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Room Fu Kicked our Living Room's Ass!

Yay new couches!
Originally uploaded by michelann

Just wanted to give a shout out to my homegirl Robin at roomfu.com. She hooked us up with this awesome new living room set from Collectic Home. Click the photo to see some more shots of the re-vitalized living room.

Daily Photo

Zilker Botanical Gardens
Originally uploaded by michelann

A stunning waterlily (or lotus, not sure) from last year's crop. Got to get to Zilker for more photos soon!

Photography Inferiority Complex

Afternoon Doze
Originally uploaded by *Sakura*

Whenever I start thinking that I'm a good photographer, all I have to do is look at the work of some of my contacts on flickr. Seriously. I don't know how she does these magical photos, but they rock my little world.

Mayday!

In lieu of well-formulated arguments and philosophical musings, I give you FLOWERS:



David and I have been busy little bees. (no fertility jokes, thanks)


We spent the last two weekends at local parks trying out some new techniques with our fab lenses. Say hello to my carpal tunnel (too much photoshop driven mouse gripping).


I know, not flowers. But, pretty!


Ecinacia is the most fun to photograph.






I love purple.





And my favorite, waterlilies:


If you want to see the growing collection of spring photos, go here or here.

Saying goodbye to one muse and welcoming another.

Over the last year, I've begun to realize that while I am no longer a performer in the traditional sense, my new career as an entrepreneur has taken me back to my performing roots in many ways. All the activities I do that involve other people - networking, pitching, negotiating, lecturing, teaching, & coaching are a form of performance. Improvisational, open-ended, revelatory performance. This realization, and the emotional roller coaster that comes from being that "on" for long periods of time has made me flash back on my years as a musician rather a lot.

On top of that, there have been a few times in the last few months that I've painfully felt the loss of music in my life. Random moments where I feel as if I've been living without a limb, and have just noticed its painful absence. I stopped pursuing music as a career in 2001. I stopped performing as a musician (with a few exceptions for friend and family weddings) in 2005. I used to sing all the time, now it's rare and usually when I'm alone. Sorting through my feelings around this has been a sticky and harrowing process.

Music was both my gateway to the hell of self-annihilation and the heaven of self-transcendence. Some of the most spiritual moments of my young adult life were when I was performing and felt as if something beyond me chose my voice as its instrument. In those moments I felt as if I was the priestess and the sacrifice at the same time. I know that sounds mildly insane, but it was as if I was controlling and creating this experience of ritualistic catharsis on one (somewhat detached) level, and concurrently experiencing total surrender, ecstasy, and spiritual nakedness on another.

At the other end of the spectrum was crippling self-doubt, constant external and internal criticism, jealousy, extreme-sport competitiveness, isolation, codependency, and auditions. Oh man, did I get to hate auditions. At first they were kind of fun. Then I realized that every time I got in front of that opera company I was cementing some kind of impression of what caliber of singer I was with one more conductor/director, and there was very little I could do to control or change it once the audition was over. Pressure.

Singing for an appreciative audience is one thing. I've always had stage fright, but it's never been enough to keep me off the stage. Hell, I'm still perform any chance I get (bellydancing, lectures, teaching...). But auditions - singing for people who are bored, exhausted, and whose job consists of disqualifying 99% of the hopeful young singers who they see - is hell. There's no energy exchange, no ritualistic, shamanistic deeper meaning. You're a show horse. They look at your teeth, your stance, your gait, and determine if you have the stuff. And when 90% of my singing became auditions, it ate my soul.

I think the moment I realized it was over was when I got 30 seconds into my first aria in a major audition and noticed I was already mentally out the door, deconstructing what I'd done to fuck it up this time. At the time I had the best and worst teacher I'd ever had - another polarized contradiction. He could hear the sounds my voice had never made and could help me find them. He could coax my vocal chords and abdominal muscles into feats of Olympian strength, endurance, and control. He was funny, encouraging, and supportive. He was also immature, egotistical, petty, and sometimes quite cruel.

Finally something (I think in that one audition) snapped. I had been trying to extricate myself from a crumbling destructive relationship that had spanned most of my 20s. And the moment I gave myself permission to leave it, I left my music career too.

I coach people on their core values now. And sometimes I help them create a personal narrative wherein they map which values were being expressed (and which repressed) during different phases of their careers. In many ways music was more in the service of my needs (approval, acceptance, adulation) than my values. It also was an expression of what I consider my greatest gift, which is creating connection. Music can connect people to the divine within themselves and others. It can connect us to the humanity of people who lived hundreds of years before us. As Joseph Campbell says, the artist is the shaman of our time. So I think that music served my need to connect to Spirit, and certainly utilized my core values of Courage and Compassion, although I think in a somewhat limited, self-centered way.

What I find strange, is that my other two core values, Inquisitiveness and Humor, had almost no expression during this time of my life. I took myself far too seriously. The ability to laugh at yourself comes with the willingness to look like an ass, and I had no tolerance for looking stupid. And Inquisitiveness - my God. I drank up every bit of academic, analytical juice I could find at the Conservatory, but there just wasn't that much room for it. Even when interpreting the music we sang, better to trust the interpretation of someone who published an edition with written cadenzas and ornamentation 50 years ago than put your own stamp on it.

Don't get me wrong, we could meddle with the dynamics, the tempo, the tone, and the articulation. But that was it. How many times was I told I think too much, I'm too smart? Leave your brain at the door (except for memorizing stuff) was pretty much what you were encouraged to do. And rightly so, in many ways. Singing is very athletic, and not very intellectual. You can't really engage your brain until your body is under control, and the body part is about physical training and biofeedback much more than intellectual understanding and cognitive learning.

So this huge chunk of who I am lay fallow for the first 10 years of my adult life. I did a lot of reading, but I didn't really exercise my brain the way I now know I'm capable of. Fast forward to 2006 and grad school (take 2). Once I got my head around the concept of critical thinking, I was in heaven. Instead of trying to get my brain out of the way of my creative process, it was my creative process! Being inquisitive and analytical helped me get good grades and start to write at a level where I would eventually get published. I began to integrate the creative, emotional, non-verbal side of myself with the analytical, discerning, intellectual side. I can't express how much happier and more fulfilled this made me.

I've always been very verbal (ask my parents), and I know that I'm good at helping people find ways to express feelings that are difficult to verbalize. I considered being a therapist for a while because I know I have that strength. But I seem to have found my new muse (which is actually an old muse) in writing and speaking. While I've never had the ability to use words like paint the way a creative writer or poet does, I am good at using words to help crystallize and articulate aspects of the human condition that are hard to express.

It's taken me a while to realize that I can be a writer without being a Writer. I'm not a wordsmith, I'm an ideasmith. There are lots of those out there these days, but I don't think too many of them are women. Daniel Pink, Malcom Gladwell, and Thomas Friedman spring to mind. These are people who tap into some strand of the collective consciousness and articulate ideas that we are all becoming aware of simultaneously. While I don't know if the ideas and concepts I can articulate are universal enough to land me a book deal like Gladwell's, I think this is ultimately what I'm here to do now.

I still like performing - I enjoy teaching and lecturing and networking - but I also find it draining. It's a great way to try my ideas out on people and see what turns the lightbulb on for them. There's nothing cooler than seeing that happen. But coming to terms with wanting to write for a good portion of my living is this huge relief. It's solitary and protected, and uses a totally different kind of energy than speaking of singing.

So words are my vehicle now. Not the words of poets or librettists that died centuries ago, my words. Are my words important enough to be considered by others? Actually, it doesn't matter. I think that we all have an unique contribution to make, and this is mine. There is no other me, and nobody is going to talk about things exactly like me. So there's no competition, because nobody else can have my voice, and I can't have theirs. Will I find an audience? I hope so. Over the last year of this crazy experiment called entrepreneurialsim, I've had the most success finding publishers for my articles, and places to speak about my ideas. That part has come much easier than learning how to use Quickbooks, for example.

I miss music, and I hope I can find a way to re-integrate it in my life. But I think I'm okay with the Music Epoch being over. I'm looking forward to seeing how the Writing Epoch unfolds.

If you're interested in reading some of my stuff, visit DiaMind Dialogues, my business blog.

Spring!

First, flowers!








It's so great to see all this color.

Work has been really fun lately. It seems like spring has really amped up my creative process. I spoke at a conference in Austin a few weeks ago called RISE, it was really fun. It was especially great to be around a bunch of entrepreneurs. It reminded me of the first time I went to music/arts summer camp in high school. Instead of being a weirdo, I was with my own kind, people who shared my values and ideals. In this case, it was fun to be with other irrationally optimistic, creative, driven people who persistently see our country's financial difficulties as an opportunity for growth and change. It was cool.

My session was on defining and identifying core vision, values, and mission. It went really well, and has got me thinking about some very exciting possibilities to expand on the parts people responded to especially well. Next week, I'm guest speaking at Wisdom at Work, which you can read about here, if you're interested.

Speaking of entrepreneurs, I got to meet one of my idols yesterday, Perez Hilton. What? That snarky gossip blogger who draws on pictures of movie stars in MS Paint? Yep. I have to admit his blog is a guilty pleasure of mine. But what I find more interesting is how he's managed to go from just some dude who writes a goofy blog to a media mogul. Seriously - the guy had one of the hottest shows at SXSW, has a clothing line at Hot Topic, a book, tv shows, and more. I expect him to be in the company of Oprah as far as media influence is concerned in the next ten years. He is wicked smart. Anyway, I'll quit gushing and just show you the picture:



I am such a dork.

I've been better about keeping my business blog updated, but less so here. I've got some new website stuff in the work, so stay tuned for updates. Oh - and I also have a new article in a journal called The Systems Thinker. Sweet! It's on organizational politics and ethics, if you're interested email me and I'll send you a copy.

That's all for now. I have to go wash some terriers.

More Latest Addictions

It's still officially winter here, though Austin's are notoriously short. The trees are starting to bloom, so hopefully I'll be out and about snapping new photos soon. In the meantime, I'm holed up with a flu, so this edition of Addictions will be homebody-related.

• Ru Paul's Drag Race - Tracy turned me on to this and I lurve it. I so miss the drag scene in San Francisco, and this show manages to be terribly campy while still kind of heartwarming and poingiant.
• Homemade Cough Syrup - this stuff works better than codeine. Recipe below.
• Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer in Sin - Drag-queen worthy, this stuff is a great highlighter, and if you wear it under your shadow and liner, nothing will budge for hours. Bellydancers, take note!
• Battlestar Galactica, Season 4 - The best show on TV, and one of the best sci-fi epics ever. I am such a nerd for this show.
• Soups and Stews (list below) - The best bet for dumping all my CSA veggies into something comforting and tasty.

Homeopathic Cough Syrup

2 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp Cider Vinegar
4 Tbsp Water
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Simmer for a few minutes. Take by the teaspoonful. The ginger and honey is soothing, and the cayenne acts as an expectorant.

Soup and Stew Recipes

• Chicken Green Chili with White Beans - I use way more green chili than the recipe calls for.
• Tagine of Lamb and Apricots in Honey Sauce - David's favorite.
• Southwestern Pork Soup - super fast, sub canned hominy for beans for a faked up posole.
• Orange Saffron Shrimp and Snapper Stew

Latest Addictions

Just because I haven't posted about my addictions in a while doesn't mean I don't have any:

• My Aeropress
  Sent from Heaven (or Hell, if you ask David) this little puppy makes the awesomest lattes, chais, and anything else you want to concentrate to super-strength. While my Starbucks intake has dropped precipitously, my caffeine intake has increased more than I care to admit.
• This coffee.
  
• My niece
  There is possibly nothing cuter. And that includes puppies and kittens. Although this one is providing some stiff competition.
• Bellydancing (again)
  Yes, the full-on addiction with all the shiny, sparkly accoutrements has returned. My abs thank me. And now I like photographing it too.
  

Holidays 2008

2008 was an eventful year. It was my first year of marriage. There were births and deaths. I started a company. We elected a president I actually like. It hasn't been the year of hell for me that it was for many people, but it certainly was intense. Overall, I'm a lot more comfortable in my skin than I was a year ago, and I attribute that mostly to the necessity of letting go of control that comes with starting a business, and to my marriage, which has been a tremendous blessing.

This year we flew to Los Angeles on Christmas Day, and drove to Santa Barbara. I love not having to take multiple flights. We had celebrated my birthday with friends the previous Saturday, and Christmas with the Quimby clan on Sunday:

On Christmas day we flew to California and spent a few days in Santa Barbara with family and friends. Meeting my new niece Saraphina was especially fun:

Isn't she a doll? Speaking of dolls, check out Miss Maxine, now approaching the ripe old age of two:

It was foodie bliss at my parents' house, as per usual:

Beef Wellington with Celery Root Mashers and Port Reduction

Hoshigaki White Chocolate Truffles

Tortilla soup with fried shrimp

Cajeta Ice cream with Mexican Cookies

And we found some time to get out and do some nature photography:

Shaun and I (mostly Shaun) cooked a dinner for our parents' 40th anniversary:

Then it was off to LA for a couple days of sightseeing and catching up with friends. We had lunch at a dumpling house in Arcadia with Rheia and Dave:

And dinner in Hollywood with Elender and Bergen, who treated us to the Amazing Cat Show:

The next day we did some sightseeing, ate at a fabulous restaurant in Glendale called Carousel, and it was back home again.

We're happy to be home, and happy to be spending time with our Austin friends and family again. Happy 2009!