Singing Beach from Celia N Flores on Vimeo.

Those that know me, know that I have no tolerance for people that take no responsibility for their own actions, those individuals that act without care of consequence and that blame their parents, their employer, and the entire world for their own bad decisions and short comings.  My professional role modes all have one thing in common regardless of their childhood experience and lack of maternal love/support they all loved their families and had a strong believe in family unity and all had a personal internal power that has driven them to be the best.  They have never blamed anyone for anything bad that has happened to them and have always taken full responsibility for all their own actions.  They’re honest hard working productive members of society that all even at an age when most of their peers are/where retired they are/were still tireless creating change and making our world a better place.

Now don’t think for a moment that I relate to my role models because I had no love as a child, I was blessed with a loving and wonderful mother and my biggest role model as my father.  Yes I am and always will be a daddies girl what can I say, even at my age I still can not stop talking about him and feeling like a 5 year old when I am around him. My dad is my hero and my source of inspiration.  I almost quite my job today on the spot because they pissed me off so much and the first thing that came to mind is what would my dad do in my situation.  Well in fact he would have told me “do it, if your not happy send them to hell life is to short to be misrable” yet he would have stuck it out and been the better man, so I calmed myself down and stopped from making a spontaneous decision without a plan of action.  My dad always had a plan of action, he was always two chess moves ahead of everyone else and that is what made him the best at what he did and allowed him to accomplish great things in his life.

See my dad was raised by his aunt because my grandmother as wonderful and loving as she was she herself was a child when she had my father.  My aunt Carmen was a great lady and loved my father as much as a real mother would but the fact that he was not living with his real mom and just visited a few hours during the week made her a stranger and a different world all together.  At the age of 12 he moved with his real family to a new city miles away from what he knew and for the first time he felt like such a stranger in a new life that he was not accustomed surrounded by people he knew where his family and loved because they where his family but know nothing about.  It was no longer just him he had siblings now, and he no longer lived in a big house he now lived in a one room house, the culture shock was so great he actually considered killing himself.  He recounts that he actual placed the barrel of a rifle up to his chain and as he was getting ready to pull the trigger the image of a childhood crush saved him…thank god for puppy love.

My father started working at the age of 14 to help his family out financially and did not stop working until a stroke in 2001 forced him into retierment and has had him laing in constant pain ever since, yet his attitude was and has remained of doing your best, taking responsibilities for your own actions, and that regardless of what life has dealt you with life is so dame short to be miserable.

It just got so cold from on day to the next here in Boston that it just shocks a Southern California girl to the core.  Just last month we had the A/C on and all of a sudden one day we woke up a few weeks ago and we had to turn on the heater and it has been on ever since.  It has all been so new and amazing though, to experience the turning of the leaves just last week on a windy afternoon as I was walking to my local CVS I was blessed with the yellow, red, and brown leaves as they where dancing around in the wind like a very well choreographed ballet, that Mikhail Baryshnikov would be jealous.   It was like a smörgåsbord for my eyes, I had never seen such colors and such beauty in any of my previous falls, it’s like a dream…but not a California Dreamin’ dream.

As a young women I would tell people that I had to experience it all.  I had to experience the bad to appreciate the good, I had to feel the pain to be able to recognize the pleasure and people would look at me like if I was mad.  But I would not be able to know what it was to be California Dreamin’ if I had never left.  It’s an amazing feeling to know that you are part of something that you belong somewhere and that it brings hope and clarity and just plain old kick-ass warm and fussy feelings so much so that I am already feel “safe and warm” even in the Boston cold…beside was LA ever safe.  I am firm to my belief that you have to experience all the feelings just to know you are alive and appreciate what you have.

It’s been far more difficult to find a job then I anticipated, it had never taken me this long to find a job…but then again I had never looked during such a bad rescission. To add more fault to injury there are more HR peeps in Boston then lawyers in California and they are all looking. So wish me luck and hopefully soon I am back making my own moola and blogging more frequently. In the mean time I will try to stay dry and warm inside my cute little house…without going crazy that is.

I urge you to donate to this amazing cause.

I’m going to miss you San Fran. I remember the first time I meet you, it was magical. Matt had driven down from Sacramento and I flew up from San Diego just to see you. We wanted to see you in all your spleanded glory with your tall buildings, your curvy streets, and your colorful people. We wanted to go out with you in the day, we wanted to go out with you in the rain, we want to go out in your cold foggy nights. We wanted to know all about you and know every wounder that you could share with us before we became your permanent resident for what would end up being 2 1/2 wounderful years. You where so majestic, despite your weathering facades and your amazing history you where so new and fresh to us. I remember that it was cloudy and raininy and I loved it all. Ever since that first encounter you have been so kind to me you have embraced me, protected me, you took me around and gave me a fantastic job, and you introduced me to people that I know will be in my life for many many years to come, you made me feel like as one of your own. Its been 2 1/2 years since you took me under you wing and I am so greatful for your warmth and all the experiances I have gained. My fairwell is a bitter sweet event beacuse I leave with great memories of great dinners with Matt at all your trendy and some not so trendy but fabulous none the less resturants, nights out with the girls my L’BEL sisters at Harry’s Bar, Americano, and of course the best night ever at the SupperClub jumping on the beds like a true 5 year old.

I will not say good-by just until we meet again, because I too have left my heart in San Francisco.

Don’t be lost…take control of your life!

Yesterday morning I was walking north bound on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. I had stayed the night over at the Palomar Hotel on 4th and Market and I was head towards work at 101 California St. As I was walking I came across a homeless couple walking in the opposite direction, “were where they going” I thought to myself. Life was dictating my direction on this sunny San Francisco morning and it seemed that life was also dictating this couple to wander aimlessly. This is where I started to think that most people allow life to dictate their direction (romantics call it destine), yet we have the power to change that and it seems that people forget how powerful humans really are. Matt and I are looked at and judged by others for our nomadic lifestyle and people cannot comprehend why we decide from one day to the next to just quite our jobs and move to another city without a job, without a house, and without knowing anyone. Yet I think that we are the only ones that are making a conscious choose to dictate our direction to create our own destinies. On a daily bases life does tell us which direction to walk in, in fact yesterday morning I would have preferred to walk south towards the beach instead of north towards work, but I have decided to be a productive member of society so I have a job and responsibilities.

We both love our families and our friends that we have back in our hometowns, but we also love to meet new people, explore different cultures, be stimulated by new things. The world is so large and it has so much to offer that it’s a crime to stay in one place your entire life. Life is there for you to do with it as you please, be whom you want, when you want, and where you want it. To see people at least in the U.S. strapped to their dead end jobs, miserable quality of life, and a sense of hopelessness is beyond Matt and I. Life is not the boss you, you are the boss of your life.

One thing is damn right clear life may dictate which direction I walk in today, but I decide in what city I walk in tomorrow.

What are you letting life decide for you?

I’m not one to tell people what they can and cannot do. Heck if they want to consume drugs go right ahead, go all out for all I care. I’m not against the consumption, people have the god given right to think and to make a choice. I’m against the industry of drugs, the industry that has been created due to the lack of legalization. An industry that is destroying families and entire countries with corruption and death like Mexico and Columbia, this industry is violent, corrupt, and ruthlessly savage.

As some of you know, I grew up in Tijuana, BC and as a child I would play out on the street as late as 11pm during the summer months. It was a quite city back then. Native Tijuanenses are nice hospitable, noble, hardworking Mexicans just as you would have found in other small cities and towns throughout Mexico in the 70’s and even till this day. Yet in the late 80’s there started to be a change not only in Tijuana but in the whole country. DRUGS started to be a big business and a few business people with connections started to see how easy and lucrative this industry was. By the early 90’s Tijuana was not as safe as it was but as long as you did not go looking for trouble you where fine, trouble stayed away. The first time there was a public act of violence the whole city was in shock. In the past people had gotten gun down in front of their homes, on an empty road, or taken to an isolated area and got shot down execution style. Although this time a drug runner pulled out his gun and shot a guy while inside a crowed trendy club in Pueblo Amigo a highly trafficked shopping mall and a place that I frequented just about every weekend during the summer months with my sister Julieta and all my college friends. This was an isolated incident but it scared people enough that the place closed down because people stopped going. Saturday night was suppose to be a day that you hung out with your friends, drink a few wine coolers, and flirted a little with the cute boys, it was defiantly not suppose to be a day where you had to worry but who is carrying a gun. By the late 90’s there where shootings between drug lords and their rival gangs fighting for the control of the market. See Tijuana is the largest port of entry in the world he whom controls Tijuana controls a very large part of the U.S. sales.

In 2000, my family as so many other fortunate families had to relocate to San Diego, CA due to the unsafe and dangerous environment that was on the rise. I say fortunate because so many others are unable to immigrate or relocate and take their families out of harm’s way. They are force to live among the increasing violence and corruption. For my family and I, the scariest part and the breaking point of our move was that we lived right next a drug lord, whose home was a corner house, the same color, the same street number, and he had three daughters…way to close for comfort especially when revenge killers just kidnap, rap, mutilate, and they do not ask for ids. Oops we hit the wrong faee from mily. So my parents packed up their bags, put their home up for rent and over the boarder they went.  A rent sign went up, because we still have hope that that wonderful city that saw my siblings and I grow up into hard working productive members to socity will once again be free one day.  Free from the violance, free from the murders, free as it once was noble and welcoming to all that wanted to call it home.

Now in 2009, people don’t even flinch when they hear gun fire or hear that there was a 3 hour shootout between police and drug gangs. It’s the inevitable truth of the daily thread of life in Tijuana. There are beheadings on a daily bases and the saddest thing is that its only going to get worse before it gets any better. Unless drugs such as marijuana (the major drug being sold and grown from Mexico) becomes legalized. With legalization comes better control, it would be an industry protected by anti monopoly laws. The same thing that happened with the left on the band of alcohol would happen with drugs.

Currently there are towns in Mexico where farmers are forced by the drug cartels to grow marijuana. Farmers are not able to grow corn and beans to feed their families anymore. They are being exploited by the drug cartels and getting paid very little or nothing at all. For others their lands are being taken away and the lucky ones are killed while the others are being put into modern day slavery. All this because it’s an illegal substance and because someone wants to light up. Simple supply and demand, and there will always be a demand.

The band on mariguana and other drugs is a big busness for both the drug cartels saling it and the governments preventing the sale. It’s a win/win for all the people on the top. Presidents look good, politicians make money, cartels make money, and the people are let with the aftermath and an inhumane quality of life.

If you want to stop the spread of rabies you don’t kill the bitten, you kill the dog.

Don’t turn your back on the problem…speak up!!!!