What’s Next?

Today it was getting up an hour before my alarm went off and getting myself sorted out.

I didn’t have to go into work until 1p.m.

Which was nice and also a touch annoying.

It was a later start than I was anticipating and I am going to probably have to dial it back at least a half hour with the family to work with my schedule.

Suffice to say I still got my deal in tonight, zipping up 18th Street to get right with God and hang out at the Castro Country Club for an hour.

Not a place I get too much, but a space I am grateful for.

All the rooms.

All the recovery.

All the change that is about to happen in my life as my school semester starts officially on Friday.

That’s three days from today.

Eeep.

I don’t even know what I am supposed to have read for this weekend.

I am not behind on my writing, having done it all before heading out to that thing in the desert, but I haven’t looked at the reading that I need to do in preparation for the first weekend in school.

I already feel behind.

However, since I didn’t have to be at work until 1p.m. today I did get my ass down to Copy Central on Mission and 2nd and pick up my last reader for the semester.  I also sorted out my student loan deferment paperwork and got that all summarily taken care of.

My ducks are sort of in a row.

I have an idea of what needs doing, but I have yet to crack open the syllabus on three of my classes to be completely clear.

I suppose I will do that after I finish doing this blog.

I am grateful I got the reader, and even more grateful that when I did look at the syllabus for the class there was the delightful notation for the first class that said, “no reading necessary for first class.”

Hallelujah.

Ack.

The more I think about it, the less time I have.

I was supposed to get back to San Francisco on Saturday, that was the original plans.

You know what God does when you plan?

Laughs.

And I will chuckle right along with God as I was given a pretty awesome playa experience, loads of magic, lots of all the things and I have nary a regret.

Although, despite what some thought upon reading my last blog post, I am NOT dating anyone.

I had a playa romance, I suppose you could call it, but I didn’t marry the man.

I am still a free and single lady.

A busy as fuck lady.

A lady who would happily date the gentleman who I spent time with, there is no question there, but a lady who is not pursuing.

“Be the ball, Martines,” he said to me.

I am doing just that.

I am done pursuing.

I get to be pursued.

I am fucking well worth it.

And in the spirit of said worth and in the spirit of having taken the events of the weekend in stride, with sweetness and kindness, with all the deep sexual connection and the magic of the moment, I have changed the header on my blog.

It no longer reads “Girl On The Go.”

I have changed it to.

“Woman Of The World.”

My partner in crime during the last days of the burn mentioned on more than one occasion how I was so obviously a woman, and, a wise woman at that.

It didn’t make me feel old or wizened.

Rather, experienced and grateful.

I am a woman.

Sometimes, most times, more often than I would like, I have to ask for help–but that is a mature thing to do and acknowledge.

That I cannot do it all alone, that I cannot be entirely self-sufficient.

For not only is it impossible for me to figure it all out, I just fucking can’t, it takes away the service of allowing someone else to share with me their experience and in turn allow them the sacred expression of sharing their experience with me.

Nothing I have been through is wasted.

Every pain.

Every sorrow.

Every trial, tribulation, and challenge.

Has given me an experience through which I can objectively view with compassion and gentleness, to be given so many experiences so that I may help another may truly be the greatest gift I have been given.

In that vein.

Then.

I continue forward.

As soft and sweet and open as I can be.

There is something luscious in the acknowledgement, finally, of being fully alive to myself as a woman.

“Before you travel and do something momentous, take a photo of yourself, then take another when you have gotten back and compare the two,” he told me as I prepared to launch out on my first solo trip to Paris in 2007.

“You will see that you have changed.”

I looked at myself in the rest stop bathroom at Donner Pass and I smiled in awe.

I had changed.

There it was.

This new openness and sincerity on my face.

I was not hiding behind any mask.

Of course, it may have been the lack of makeup, the surfeit of hormones from having been bathed in sexual attention for days, or the tan skin from being out in the desert for over a week.

I cannot say with any certainty.

But the change was evident and it made me happy to see and acknowledge it.

I was comfortable in my skin and delighted in my life and grateful.

Oh.

So grateful.

For the man, for the moment, for the movement of my heart, the ticking hands on the face of the world, this life, this ability to see through another lens of self and self-discovery and beauty.

The beauty of connection.

With myself.

With another person.

With the Universe and the world that I walk about in.

I don’t need to know what’s next.

I just need to show up for it.

I show up to the page.

I write my blog.

I show up to work.

I am of service.

I do the deal.

I help my ladies.

I ask for help from my people.

I go to class and do the best I can.

I let go of all the results.

I can’t do it.

Maybe God can.

I think I’ll let him.

In short hand.

I am powerless over outcomes.

I am only capable of taking action.

I don’t need to know what’s next.

Except that I have faith in becoming more me.

And hope that I will not wall up behind the fear of everyday life and the expectations therein.

Woman of the world indeed.

Officially a grown up.

Who knew it would be so.

Well.

Nice.

Tags: action, all the things, asking for help, blogging, boyfriend, burning man, Castro, Castro Country Club, change, CIIS, community, dating, doing the deal, faith, Get Right With God, girl on the go, god, graduate school, growing up, hope, love, lover, papers, reading, recovery, San Francisco, sex, sexuality, syllabus, woman of the world, work, writing