it’s that time of the month again. 30 minutes is not a long time to write but it is long enough to focus and write about something I deem important or channel some creativity into something I haven’t written about. I sometimes struggle to write about something new and most times, it’s amazing what comes out of this monthly practice I’ve created with a dear friend of mine 4 years ago during the pandemic. but before I go into lots of tangents or in some rabbit hole, I thought I’d take a moment to frame this piece in the the framework of The 5 Essential Elements of Wellbeing - something I haven’t done for awhile because frameworks in themselves can limit your thinking and experience of life and of course, structure is useful. for someone who loves structure, I’m living, to some degree, the most unstructured life imaginable with intent to embrace flow and this monthly practice of writing 30 minutes a month and sharing it is the most predictable thing outside of brushing my teeth daily! (which as of late, has been challenged but you get the point!)

so the 5 elements of wellbeing without getting into the details of its backstory and what it is - they are #purpose, #financial, #social, #community, and one more I’m forgetting!

I’m going to dive in and discover what it is in the interests of time.

so it’s really easy to feel like I’ve lost #purpose - somehow about 2 years ago after taking a communication program, I got sick of being on purpose and on task. I came to the conclusion I needed to take a break from task mastering and driving every aspect of my life. these last 2 years is a bit of an unplanned experiment to see what would happen if we lived our lives completely in flow (with the background of decades of structure!) 20 years ago, my purpose was that everyone experience the joy of dance - its structure was Dance Labs and a program I co-created called Dance Like Nobody's Watching -it’s all been on hiatus and our domain name lives. there’s no doubt I am still passionate about dance - just not in this context. 10 years ago, my #purpose was exactly this, enabling people to explore their purpose in a structured way through the Business Model You - I’ve had breakthroughs using the method, inviting others to try it, even experimented extending the method with dance and to some degree a form of dance therapy (without being formally trained). I founded Weave Your Legacy, ran a gofundme (Dance at the Heart of 1 Billion Thriving), and its been incorporated as a non-profit (kinda of but I won’t get into details) for a year and a half and feel like it’s just a shell of an organization as it’s not like I wake up every day and “go to work” on this effort.

ah - the 5th element: #physical - it’s because I’m just so tired. now, I don’t want to get into a racket about my physical health. I’m just amazed shifting my life this way that I’m still tired! but my gut says it take a lot of energy to maintain your own flow or to follow the flow of life and still live an extraordinary life (i mean I could be just sitting around and watching movies and playing video games which is kind of true but enterprising me has turned all this into both quantified life and open source and digital preservation projects I won’t get into now other than to say that I lose sleep (in a good way) over these projects - so much for hobbies!)

• at the end of the day I am in good physical shape - I stay active, get outside, get sun, I look healthy (for the most part, i could use a haircut and shave lol) - I don’t have any major diseases (something to be grateful for) - I don’t have a lot to complain about other than my fatigue and I was joking with my PT (I’ve been in PT twice a week for about 7 months now) that I might as well do something if the net result is feeling tired both ways! (don’t get me wrong, I do take time off and it’s been a bit of adventure to discover what this is and what flow is if “taking time off” is intentional and has purpose in itself!)

my finances are under “control” in this capitalistic life - I’m going to try not to get into my rackets about how our financial system is built - I’ve been educating myself in this area as much as I can in the last 3-4 years (a lot in thanks to the Roam Research community)

(doh - i’ve lost my train of thought- I was interrupted by acknowledging a text from my writing partner that he is 10 minutes late - my flow got broken and it’s easy to get upset but that’s the funny thing about flow - I don’t live in a vacuum and things happen outside my control and you just gotta do exactly that - flow with it!)

• I’m not rich, I’m not poor - I have what I need to sustain the life I’m living and I don’t care what role you have in your life or what you make or how much you have saved - life is unpredictable. I am content with not feeling like I’m living paycheck to paycheck, that I have the general freedom to do what I want and love and travel when I want to - now I’m not the globetrotter I used to be - I made a conscious decision to tone this down somewhat but my tendencies to travel have been channeled at a “micro” level shuttling between LA and SD each once a month and my dream is to transition what I’m learning back to my life between Thailand and California (aka. the United States)

which leads me to my #social life - I’m one of those people who have over 1000 friends (maybe 1500, I’ve lost count) on Facebook - I’m not saying this to brag - I’m sharing this to provide context and for those reading this I absolutely LOVE you and want you to know that even if it looks like I’m not in touch at all or sparingly in touch. I’ve made a conscious decision to not be so digitally connected and because I’m focusing my life between LA and SD it means many of you who live outside southern california, in other parts of the United States and esp in Thailand probably feel neglected (hell, some of you in LA feel the same way too! and I don’t mean this in a bad way, I just want to let you know I understand). my time is spent exactly where I am here in Temecula - keeping myself busy, managing my flow. I no longer pitching, shilling, enlisting, enrolling all the things I am and am not up to - I feel no need to (and like I said, I’m in a new experimental part of my life) - I wanted to experiment on what my life would be life as a pseudo country bumpkin (it’s kinda what Temecula is like with the “big city” being an hour plus way)

• I’m still not married and go back and forth about being single at 50 - like who in my life would love being with someone in the flow - someone who is bucking the trend (yes, the rebel in me) and probably doesn’t come across as “the man of the house” (you can think whatever you want, I love the way I’m living my life even though I haven’t created a family!) - but I don’t want to go on a tangent or sound like I’m defensive. I can say I have a lot of good friends in my life, many I many not talk to for years or months and feel I could count on them to be there for me if shit hit the fan (knock on wood)
• and for those of you that don’t know, I live at home with my parents. this is a conscious decision as well. I wanted to focus on living within my means, learning to create cash flow in a simple way (delivering packages) and pay off all my debts (which I’ve always been net worth positive) - happy to say that I just paid off my car, that it’s value isn’t terrible after 5 years and if I decided to jump ship and move back to Thailand, I would be pretty happy with what I got and have had the privilege of the “freedom” of driving the past 5 years and that my business paid for it. but I’m not about to sell my car anytime soon - I promised before I would do that, I would do the ultimate adventure with my car and drive across the United States! I feel very behind on my planning (x-country Roadtrip) and my shoulder injuiry (which is doing well, it just might take up to 18 months to fully recover) as gotten in the way because I was planning on visiting National Parks and backpacking and thought I’d be fully healed by now!

in any case, I have to strike a balance on this trip between visiting friends and not feeling like I’m zinging around like crazy. If I’ve discovered anything in the last two years, the easiest way for me to focus is to focus on my dance #community and I pretty much choose to center my time when I visit LA and SD around monthly dance events and plan around this. at some point, I’ll get on the ball and start doing the research and exactly what fusion dance events are happening across the country and start making some decisions on what path I’m going to take and invite dear friends and family to try something new if they are not dancers themselves.

• the dance floor is very conducive to inviting people to meet in a single place, to share time amongst each other and isn’t really on a “timeline” (props up to organizer who let dancers leave when they want to leave - when they feel “filled” with lots of oxytocin - you know who you are!)