Laume's Studio

I've made a significant shift in my productivity in this new year. I can feel it. I can explain it from a number of different perspectives, and point to a number of different factors in it's evolution. But I just thought of another one. 2009 - Nine has always been a powerful number for me. Maybe part of the extra energy comes from that deep connection.

It's a great relief, after many frustrating years of feeling in limbo. I'm not saying I've discovered the answers to all my questions, it's just a shift, not an epiphany, but I'm still grateful for it. I'm trying to take advantage of it, ride it's crest for as long as I can, and spend as much time as possible working creatively.

Of course along with the new energy, comes new frustrations. I'm having to rethink a lot of how I structure my day. I've come to the realization that I need to spend a lot less time online, and yet I draw a lot of my inspiration and networking and friendships from this small, white, plastic box that opens up and gives me such a wider view of the world. For now, I've settled for making posting my blog posts a priority but it's much harder to find time to visit all the blogs I want to visit regularly. I'm still visiting people, just more sporadically, catching up on a few weeks (or, gulp, months) of posts at a time.

I think this photo sums up a lot of what my life is like.

There's nothing in the photo to give you a clue to the size of things, although it doesn't really matter. I'm looking down over the bridge and that's a really, really big rock, only a small portion of it sticking out of the water. What's important is the idea that for all the part that you can see above the water, there's a much larger part that's hidden.

The rock below the water level is the bulk of daily life that gets swallowed up by day to day living - all those things that need to get done to keep self and kin fed, clothed, bills paid, etc. The part of the rock above water is the part of each day one has left to do ...whatever else one wants to do.

To take the analogy even further, depending on how fast and high the river is flowing (how fast and busy life comes at me), the degree of dry stone that stays above the rush of things changes. Some times there's more time and energy left to play with, sometimes there's nothing left of the day, the rock completely submerged.

So, that's all to say that I'm trying out different combinations of what activities get a place there on the smaller dry spot, and what activities I have to let float away for now. It's hard because I want it ALL above water. But that's not gonna happen. And if I stay with the analogy I started, that would translate into being "high and dry" - uhm, that sounds like it might be a stuck and uncreative place. With no river flowing by, there's no place to dip into for new ideas. So, it's back to juggling and making decisions.

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More on street art, this time publically sanctioned art. Our town has a few unique treasures, one of them is the many (and over the years there are more and more of them) city murals. I don't take them for granted, per se, I enjoy them every time I walk or drive by one. But until now it hasn't occurred to me to take a photo of them to share with you. So, here's a couple I walked by yesterday.

If you could read the words along the bottom, this is a photo of Lassen County's founder (apologies to the Native Americans who had already found this area and had been living here for a long time before then) Isaac Roop and his daughter Susan, who Susanville is named after. You can click to enlarge these photos.


This one is on the side of the local Iron Horse gym. It's a tribute to the logging history of the community. The local mill only recently closed, after something like 70 years of being in business. I like how it was made to look like an old photograph, right down to the corner photo tabs.


Here's another photo to show you how large it is.

I'll try to remember to take photos of more murals as I wander about town in the coming year.