May 2017 – Page 2 – KINETIC MOTIONS

May 19, 2017April 29, 2018

Life is a Leap

Life is a leap of faith. I heard this phrase in a song from the show Strictly Ballroom on Wednesday, the day I launched this blog. My mother and I are long time subscribers of the Mirvish theatre season and love going to see plays together. I sat in the theatre and enjoyed the show after a long, exciting and yet stressful day. Some of the words in the song that close Act 1 struck me and those words were timely:

When you feel you’re flying blind that is when you know you’re fine

Something deep down inside that’s never ever ever crossed your mind

Even though it scares you to lose control

Take a chance and just let it go

When you feel it take your breath away

Just keep walking towards it anyway

‘Cause life is a leap of faith

Life is a leap of faith

Even though it’s hard to trust let the armour turn to dust

I say I say you must unless you want your heart crushed

Even though it scares you to lose control

Take a chance and just let it go

When you feel it take your breath away

Just keep walking towards it anyway

‘Cause life is a leap of faith

Life is a leap of faith.

So the title of this song is actually “Love is a Leap of Faith” and the female lead’s father and grandmother are clearly singing to this woman and the male lead about love. However, I am choosing to interpret the words as something more generic about life, in particular my life right now.

This blog is a leap of faith for me. Yes it kind of scares me, but I’m taking a chance and I am just letting it go. I don’t know where this will take me, but this new journey excites me.

By the way, Strictly Ballroom was a fun play with great music and fabulous dancing. I felt the plot was a bit weak and definitely Act 1 was better than Act 2. It’s worth the ticket and a night out!

May 18, 2017June 20, 2017

What’s in a Number? I have Favourite – do you?

Many people have a favourite number, a lucky number or sometimes an unlucky number. Numerology plays a central role in many cultures, with some believed to be inauspicious while others may bring fortune.https://www.thespruce.com/is-number-4-a-bad-feng-shui-number-1274542

For example, the number 4 is associated with bad luck in Chinese culture as the Chinese word for the 4 has a similar sound to the word for death.

Gematria is alphanumeric code in Hebrew, in which letters correspond to numbers. The numerical value of a word can be calculated by adding those numbers together. 18 is lucky in Judaism as 10 and 8 correspond to the Hebrew letters for “chet” and “yud,” which put https://www.thespruce.com/is-number-4-a-bad-feng-shui-number-1274542together spell the word “chai.” That’s the Hebrew word for life.

Sometimes a number or a set of numbers can, because of a single event, tradition or a series of events, be associated with good luck (or bad luck!). There may not be a cultural, religious or historical connection and it’s not always logical.

For me it’s all about 17.

I can’t quite pinpoint when I started to like 17 or why, but since childhood I have liked it and have associated it with happy and coincidental events in my life.

As a teenager, when I became a sports fan, my favourite hockey player was (and still is) #17, Wendel Clark and my favourite baseball player was #17, Kelly Gruber. When my brother played both soccer and hockey his coach handed him the #17 jersey, and I was so proud to see my son wearing the #17 jersey this year when he joined his school’s basketball team.

Over 25 years ago, when my parents built our family’s country home, my mother decided to play Lotto 6/49 just as the 1,100-foot driveway was built. As we were a family of five she needed to add one more number to her list and followed my suggestion to include #17. Well, she got five of the six numbers that night (yes of course 17 was one of them!), and the amount she won covered much of the cost for that driveway (which we later named “Route 6/49”).

This year is 2017, and I launched this blog on the 17^th of the month. Somehow, it brings me comfort and a little smile. Do you have a lucky number? Post your comments here, send me an email at kineticmotions17@gmail.com or Tweet at me @AliciaRichler to let me know what number you like.

May 17, 2017June 23, 2017

First Blog Post

Grade eleven chemistry. Most of my attention was focused anywhere except on the lesson at the front of the room. I began to doodle and my pen curved and swirled to create a cartoon character. I looked down at my paper and was pleased with my creation, but he needed a name.

I looked up at the chalkboard, which was covered in mathematics equations and formulas that seemed more like gibberish than my homework. Then I looked around the classroom, a room which was used for science, chemistry and physics, and the name came to me – Kinetic Man: a man of action.

Since that day, I have been drawing Kinetic Man on birthday cards, chalkboards and notes to family and friends. Drawing Kinetic Man energizes me, he gets me up and gets me moving.

Kinetic energy is the energy of motion. While I didn’t realize it that day when I was sixteen years old in high school, doodling on my page and creating this cartoon character, Kinetic Man has inspired me to get in motion and start writing.

For years I have thought about creating an online space to write and voice my thoughts on a number of subjects. The internet is vast, full of countless websites, blogs, publications and pages, and I hope this is a space people will enjoy visiting to read, comment and contribute.

I am going to cover a variety of topics here, including, but not limited to, current events, travel, food and cooking, family and sports (in particular baseball and skiing).

While I have worked in public affairs and communications for many years and had the opportunity to interact with many talented bloggers, writing in this style is new to me. I am truly a novice and have so much to learn. I am excited to take on this challenge and don’t know where it will take me.

I welcome your comments, opinions and advice. Please feel free to share my posts and contact me if you would like to write a post. This is the space that is getting me moving, and I hope it gets you moving too.