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The Double Meaning behind the blog title 'Dream Follower:'
First, for 14 years I was a ballroom & social dance instructor, and have studied both leading and following. I feel that learning to follow is full of nuance and is often misunderstood. I made it one of my personal goals to become a really excellent follow on the dance floor, and will probably talk a lot about the art of following - both in and out of the context of dance.

Second, I am a huge fan of author Michael Ende, probably best known for The Neverending Story. The book is incredible, and the first film captured some of the essence. (Please don't watch the other two films...I urge you to read the book though!) Anyway, at least twice in my life I have been caught in a storm of my own indecision, and my inner Moon Princess yelled to my inner Bastian...'Why don't you do what you dream?' I tear up even now as I write this little blurb. The tension between being practical, keeping my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds (at the risk of compromising my inner vibrancy, true self, and who knows what else)...and reaching for my true dreams (at the risk of losing everything) is still a very real struggle. In fact, one of those struggles lead to my 14 years of teaching dance, so we can see which voice won the battle that fateful day when I was staring at the want-ad...

And so I strive to be two kinds of Dream Followers in my life. One has to do with connecting with others, and the other has to do with connecting with my inner Moon Princess and the world of possibility that opens when I do...

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Shifting Meanings

Many many years ago, being thin and tan were signs of poverty while being pale and fat were signs of opulence and wealth. Being tanned meant you had to work outdoors, and thin meant you had to struggle to put food on your table or sometimes go without any.

Now, a tan means you have leisure time to go on vacation, or lay out or pay someone for a spray tan. And being pale means you are stuck indoors behind a screen in a cubicle. And being fat more often than not means you are poor, because unhealthy choices are more affordable than healthy choices 9 out of 10 times, and besides food choices being screwed, the nation has turned fitness and weightloss into a billion dollar industry, so if you are thin and tanned you might also have a personal trainer. Or maybe I've lived too close to LA for too long, and am not seeing that the overweight ones are also wealthy, who knows.

In any case society is all screwed up because whatever the trend is today will be different tomorrow (if today and tomorrow are a few decades apart)...

So the moral of the story is just try to define happiness for yourself and forget fitting in.

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