Yes or no? Stay or go?

Here it is almost Halloween! How did it happen? Where did the time go? What happened to summer?!? Somehow time just keeps slipping away, at a faster and faster pace each year. Physically impossible, I know, but perceptually true.

Long gone for me are the days of wishing time would pass so I could go to kindergarten, or get my driver's license, or put my fake ids away when I turned 21. I'd prefer a tick-tock slow down at this point. (Except during some exceptionally boring work days.)

But, I must confess that I am on schedule for the goal that I set on New Year's day this year. The year did not get away from me in this respect. This isn't something that usually happens. Rarely, really. But I had help this year.

This past New Year's day I went to a yoga and goal-setting workshop. It was a valuable 3 hours. In addition to the yoga, which is always helpful, the goal-setting portion of the workshop was insightful. They instructed us to set larger goals, not your typical nit-picky New Year's resolutions. In fact, they even took it farther; we were to put our goals out there for the next three years.

There is wisdom in this, as one goal can build on the next, and the next; or you can work on one area of your life one year, another are during the next, and so on.

This year's goal, 2013, was to find, then create, a new home for me and my girls. We were doing fine in our beater rental in OB as I sat there on January 1st, but it was a transition spot, and I knew we all needed a real home, a place where we could unpack and get comfortable in for the foreseeable future.

I'm feeling pretty confident that I've done this. Yes, it could use some more art on the walls, and yes, there are electrical and heating fixes that still need to be made, but it's home. The house hunting, contact negotiating, mortgage securing bullshit, physical move, and unpacking are behind us.

So, yay for me and my 2013 goal. I rock.

This leads me to my 2014 goal: yoga teacher training. Why teacher training? Am I really ever going to teach yoga? Honestly, I don't know. But I really feel strongly that it's the next logical step in my yoga practice. I toy around in my head with the future possibilities of owning a studio or of supporting myself in a vastly different ex patriot life in Mexico or Costa Rica.

In reality, in the near future, I'd like to teach a class or two a week here while I continue on in this life. The challenge of creating an interesting sequence of poses, putting it together with kick-ass music, and passing on to others all that yoga has provided me with is motivating.

Blah, blah, blah, so I wanna get certified, k?

My hang up, the reason for this post, the problem, is that I want to train under a certain person. She's San Francisco based, which is not totally convenient, but not impossible. I have been trolling her website for months, waiting for her 2014 teacher training to be posted. When, where, how much would it be? Sign me up, sign me up, sign me up.

Ha, well, guess what? The 2014 training, the initial 100-hour portion, is in Bali. Bali!!! She usually holds the winter portion in Mexico. You know, our neighbor directly to the south, a close, quick flight; plus I could even write a great article about it for the Mexico travel magazine I contribute to.

But no, she is taking her first sabbatical ever and moving herself and her two girls to Bali for the majority of  2014.

There she is doing hurdler's pose, in Bali. Taunting me!

Don't get me wrong. I would love to go to Bali. I have never been to Bali. Who would not want to go to Bali?

But Bali? It's so far away, it would add an extra day of travel each way, to a trip that would already take me away from my kids for  more than 10 days. The cost of the airfare to Bali is three times what the cost of a ticket to Mexico would be.

But Bali? With Janet Stone?

I mean, it WAS my 2014 goal, right?

That's what my, fuck-it, you-only-live-once-and-who-knows-for-how-long-that-will-even-be side is saying.

But my more responsible and much less fun side is saying, just push the training back a year, or train with someone here locally, or find some other option, there are always other options; two weeks in Bali is too much, too far, too expensive, too selfish.

No one can make the decision for me, I get this. I need to figure it out in my own head, in my own time. But I'm forcing you to come along with me on this internal debate because it helps me to write things down.

See how selfish I am? (Is that a sign?)