Overstretched, not physically

I wanted to say overextended, but couldn't help myself to play the words game, and use something actually connected with skating...

I have many things going on and I'm processing few unexpected things that happened.  I wrote in the summer a post about my other passions. I love arts, and I paint. While I'm not making a living out of it, I am a selling artist and I do want to maintain my skills. Plus, have I mentioned I love art? So I do love and want to paint. When I started skating seriously I reorganized my weekly schedule allowing time to still create and go out to shows and expositions.

But then the stray and feral cats came my way... I love animals. These are sweet, innocents souls that are in a bad situation. How can I not help? Slowly but surely this took away more and more time, money and while I love helping them, there is a lot of pain that I feel handling them everyday. I'm feeding 12 colonies and take in kittens and friendly cats and find places for them. I've tried very hard all last year to organize this endeavor. I won't go into it, it's a too long of a story. I'll say that I feel I gathered some knowledge to, maybe, be able to organize the cat rescue this coming year... And I'm overwhelmed by the amount of work I know lies ahead.

I was contacted recently by a family acquaintance, business guy, that has a cousin, a lawyer experienced in non profits and fund raising. He wanted the three of us to start a non profit and split the money... I didn't know how to finish the conversation quickly enough. I tried not to think about it but I woke up at 5 am and couldn't go back to sleep. I talked in the morning with a good friend that is involved in business and she wasn't shocked. That also shocked me... She said that it's a known fact that non profits are run inefficiently or worse, inappropriately. She made the good point that at least I wouldn't had to worry about the nonprofit doing something illegal as one of the partners wound had been a lawyer. Then I talked with a friend that was involved occasionally with  animals help organizations. And she had the same angry reaction I had. She said that non profits like that, sooner or later are sniffed out but  the damage that they do is huge, as more and more people that would want to help with donations, don't know whom to trust and end up not helping anymore or giving to big non profits. And the bigger the non profits, the more inefficient they become. So, I want to start a new blog (about the alley cats) and start raising awareness, educating about options, and hopefully raise some funds too. I enjoy writing this blog about skating. Writing about alley cats I suspect it's gonna be painful.

The biggest help one can do for the feral cat population is TNR (Trap Neuter Release). That's the only thing that will curve the problem. And there are people that do only that. They don't even try to feed. They don't try to adopt the friendly ones. I still have to figure out how to best TNR myself. The animal care organizations have discounts, but they also have rules (each different), some of them making it impossible for me to follow.

A very good thing  happened last year, I was able to finally figure out, after months of dancing back and forth, the adoption process of one of the biggest organization that helps cats in the area. They take in friendly stray cats. They took from me and got adopted 7 cats at the end of the last year and 4 this month. Half of them were living with me for a while, and while I've tried to never think at them as my cats, I'm missing them badly. I'm very happy but it also feels like I'm grieving...

The last four cats that got adopted were living in room that was once my art studio. So now I've got to clean it, and theoretically  be able to paint again. Guess what, I've got sad looking back at these last two years I haven't painted. Then I've got sadder realizing that, realistically I still won't have time to paint in the coming future.

In regards with the cats, another big frustration and disappointment was actually seeing how inefficient the animal care organizations are.

Now, my skating... It's mostly good, really. I've just had a little setback as my hip started to hurt again after few months of being pain free. But I feel better already. I overworked my hip with the dance 3-turn. I have to fix the 3-turn before testing the Ten Fox. But I think I've got so worked out about it because I was distracted by all this other things. I've learned again and again, that my skating activity is more efficient and pleasant, when I get into a rhythm. Pushing too hard and allowing myself to get frustrated, gets me out of the rhythm and actually does more harm then good. And it also takes from my enjoyment, and then affects my motivation.

My other passions

When I started writing the blog I knew I eventually would want to share my other activities beside skating. I think most of the people look at these kind of activities as hobbies. I look at them more like passions.

Taken chronologically, from when I was a child I loved nature and animals, and to this day I'm passionate about green living and animal welfare. Then, in my teens my big love was fashion and I've learn to saw and later studied fashion design in parallel with my "real" studies. As I matured I discovered art. I love music (classical and pop), I love dance (ballet and all the others forms) and I love the decorative fine art (painting, sculpture, glass art, ceramics). My biggest love may be the snow and skiing. And you know I love skating...

Of course there is not enough time to emerge myself in all I mentioned. I find that at different points some activities take over. For the last 2 years skating was my main priority. And I literally arranged my weekly schedule around the ice rink schedule.

I'm helping the ally cats for a while now (probably 10 years). I've inherited from a neighbor that moved away a colony registered with the city. A nonprofit foundation organizes these colonies care, they help with the food and offer assistance for TNR (trap, neuter, return). This would eventually curb the number of feral cats and also would make the existing ones less aggressive. Last summer I've encounter two lost kittens (3, 4 weeks old) that I've brought in and bottle fed every 3 hours at first. It wasn't easy. Even harder was to see that the kittens cared by their mothers disappeared one by one.So this year, when I've seen a pregnant cat, I tried to take her in. Some of my friends adopted some kittens :) One friend help with some medical bills. One friend started to do what I'm doing. The nonprofit non kill shelter takes the kittens after they've reach 2 months and puts them for adoption. It is sooo hard to let them go, but I know it is the only way to have space to help others.

I mentioned last week that I've went to an outdoor concert and some art exhibition. In the summer I like the outdoor concerts a lot. A lot of the classical music was inspired by nature, and to me makes sense to be listened in the nature. This year, I really don't have the time to go that much. With work, errands and skating I'm away from home too much. The kittens need lot's of time...

I still occasionally sew, mostly for myself, but I've just made  a skating skirt for a friend that used to borrow mine for tests. Now she is moving away so she needs her own. I've also made a new (shorter) skirt for my moves test, the one that I didn't get to test.

The one think that I didn't get to do in 2 years now, is paint. I paint in watercolors and I am a selling artist. But as everything, it takes a lot of time for learning the technique, figuring out materials, finding inspiration. Plus that one room that I used as my studio is now some of the cats room.

I cannot do it all, but I love it all!