Happy Channukah

Okay so this is being written in word but I want it to go up tonight as it's the last day of Channukah so I'm holding place with this nonsense filler. Yeah.

Impossible!

I babysit a couple of kids from when they get out of school until when their mother gets home in the evening. I don't know what religion they are, other than they aren't Christian. But they do know the nativity scene. Because the older one, as I was picking him up from school on Friday pointed out the Mary + Joseph + manager for baby Jesus and told me that it was impossible.

The reason why it was impossible?

They didn't have nails back then and so they couldn't have a manger. It was a million years ago and they didn't have nails a million years ago.

I'm not a Christian, so I can't say I care if this child believes in the nativity scene or not. That's for him to look for and decide when he gets older. But he did make some factual errors in how we count time and about the existence of nails.

I tried to explain to him that the idea was that Jesus was born only about 2000 years ago, hence why we call it two thousand and ten. The idea is that Jesus was born in the year zero. He seemed to accept this.

But then I said that even two thousand years ago they had nails, they didn't look like the nails we had today, but they still had nails. Nails have been around longer than the idea of Jesus. We've had nails for thousands of years.

That however was far too ridiculous. I was flatly told that having nails for so long was impossible. "That's ridiculous! It's impossible! Nails didn't exist back then."

Scrooged.

I'm a big fan of Dicken's A Christmas Carol. In my family, it used to be a Christmas tradition that we would sit down and read it together in the month of December. At first it was just my mother reading to us, and then as we got older we all took turns. So I usually loved every version of A Christmas Carol that was ever made. Although generally, I like the traditional ones more, minus the Disney version in which Mickey is Bob Crachitt, love that and Disney characters aren't really all that "traditional." Although if you consider how old Mickey is these days, he might be crossing that line.

I'm not sure of how I feel about Scrooged though. I don't think it's quite the type of Christmas Carol movie I really enjoy, although I was rather distracted while watching it. I was writing and it was on TV so it had commercials and I was chatting with friends. So maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance. But I sort of feel that if I movie can't hold my attention...it's not really my fault and more the fault of the movie. Because there are some movies that I have a really hard time getting anything done at the same time as watching them because I get so into them.

It should have been amazing, as it has Bill Murry and Karen Allen, and I adore Ms. Karen Allen in surprising amounts. She's so adorable, with her smile and her giant eyes.

Overall the movie was enjoyable, but it didn't really put me in the Christmas spirit.

I did like this little gem at the end though: "We are the people we always hope we could be." Made me think of what I blogged about yesterday. Actually, his whole speech at the end was pretty good. Especially with the Claire, world, world, Claire.



She is so cute.

But if I'm looking for A Christmas Carol, I'll be sticking to my traditional one with everyone in period costumes.

As long as there's Christmas

"As long as there's Christmas, I truly believe
That hope is the greatest of the gifts we'll receive

So there always will be a time.
When the world is filled with peace and love."

I've always loved this bit of music. I love Beauty and the Beast, but Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas always warmed my heart more than the original did though. It might have something to do with the fact that Bernadette Peters is voicing the angel, and I've adored her forever. But I think it's this song, (and the other one "Stories") that have always touched my heart more than "Something There" or "Beauty and the Beast" ever did.

But these words basically sum up Christmas. Not just Christmas even, but the holiday season. A lot of religions have religious holidays during this time of year. It probably has something to do with the fact you get the longest night of the year and then it seems God returns the sun to us like a gift. That's pure speculation though, I have no actual idea. But there is something about this time of year. That isn't the presents, or the mistletoe, or anything to do with those traditions. Something about this time of year says, maybe the world can be better, maybe we have a chance at peace after all.

Christmas has always been a non-denominational holiday for me. My family isn't religious to say the least, so Christmas has never been very spiritual. I've found another way to be spiritual over the holiday season, by celebrating Chanukah. I like celebrating holidays as it makes me feel closer to people from around the world, which I think is kind of the point. I celebrate this, and so do so many others, it gives us something in common, and suddenly we are a little less of strangers.

In the end, that is what the holiday season means to me. It's a chance to be less of a stranger. It's a chance to be a little more human.

Sure, it's going to be stressful, all those presents and Christmas shopping, and kids get more materialistic every year it seems, people can't handle the pressure and get mad at others. But I hope that everyone around the world is able, even if it's just for a minute, get a moment where they realize that the person over there that they don't know, is a little less of a stranger. Open your hearts and let in the joy.

Giving Thanks, Day One.

So, I didn't exactly manage to get in my 31 horror movies and other Halloween related things for the month of October. I ended up being supremely busy and while I did watch a lot of horror movies, some good (Paranormal Activity and it's sequel), some bad (Stupid Teenagers Must Die), some classic (Godzilla v. Mothra), I didn't manage a full 31, and I didn't manage to write a single blog on them. While I could go back and reflect, I'm going to chalk it up as a good attempt and move on to the idea for November: Things I am grateful for.

Now, there are a lot of things that I'm grateful for that are rather obvious ones. I'm grateful I have food and shelter, clean air and water, clothing, my family and friends, my health, so I'm probably not going to write about those things. Yes, sometimes I take these things for grated, but I want to look for grace in other places, not ones that might be staring me in the face, even if I am taking them for granted. I still greatly appreciate these things, but I want to make this a little bit challenging for myself.

In honor of our recent election, I am grateful for choices. I'm grateful that I live in a country where my opinion matters for something. Now, you could get all pessimistic and say that I am one small speck of dust and one small vote so I don't count for much, but I firmly believe that every vote, every voice counts. After all, you become one of a group that votes in the same way you do, on each person and each proposition or ballot measure. And you become part of an age demographic. Some generations clearly know how to use the demographic. Retired folk vote en masse and so their issues are the ones that end up on the ballot. Which is why I always love it when I see young people choosing to vote, maybe one day, before we are retired, politicians will have to cater to us, and ballot measures will be things we care more about.

But election aside, I am grateful that I have the ability to choose my mood. Yes, there are some things that can interfere and chemical reactions in the brain certainly affect you in a negative way even when you want to be happy. But you can also choose to be happy on a daily basis. You can choose to not dwell on negative things. Bad things are going to happen to everyone and everyone has a choice in how they deal with them.

I was talking to someone the other day, about this. He was telling me how noble it was to make a choice to go on with life and not obsess about something bad that happens. I don't think it's particularly noble, but that's me. I don't think that choosing to live my life is a noble choice, it's a choice we all make. I think choosing to be happy despite the bad things, and choosing to not seal myself up in a tower are smart choices, but they aren't noble. I don't think it's noble unless I became sort of role model, and put that sort of thing in the public domain and let others draw strength from it. That might be noble, but I don't think I want to make that particular choice.

But I am grateful that I can make the choice to be happy today, and that choice will be honored by myself. People might say mean things today, or be grouchy and rude, but I don't have to let it affect me.

blogging in a theme

I feel like I need a way to keep my blogging self motivated. I'm not a good diarist, never have been, not thinking I will start being one now, but I intensely like the idea of keeping a blog and so far, I kinda have been sucking at it. No posts between May and October can lead oneself to believe that one may be sucking as a blogger. Plus I keep reading other people's blogs and thinking how interesting they are and how sad and lonely my own blog must be.

So I have a solution. Hopefully.


Themes for the month!

I love themes. Themes are great. I'm always bringing up themes for my life, most of which fall by the wayside shortly because I am a bit of a lazy procrastinating girl with a bit of attention deficit. I'm not ADHD, I have a good attention span, excepting things I set down for myself because sooner or later I get bored with all my ideas. Or something.


But this theme would automatically change ever 30/31 (or in the case of the red headed stepchild February 28, or 29 when it's a leap year), so that should cure my boredom of myself. Right? Of course right. It's not going to make me stop talking about the other boring things in my life, but it might inspire me to blog more which is the whole purpose.


And my themes are brilliant, at least until I get to March, but hell, if I make it that long, I should be able to come up with a March theme.

October: Halloween. I'm going to do 31 days of horror movies. I'm already behind, and I'm not going to be so bold to say I'm going to actually watch ONE a day, I'll probably have a few marathons because that's how I do, but 31 horror movies for 31 days of Halloween. I have some other fun Halloween ideas too, I LOVE Halloween. Halloween recipes, pumpkin everything, carving pumpkins, etc etc etc. I LOVE IT ALREADY. Hopefully I love it as much in the next few weeks.

November: Thanksgiving (there's even a theme to my theme!). 30 days of thankful stuff. I have less ideas for this, but it will come. And if all else fails, I'm just going to cook for a month. I'd watch some Thanksgiving movies, but do any of those exist?

December: 31 days of Christmas (and Chanukah)! There is so much Christmas stuff to do I could probably do a years worth, but here is a month. Movies for sure...Nutcracker YES! And everything else. Yummy christmas goodies.

January: 31 days of NEW THINGS. Because it's the start of a NEW year and what not. What 31 things I can do that are new, I haven't figured out yet, but that's months away, pish. It will be easy-peasy.

February: 28 days of redheaded stepchildren! Ha, no. I wish. I'm not a big fan of February, and not because it has Valentines Day which I will theme the month around. I love Valentines day, even when I'm more single than a dollar bill, I just don't like how it's all weird and has to stand out with it's 28/29 days. Can't it be normal. Why couldn't we take a day from January and give it to February so it would have more days? Why couldn't March? Or July? It's stupid. It makes no sense.

March: Yeah, I don't have ideas for this or for April, May, June, August, or September, and when I get back to October I can start all over again, because HOLIDAYS ROCK. Although I might start picking out weird random holidays. Like create your own holiday day. Although that would encompass everything and I'd get bored again. But like...whatever is National Book Month. I could talk about books. I don't think I could read a book a DAY, but that doesn't mean I couldn't read like 5 or 6 and then talk about a bunch of old favorites. THE POSSIBILITIES!

I'm kinda of excited now. Because today, I'm supposed to see two horror movies. And then I might watch the first version of one of them on Netflix afterwards. That would catch me up halfway to where I am supposed to be. I'm so on top of this. And I can't wait to blog about pumpkin carving. OH, that reminds me I have to make my Malificent and Dragon stencils for my pumpkins. And I should request Halloween off I guess, or the night off so I can feed the trick or treaters and let my pumpkins be useful and not just for my amusement. Although that is good as well.

And one of these days I want to make this blog all pretty and customized. High-ho, high-ho, it's playing with GIMP I go. After I finish my other ninety million projects. Is sleep optional yet?

where am I going?

I’ve been thinking about what I want to do with my life.

It’s hard to say really.

Are the dreams I’ve had since I was ten years old, the dream I still want to make my life out ot be. I think so. Maybe. I do want to perform. I want to do theatre and I would be happy doing movies or TV. The problem, with most anything I do nowadays, is the motivation. Everyone else seems so much more motivated than me, to put themselves out there, to get agents, to move to New York or LA, to even go to auditions.

I want to perform, but I don’t have the energy to go get it right now. Which may be a medical problem all of itself. For lack of a better term, I’ve been highly bipolar lately. I’ll have these fabulous highs, it feels like I could accomplish anything and everything, I’m on top of the world, but then a few hours later nothing is going right. I’m stressed, I don’t have enough money, my life is a wreck. All I want to do is crawl into my bed and cry.

In those highs, I get stuff done, and in the middle ground between the highs and the lows. I got all my clothes sorted the other day. I cleaned the living room. The last night I worked, the popcorn seeds that get lodged in the floor by the drains bothered me and I dug them out with the screwdriver. The floor is now cleaner than I’ve seen it in a while. But I can’t seem to line those highs up with times for doing anything towards making my goals of being an actress. I just want to be one already. Can’t we skip the hard part?

In the meanwhile, I keep thinking about the fact that I need to make money, and even if I get my behind in gear and start going to auditions I still need to be able to live. Where I work is fine, it’s not like I dislike the job, but I don’t love it either. I’d like to be doing something more interesting, more challenging.

Money was part of the reason I started a blog to begin with, funnily enough. That, and I’ve always had this goal of documenting my life. I’m terrible at keeping a diary though, whether written on paper or typed on the internet, or just typed on my computer.

But you hear about these blogs that people actually make money off of, or they get noticed writing or something somehow through their blog. I’d love that. Kind of. But then I’d have to go through the work of coming up with interesting things to write. And sometimes all I’ve got is…I went to work today and it was okay. Doesn’t exactly make for great blogging material. And I can’t seem to think of an idea that is novel enough to start a blog around.

Well, maybe I have one, but the motivational thing….still a problem.

Thinking about making money now, besides the blog that I can’t get started aspect, I’d love to write. In the past couple of years, my writing juices have just been so open and adament about being heard. Another reason why starting a blog was tempting to me. I like writing. But I don’t know how to get paid for writing.

I also like to travel, but I don’t know how to get paid to travel.
There are numerous things I like to do that I wish I could get paid for. Traveling. Sleeping. Eating. Basically, it would be nice if someone just paid for my life. If money just fell in my lap so I could support myself and I could do things I liked without worrying about the money. I’d still want to work. I don’t think I could sit at home all day or even travel, eat, and sleep all day without needing a job, even a small part time one. I like the idea of usefulness, and having a job makes me feel useful. Maybe I’d feel different if I was getting paid to write, but I don’t know.

Someone suggested I could be a travel writer, or a food critic, or something along the lines of combining writing with something I like to do. I could, but I don’t really want to. I think I object to the idea of me “being” any of those things, making a career out of it. I don’t really like the word career, and I already identify myself as an actress. I’m an actress, who likes to travel, write and eat. And sleep, but I don’t think ANYONE gets paid long term for sleeping. If you know someone who makes a living off of sleep studies…then go ahead and prove me wrong, but I will think you are lying out your ass.

Maybe that’s my problem. I identify too much with this long term dream of mine that I’m doing nothing about that I can’t wrap my head around doing something different. I’m not sure, but I’m up again at almost 7am, meaning, I haven’t slept yet, trying to figure out what I want out of life. As if I should know at twenty four. It’s not like I’m old, I have plenty of time still to dabble and try things. And then I start worrying if I’ll ever settle down and do something. Which I’m pretty sure is a stigma of society, not something I came up with on my own.

Because, it wouldn’t really be bad if I was an actress, (once I get my act together), who dabbles in traveling, writing, eating and sleeping. And whatever else I may decide to try. Do I really have to label myself as one thing? Can I just be an adventurer? I like that idea.