Chez Louise - blog

Realizing some important things

noreply@blogspirit.com (Louise) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:35:39 -0400

This past week, I think I've started homing in on what has been missing out of my life, namely a mission. So I'm happy to announce, I think I'm starting to figure it out. And no, I don't think I have to run away with the circus to do it, however fun that would be.

Sometimes, you just have to pay attention to what naturally draws you in. When I was in electrical engineering, what did I most enjoy? The time spent sitting by the river wishing I didn't have to go back inside to do circuit analysis homework. When I was in mechanical engineering, what did I do for fun? Take out books on passive solar energy and cradle to cradle design. Now that I'm working at a medical device firm, what books do I enjoy reading the most? The ones on sustainable practices, human-scale living, and indigenous wisdom. I'm spotting a trend here. I think my calling is finally calling out to me loudly enough to be heard through my thick skull.

Back when I was finishing up my master's (i.e., back when I had a lot more time on my hands), I would come home from school, sit on my bed next to my teetering stack of library books that had nothing to do with my thesis (and more to do with sustainable living), and stare at a blank sheet of paper. I'd be frustrated, because I felt I had something big to say, something important to say, something screaming to get out of my subconscious and into the world. Problem was, I just didn't know what that "something important" was; all I knew was that it was important and that it was stuck inside of me. I also knew it wasn't something like, "all houses should have solar hot water heaters," because it just seemed a lot bigger than that.

This weekend, I've been reading 2 books: one is on biomimicry, and the other is on authenticity. It must've been a good combination, because all of a sudden, I look at everything around me and think, we're kidding ourselves if we can go on like this, as a society. What also caught my attention is a small newspaper article talking about the discovery of large quantities of oil in the Arctic, in territory disputed between Canada, USA, Denmark, Norway, and Russia. All the world needs is another conflict... and not only that, but to imagine a fragile ecosystem like that disturbed for something we shouldn't be digging up in the first place.

But the question becomes, how do we, with the current economic system and current energy system, get out of this situation? It's fascinating (and sometimes scary) to think about, and I don't have a solution, but I'd really like to be part of the effort to get to one. Time is ticking, and I have a lot of books to read and people to listen to!

Running Away with the Circus...

noreply@blogspirit.com (Louise) — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:12:30 -0400

Well, one more weekend is biting the dust as bedtime approaches, and it's back to work tomorrow. These past couple of weeks have been quite intense at work, and as a result, I've been experiencing some strange form of creative whiplash this weekend. Actually, now would be a good time to take a week of holiday, to continue my little explosion of "other-than-work"-ness ideas that I got going in the mere two days of the weekend.

It all began with a song that got stuck in my head not too long ago. I heard it on the radio on the station that doesn't announce what the songs are, so I got up out of bed after hearing it and wrote a couple of (hopefully) key lyrics on my white board so that I could google it later and find out what song that was. I had the words "balame per te" on my whiteboard for a couple of weeks and today I decided to google them, which resulted in more or less nothing useful. Then it hit me that I have heard this song before, and somewhere out of my subconscious popped the words "Cirque du Soleil". Eventually I just went to find all Cirque du Soleil lyrics and looked for a song that might be a good candidate. Sure enough, there it was: "Ballare" was the name of the song that had been stuck in my head. I wanted to buy it on iTunes, but before I did, I thought I would see if I could find the song on YouTube so I could listen to the whole thing, rather than the 30-second clip they give on iTunes.

As it turns out, on YouTube, you can see the spectacular aerial pas de deux which goes with this song, from the show Dralion. This is the song I had in mind, but when I saw the pas de deux, my jaw was pretty much in my lap the whole time. I thought about how incredibly cool it would be to be part of something so spectacular, and next thing I knew, I was looking up how people get hired into the Cirque du Soleil.

Now of course, I wouldn't ever try auditioning as these guys for a couple of key reasons:

Fear of heights, falling, and in general, having only the grip of two sweaty hands standing between me and certain death (or at least maiming) on a stage 60 feet below

Lack of physical aptitude. I've never EVER been able to do the splits, have never had much upper body strength, and last time I did a somersault in the air, it was over the handlebars of a bike and ended in a very ungraceful thud into the gravel.

BUT, say I practiced cello 5 hours a day for the next God-knows-how-long, maybe I could audition as a musician, and wouldn't that be cool! Except for the fact that I don't have 5 minutes a day to practice (details, details), what a great plan! Or, better yet, take my singing out of the shower and audition as a singer. Oh, the drama! And herein was born the plan to run away with the Cirque du Soleil.

Now of course, this is a completely unsensible plan, but how cool to dream of something exciting, where I didn't need 40 pages of documentation to make even the slightest change to something... ah, the freedom!

So that was the culmination of a weekend which otherwise involved the following:

Discovery that the tree in our front yard which I thought was an ash tree is actually a honey locust. Who knew there was a tree and an insect with the same name?

Researched the types of seaweed that would have been available to the characters in my novel, and discovered that seaweed can be burned and the resulting "kelp" can be used in glassmaking - a convenient tidbit of information which plays right into my plot.

Trying to choose a water fountain feature for my parents' backyard. I think we'll just have to come to terms with the fact that we'll never agree, and I'll just let my parents decide what they're going to put in there.

Looked into whether able-bodied people are able to join a wheelchair basketball team. This was a lark almost as big as the Cirque du Soleil thing, since as I mentioned I'm not strong in the upper body, and I suck royally at basketball on my own two feet; a wheelchair won't help things.

Went for a big long walk on Saturday night which I thought to myself, I should try to work up to running this sometime. I thought it was my "big achievement" run, but when I mapped it out on MapMyRun.com, it turned out only to be a measly 6K. Wow. I don't know how people routinely run 10K or more. The farthest I have ever run in my entire life is 4K, and I remember thinking I was about to die. But something in the back of my mind is telling me I should get into the habit of running. All I have to do is actually DO it.

Worked on the plot of my 3 Day Novel for 2008. Hopefully this will work out!

Anyway, that's what happens when my imagination gets too much time to run wild - I end up dreaming up all sorts of crazy things, and next thing you know, I'm trying to figure out how to go from being a mechanical engineer to a circus musician. Yikes! Maybe it's a good thing tomorrow is a work day.

Luck o' the Irish!

noreply@blogspirit.com (Louise) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:19:07 -0400

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, and consequently I spent the entire afternoon at a dress rehearsal for a big dance show our school is doing to celebrate the occasion tomorrow. That was OK, except there was a lot of 'hurry up and wait' happening, and it's actually a lot trickier trying to stay lined up where we're supposed to be when we're in the middle of dancing. I'm sure the show will be fine anyway though, especially since there are a lot of the really showy girls who will be participating.

It's an interesting experience to be part of this, but on the other hand, I'm going to be really glad when it's all over and I can go to bed at a reasonable time on Wednesday nights, rather than stay up for a dance rehearsal that goes til 10 pm. A friend of mine recently sent me a list of tips for getting a good night's sleep, and one of the tips was to avoid exercising in the 3 to 4 hours before you go to bed. So I guess 10 pm doesn't quite fit in that category. Oh well. I'm looking forward to having some sleep time back!

Yesterday was actually a really good day for that - I've had a cough and a cold all week and have been dragging myself out of bed to get to work at the usual times, even though I felt zombie-like. Saturday was the first day I got to sleep in, and I stayed in bed until almost 11 am. It was bliss! It was my lucky day too, apparently, since I then went to the library, and on the shelves of used books for sale, I found The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin, a book I've been wanting to buy for a while because it is so relevant to the novel I'm writing. It was in perfect condition (but minus its dustjacket), hardcover, for $2. I was originally going to buy a copy off eBay, but that would have been around $15 for an OK-condition copy. I'm glad I took the time to scour the racks at the library yesterday! I also spotted a book on Wildflowers of Great Britain and Europe, which was neat, since my story is set in the Faroes, so I bought that for another $2. I also found a book on Shakers of Pleasant Hill and one on healthy(-ier) cookie recipes that minimize use of refined sugars and bleached flour, and a lot of the recipes looked good, so I bought that. I can't wait to try some of those recipes! So all in all, I feel like I hit the jackpot at the library.

So now all I have to do is continue synthesizing that information and get going on finishing that novel I started. I started re-reading it last weekend. It's not the greatest by any stretch of the imagination, and needs a lot of editing, but it didn't make me cringe anywhere near as much as re-reading my work normally does, so maybe this one actually has potential! Basically I just need to be able to "see" where this plot is going a little bit better, and I hope that will get me out of my rut. Here's to finishing the novel this year!!