said it was approved – if I want it.

It will take a month or more to work out details, pre-research market possibilities and so on, but it’s mine if I want it.

I have no idea how I’ll make this work.  Any of it. And yet I’m filled with the same kind of skittish excitement and dizzy with the mass of possibilities that I felt when I was trying to decide if I should go on the BlissQuest.

Again, the writing contract was what gave me the courage to jump, to make a flying leap into the absolute unknown.  A magic feather, enabling me to trip over coincidences, get caught in whirlpools of synchronicity, almost freakishly well timed.

The opportunity has presented itself – so I think I’ll take it.

I’ve been considering moving to LA.  I know. It’s LA.  Please- let me esplain.

Part of my Bliss, and Plan A – requires acting in moving media.  Since being back in Portland, I’ve come to realize a few important things about the reassembly of my parts.

1)      I’ve wanted to be an actress for years, and although I love theater – it’s not the energetic medium that sustains my interest.  The dream has always been tv or movies. Also, I believe the best chance I have for that is where the industry camps out – which would be LA.

2)      I was ready to move there right after graduating high school, I had a Volkswagen and luggage, and my enthusiasm and a small town full of people who believed I could do it – I moved in with my boyfriend at the time during a fight with my mother and soon I was engaged, married and the dream of acting got shelved in the pursuit of co-existence with another person. I’ve realized that the dream and the shelving of it – may have played a large part in why I was medicated for so many years.  To numb the grief I felt over giving up on something that for as long as I could remember – meant the future of my hopes. As much as I think I’ve tried to reason with it, cajole it, barter, negotiate and even bribe – that dream, the 17 year old Athena, that creative wanting… will not go away.

3)      I also have come to the realization that most of my “reasons” thus far in not trying harder – are fear based.  Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of the responsibility of my happiness, fear of rejection, and fear of acceptance.  That’s a lot of fear. And as anyone who’s been reading for the last year knows – This new quest for happiness, the newly emerging self is not okay that my fears rule me.  It’s time to confront those fears and put them to rest so there will be more room in my life for joy.

4)      When I was in Utah, thinking about heading back, I considered a brief stint in LA on my way home.  I thought about setting up camp for a couple of months and giving it a good tester.  I think I knew back in February, that the BlissQuest still needed this stop.  However, I was so ridiculously homesick.  I needed Portland and wholeness and the beautiful faces of people I loved.  I know now that another reason I needed to come back was that – I cannot go to LA and expect happiness when my parts are not compiled.  I had to come home, regroup, reorganize and set up a plan.  I’m so grateful that I did.

5)      Knowing that this dream, Plan A, has been such an important part of my subconscious for so long – I feel that the only way I can move past it – is to go through it.  It looms before me like this giant laughing specter.  If it’s not substantial I’ll pass right through perhaps feeling a chill or a sense of relief.  If it’s real I might collide with something bigger than myself, more powerful and energetic and we might dance or fight but I know, as the last year has proved, whichever it is; a specter of my past dreams or a fleshy step toward self-fulfillment…. I will be wiser for the trying.  I will be stronger for the attempt.  I will be more complete – whatever the outcome.

6)      Shame. There’s been a lot of shame in my life associated with this dream.  I can expand on this more later, but one thing at the forefront of my mind is the need to release the shame of wanting something that I’ve allowed others to tell me is; foolish, or selfish, or unreal, or childish.  This shame needs to go so I have room in my life for more joy, because feeding the shame means I’m starving something else.

These are some of the reasons I’m considering the move.  There are more and I can update them as I sort them out. As I reveal this on the blog, on the internet I feel like I’m sharing a very personal intention, a dream with the whole Universe. 

Eyes that don’t know me, but that have perhaps suffered their own “dream shelvings”. 

Hearts that have never met me, but perhaps know the longing.

Souls that have never touched mine, that understand the “call to create” despite the repercussions or the disorienting logic.

Mostly, I hope that in this new level of the BlissQuest, whatever the outcome – whatever the journey reveals… I hope there is adventure. I hope there is knowledge and beauty, love and synchronicity, the exceptional and fantastic and yes, Bliss.

And I hope as readers what I encounter, good or bad or magical – will inspire you to pull your own dreams out from the closet, dust them off, hold them close and repeat… “I deserve this. I do not need to justify my dreams.  I do not need to pay for them with shame.  I do not need to fear them.  They are mine.  I was born with this dream, I nurtured this dream – it is mine.  I am as worthy of it – as it is of me.  My Bliss is attached to this dream, so therefore I will honor that.  I will follow my Bliss because in the end – no one is responsible for my happiness but me.”

Believe in your dreams, they believe in you. 

They don’t care if you’re not as pretty as you think you should be, or as smart as you wish you were.  They are there for you.  Always. Waiting to be accepted.  Even when you doubt yourself – they know you can do it, otherwise – they would have let you forget about them. They would have let you move on without regret or the ache of separation. 

I believe a Dream, is like a djinn.  Only when you get past the shock of seeing it, only when you stop pretending your nuts, or denying – only when you break through the reality of the now to see the reality of what could be… only then will you see how spectacular he is.  Only then, when you look him in the eyes, make contact and KNOW you are not imagining, can you ask.  I also believe he’d say something like, “What took you so fucking long? I’ve been sitting here for ten years, waiting for you to look me in the face. Make your wish so I can give it to you, then I can get on with my life too.”

A Dream is like a Djinn. Just let him out of the bottle – and your life could be everything you want it to be.

So here it goes….