Hello from @lifeinblue - musician, cardboard designer, human lover and occasional cat saver

I was born in a small and very beautyful country in Eastern Europe, Bulgaria. My home town Ruse has an over 2000 years history. It was created by the soldiers of the Roman Empire as a military port on the Danube River. Actually Ruse is the biggest Bulgarian city on the Danube, an important economical and cultural center of the country. If you love sunsets, here is the place to visit ! Sunsets are simply magical and breathtaking. Even if my home was far from the river, I was able to see the sky on fire every evening. As the Danube is very large it reflects the sunlight in a magical and very powerful way.

Magical sunsets in my home town Ruse. Photo by Krasimira Pastirova.
Photo credits : http://pastirova.com ; http://azreporterat.btv.bg/publikaciya/35675

Life in Bulgaria is not easy but somehow it reflects calm and sweetness, even in the big towns. Time is like slowed down compared to life in France, especially in Paris.
Bulgarian homes are open to visitors, people love to have friends in house and big dinner tables with generous food, and they love to take time for a break and have a look at what is happening outside. In Bulgaria you can often see people on their balconies, looking at the street or talking to their neighbors.
The little Bulgarian thing - official nap time between 2 and 4 pm, noise prohibited. If you take the sad decision to practice some musical instrument or repair whatever in the house during the sacred nap time, your neighbor can call the Police and ask you to stop.

At age of ten, I started to have serious issues with my stomach. During all my teenage years I had many gastric ulcers and all the problems related to them - big stomach pains, sleepless nights and incapacity to eat most of the time. Bulgarian food is fatty and spicy enough, so I had to learn another healthy way to eat. And my goal was not to be slim as most of the teenage girls but just to avoid stomach pain. My problems are over today, but I am still very concerned by the healthy nutrition. I naturally pay attention to what I eat, but I don't feel it's a sacrifice. I believe that's the key - to find the best nutrition for ourselves and preserve the pleasure of food without excess or sacrifice. It's been a long journey for me to find this balance. I will share here some tasty and healthy recipes I found, and others that I just adapted in order to preserve the taste but make them more healthy. I will also share my tips and tricks to finally eliminate my bad habits with food.

I am pianist, composer and arranger. I started the piano when I was six years old and received my professional education as a classical pianist in Bulgaria.
It was a big adventure and I will surely tell you more about this in separate articles. The point of this experience is I had to become an adult very quickly, as I was involved in a highly competitive and demanding educational system. But at this time I wasn't conscious at all about those things. It was normal and I was simply happy to be all day in music and to have musicians practicing all instruments as class mates and friends.

In Ruse we have a very prestigious music festival, where people can see and hear the very best classical musicians in the world. I was really lucky to grow up in a city with such a cultural richness and to be able to see so great solo musicians, orchestras and conductors just in front of me at a very tender age.

But my ears were open to every music and at this time I had the chance to discover Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, the disco stars, also the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Metallica, Extreme, Depeche Mode, George Michael, Queen and of course... Michael Jackson !! When "Moonwalker" came out in Bulgaria, I went to cinema to see the movie no less than 22 times !!! My piano teacher was desperate with me, because she was able to notice I wasn't practicing enough at home.
I started to be more and more interested in musical arrangements while listening to the songs and the classical orchestrations. What I loved the most was the mix of the different sounds and instruments, and the deep sensations inside of me listening to how the instruments were "talking" to each other. It was simply magical to hear how the great composers or arrangers were painting invisible pictures with the sounds.

At the same time I saw some of the american musicals at TV and was completely enchanted by this world. I will never forget the feeling when I saw for the first time the dance performances in "Singing in the rain" and "West side story".
Progressively, I started to feel not quite at my place as a classical pianist. I loved the piano and everything was going well for me. But staying alone with the instrument and repeat the same classical pieces without end during many weeks started to be a weight on me.

Another lesson from this experience was to listen the little inner voice who speaks the truth. I didn't know nothing else but the classical piano road, the competition and the execution of the music score as a little soldier. It was the only way possible because nobody gave me another choice. But I knew deep inside that it wasn't the right way for me, even if I didn't know where exactly I was supposed to go.

At age of twelve, I met an amazing French teacher and one of the greatest persons who gave me passion for France and french language. My dream to live in France came true a few years later.

The culture clash was big and to be honest, even if I was already bilingual in French, it was very difficult to adapt myself. Progressively I learned (and I'm still learning) to sort things out and take the best from both Bulgarian and French culture.

In music, things started to fall into place for me in France. I had the chance by discovering the dance accompaniment and meeting great jazz musicians to start improvising. It was the beginning of another big adventure because when a classical musician starts to improvise, things are never the same anymore.

It is not only a new way to play or listen to the music, it is a complete opening to new state of mind and vision of life.
We must accept the errors and even love the errors. Making mistakes in front of the others, the worst nightmare for a classical musician is the inevitable road to improvisation. It is a complete let go of the ego and the goal to deliver a perfect technical performance.

Little by little I started to feel that what makes me really happy is to mix the music with other arts - theatre, films, dance but also to mix the musical styles inside some arrangements. I found myself and my place as a pianist and musician.

I had the chance to compose music for little movies, theatre performances, classical and jazz orchestras, and also work with dancers from Paris Opera Ballet, Bolshoi ballet, Monte Carlo Ballet, Miami city Ballet... I am currently working in Paris conservatory and I am often invited to work with Preljocaj Ballet, a Dance company that I like a lot for so many reasons.

I do my best now to focus on composing for movies but Dance will always be for me the open door to improvisation and musical freedom.

One day I saw a TV report and I had a crash on something very new - creating cardboard furniture ! Since I made a lot of creations for my home and I also had the pleasure to make workshops for passionate people who wanted to learn the cardboard furniture technics with me.

I was familiar with manual work, in Bulgaria it is a part of the family education. Usually the grand mothers transmit this art to their grand children.

But the cardboard and the entire upcycling concept was a complete revelation to me. It became a real passion, absolutely necessary, very different from the piano but very complementary also.

What I like is the recovery concept, the idea to make a real artistic creation with some stupid cardboard found in the street.

And what I like a lot more is the possibility to completely personnalise the object, make it unique, reflecting our home and personality and nobody else's.

I will share more about this in details, but here you can catch the idea of the concept.

Since a few years I created a blog and Youtube channel about the cardboard furniture, and I started to be interested in blogging, ranking in Google, key words and all that usual marketing stuff.

One day I saw a video about the great course Post2Profit by @hopehuggs. It is very strait to the point and step by step useful information about Steemit. I strongly recommend this course to every newbie person on Steemit. I was very inspired by the story of Helen, divorced strong mother of two, who changed her life and reached financial freedom with Steemit. So thank you Helen for the inspiration, high quality content on Steemit and the great course !

Photo credit : Post2Profit - Steemit course by @hopehuggs

I am ashamed to say so, but following the youtube channels of @crypt0, @jerrybanfield or @trevonjb, I haven't heard about Steemit until I read the Helen's course. I just don't get how I missed all those great videos ! Ooooops !... :-)

Besides the opportunity to get paid for our articles, what I like on Steemit is the possibility to writ about everything, all in the same blog. No need to create a new blog in Google with different domain name and rank it. It makes things much easier for a person interested in many areas.

I think Steemit is exciting, rich and inspiring, and I'm not talking about money here but about huge human potential and richness.

Since I found Steemit, I took the time to read a lot of articles. I saw some very good quality posts with many upvotes, but some others with zero upvotes.

I have a lot to learn about all this and how it works. I seriously plan to invest in Steem Power and support people who take time to make quality posts. I am willing to meet artists from all areas and support their work but also very curious to learn more about crypto and Steemit.

I hope you will help me to do so, and I hope I will be able to help others very quickly on this amazing platform.

And here are some ideas of what I could publish on my blog :

• some tasty and healthy recipes ;
• pictures and articles about cats, some of them need help as many people ;
• my music - compositions and arrangements, classical pieces, piano versions of songs or movie music. If you want to hear a particular music played by me, please let me know !!!
• articles about inspiring artists, in all areas ;
• upcycling tips and ideas, with cardboard and other materials ;
• places to visit in France and Bulgaria ;
• some memes, it could be fun :-)
• tutorials about how to make nice animated videos, very popular on internet at this time.

So here I am, at the end of this first post.

If you enjoyed it, would you please comment, upvote, and resteem in order to help me to have a good start on Steemit and be able to help others also ?

Thank you for reading me, and see you (read you) soon ! Love,

Ilina