I'm a Bad Blogger

So yeah. I fail.

I was so excited about my "LOST" blog, and then I never got to keep up with it. :( Sadly, my access to the internet and television have been severely limited ever since I started my journey. If I had more time, perhaps it'd be easier. However, by the time I get to watch the new episode, I don't have time to go back and re-watch the old ones. Life has gotten in the way, yet again.

With Asteri's 11th birthday coming in now less than two months, I'd like to say I've been hard at work getting all that done and thus have a valid reason why I didn't keep up with the topics of this blog. The website revamp too has unfortunately suffered a similar fate, being pushed aside for life. The thing with that is, I have to meet the deadline for a variety of reasons so I need to start trudging along and facing life as well as these tasks at the same time. Otherwise I'm left without a release, and with regrets of not getting all my projects completed when I wanted them to be.

I have some exciting things planned, and granted a lot of the work has already been done but that is just the beginning of what needs to be accomplished. Here's hoping I find a way to fit it all in.

Being a Writer in the Real World Kinda Sucks

Earlier today a friend was telling me about a new project she is working on and after very excitedly talking about it she ended things with a statement that she assumed I thought she was crazy. My response? "You're not crazy. You're just a writer."

While it may be true that many artists, writers, musicians, comedians, etc. do have some serious issues, in reality... who doesn't? The thing is that anyone that does anything which is creative tends to be a little more passionate about things. Plus, with creativity comes the things that are created. To me, her descriptions weren't weird because I've been spending my spare time working on my "Once Upon a Mushroom" project. I've been writing about a gnome going on an adventure with a talking dog, and that really isn't that insane compared to other works out there. Furthermore, it isn't even subject matter which makes the creative types seem a little nutty, it is the insane amount of research, note-taking, and even doodling that occurs in conjunction with it.

So while she was telling me how vast the amount of notes she has for her project it just seemed normal to me since, well, I created a wiki for OUaM because I had too many notes myself to keep track of. Heck, part of why I have so much junk in my house to sort through is because I have over 18 years of journals, sketch books, note pages, and so forth of my creations laying around. Knowing me, there's probably even a notepad tucked away in the kitchen somewhere that has the description of the main villain from "Shadow in the Mirror" (and don't get me started on how many dot matrix printouts and type-written pages that probably still exist at my parents' house).

However, the biggest issue with being a writer is that you tend to also wish you could write out your real life (and since I also used to do a lot of work with video editing and directing, I tend to also think of things in screenplay form many times). I have sadly found that I can (generally) figure out major and minor plot details in most movies and television series I watch just based on the tried and true devices as well as the writer's (and director's) styles. Sure sometimes I'm happily proven wrong, but more often than not I find myself realizing I could see the story unfold just from a mere plot summary.

Valentine's Day is right around the corner right now, and with it comes so many movies and shows about hardships in love. In the end, it is almost always a happy ending. Guy/Girl does something stupid to push other guy/girl away, a bunch of stuff happens, either guy/girl meets another guy/girl who starts out as a foil but ends up their "true love," or the original couple get back together. There is almost always a misunderstanding, but in the end people tend to live happily ever after (unless there's a sequel, or badly written fanfiction). Real life, sadly, doesn't work that way, and even the movies where it shows relationships more realistically still have the whole condensed-timeline thing working for them.

While pretty much everyone I know thinks "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is one of the funniest movies they've seen, I ask them to imagine if it unfolded in real time. (By now, you should have seen it so I don't care about spoilers!) If we actually had to live through the time she was apart from the man she loved, because her own family didn't like the idea and wanted her to be with a "nice Greek man," would we still have laughed as hard? Being forced to not be with someone you love is not exactly a pleasant feeling. And yes, "Titanic" (again, you should have seen this already) didn't exactly have a happy ending but imagine how much worse that'd be living not only through the disaster, but going on all those years not being able to tell anyone the truth and knowing your (for all intents and purposes) "true love" died before you could spend your lives together. Every day, people deal with relationship roadblocks, however big or small, that they can't get over right away. I know people who were together over thirty years ago, remarried and had kids over the years, and then found their way back to each other recently. Sounds like good fodder for a story, right? Well, of course, but no one is going to want to wait thirty years for that pay-off in a movie (even soap operas don't spend much time on things anymore).

Right now, I'm going through one of the most adult things I've ever had to deal with in my entire life. Something I can't run away from, even though it'd be so easy to do it. How it makes it "adult" is the fact that I'm owning up to all the facts and dealing with it instead of being a coward. My entire life is changing, some for the better and maybe some for the worse, but the rest is still up in the air. There are certain things which are known to be true, and other things which are variables that could destroy that. Since no one can predict the future, no one knows how to proceed because at this point any answer could be the wrong one. Hindsight is 20/20, right? That is part of the problem: We can look back and figure out where things went wrong and how they could have been fixed, but since we're in the now that is impossible. All that can be done is to move forward and see what happens. Day by day, little by little, until the answer reveals itself. Now, if my life were a movie, I'd already know the ending. Of course, depending on the genre there would be several possibilities, but I'd have it figured out already. I'd know the outcome based on everything that has been given so far. Sadly, real life isn't some cliche (well, not usually). Plus, if you just edited out the time it takes between decisions and occurrences, these moments in life would still be a movie you could figure out.

Maybe I'm just rambling now, but to me at least it all makes sense. Trust me, there is not a moment that goes by in my life that I don't have set to music somewhere in the back of my head, with narration going and an idea of where I'd possibly take things if it were actually a story I was working on. That is just how I roll.

I'm a writer, and it does make me crazy sometimes. Then again, you kind of have to be.

"Once Upon a Mushroom"

I decided to jump right in and create a Facebook fan-page for my new project: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Once-Upon-a-Mushroom/248607449725

I hope to get back to you all with some better updates. Right now, "Real Life" is cray hectic. I'm hoping this helps, though.

This Might Not Be Coherent (Thank You, H1N1 :-P)

If I ever have children, they will one day no doubt ask me what life was like when I was "young." They will have read in their history books of all the "craziness" that transpired in my lifetime, and just looking back right now I already realize I'll have some good fodder for stories. In fact, I can ask myself the very same questions I have posed to my parents over the years and already come up with a few answers.

Why, I remember when my mother told me about how she had to iron her hair because it was so curly and they didn't really have actual hair flat irons. She was in high school in the 70s, and the whole "big hair thing" didn't come into play until she attended cosmetology school (well, back then I guess it was just "beauty school"). So what is the strangest thing I've done to my hair to stay in fashion? I can tell you the things I did to it that were most definitely out of fashion, like when I managed to accidentally crimp my hair before a big middle school dance with these weird hair doodads I bought for myself at Caldors (or was it Bradlees?). While I am most definitely a child of the 80s that had many a crimped-do, this occurred in probably about 1992 or 1993 so you can imagine my horror. I remember I hid the pictures from my mother for years, because I was too embarrassed to show her (even though she obviously saw me when I left the house). However, I suppose the only culturally significant 'do I've had is the "Rachel," made famous by Jennifer Aniston when she played said character on "Friends." I got it right before news broke that it was the "it" hairdo, and immediately felt funny for having it. In fact, I've worn my hair in a lot of styles based on media characters, even if they were cartoon characters (my favorite go-to has always been the "Quistis," especially with my glasses), but that is probably best left for a post by itself (with lots of pictures to match).

Let's see, what else... Oh, there is of course the question of "Where were you when..." followed by a significant moment in history. For my mom, that was "Where were you when JFK was assassinated?" Meanwhile my father, who moved from the Mediterranean to Canada to the US, has stories about where he was when the Nazis attacked his village ("We were all laughing at them at the edge of the cliff. They couldn't reach us from where they were shooting from!") and, before that, when the Italian soldiers invaded ("Your grandmother attacked them with a frying pan, she wasn't about to give them food when she had a family to raise!") Again, whole other post. When I was growing up though, I used to think my generation was severely lacking in a "generation defining occurrence." The biggest thing that I can actually remember from when I was a kid was the Challenger disaster. Then it was Desert Storm. But then, it was 9/11.

What has been made clear is that probably every generation, at first, starts to think the one before it was crazier, or harder, or easier, or amazing, or horrifying. Then something happens and you can't wait for it to end, for all the talk to stop, for all the questions to cease. From the minor little dips into pop culture history to the realities of war, each generation gets those "defining moments" in some way or the other, and is thus labeled as such for the rest of history (until something more exciting happens). Then, you can look back and laugh at it when it doesn't hurt anymore.

This is why I think this point in my life shall be "hilarious" someday. It might take quite a while, but we'll see. When my theoretical kids ask me about the economic crisis, I can tell them I lived it. Our very own depression, oh great. Then there's the health insurance issues, other medical issues, the current and former political state, the fact that my boyfriend and I both managed to get H1N1 (aka "swine flu") and are now both basically quarantined for a week, the hardships of being in a state with some of the highest gas prices in the continental US... It should be funny someday that it all happened to us at once, right? ... Right?

At Least I Am Certain About Not Living In Rhode Island

I miss Boston.

I also miss Maine.

And I love it here.

...

I miss being able to walk ten minutes in order to get to a million different things.

I miss being able to drive an hour before you see a city.

I love being so close to Long Island sound I can smell the sea water in the air when it rains.

I miss my friends.

I miss my family.

I love being close to my family here, and reconnecting with friends I haven't seen in years.

Even though I had to work weekends and sometimes be up at 6am on a Saturday so I could work for three hours at a meeting, then come back hours later to do a full shift... I miss my job. I especially miss the people there.

I miss being able to support myself through art, internet work, and writing.

I love the idea of being able to go back to school.

I hated the commute to work.

I hated the commute to the grocery store.

I love the commute to pretty much anything I need to get to.

I miss spending Thursday nights at the Pig, walking down to Qdoba after a stressful day, taking the T down to Newbury Street and exploring the shops there, sitting out in the common, or the fens, and having a relaxing afternoon.

I miss hiking through West Paris, driving to York Beach, driving up the coast toward Bath and beyond, and heading into Portland with my cousin for a girl's day.

I love seeing my parents, and my brother, and going to Mohegan Sun for dinner and a show, walking through the parks and the hiking trails, and driving up to Lake Zoar, or Candlewood, just to look at the leaves or the water or whatever.

When I was in Boston, I wanted to move back to Maine or back here as much as I loved it there.

When I was in Maine, I wanted to move back here or, more likely, move to Boston.

When I'm here, I want to move back to Maine and back to Boston.

I want to be everywhere.

But I can't.

... Is it possible to be homesick for three places at once?

Yet what am I homesick for?

Most of my Boston friends have scattered, so it won't be the same.

My grandmother passed away and my cousin's marriage fell apart, so Maine will not be the same.

And as much as I try to reconnect with people, we have all been apart for so long and are so different now, it will never be the same.

We almost moved to NH or VT. What would that have done? Would I still be in this same situation?

I can't find a steady job here, but I want to go back to school. If I go back to Boston, I can find a job but going to school is going to be hard to swing. If I go back to Maine, well, both are going to be hard. VT has the best employment rates right now, who knows about New Hampshire.

Will I ever be completely happy where I am? Do I just need to pick up and finally use my EU passport for something other than bragging rights? Should I go work in Greece and live there? Should I finally do JET and go to Japan? So many people to let down, so much stuff to do, so much money to pay, so much of everything.

If someone can help me find an answer, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Lemons and Lemonade: Life as a Cliche

They say that "when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade." First off, really, who says these things? Maybe I've been guilty of it a few times, but in all actuality it is rare for someone to make this statement to someone else unless they are trying to be cliche. However, it is time for me to actually say it about myself, and my life. I need to desperately make some lemonade, and hey I'll make it a little nicer and make it pink.

I was thrown a curveball over my visit home. I made the journey so we could get some perspective on things going on in our lives right now, but an unexpected twist was added. I won't talk about it in depth now, but it is kind of game changing - and very scary.

In the meantime, I'm trying to just deal and to keep looking forward instead of being stalled in the present under the weight of these massive lemons that have been dropped upon me. Hey, maybe the Tree of Life is a lemon tree or something. Whatever, I've gone on a random tangent now, so I better stop before it continues indefinitely.

I need a new place to live, and possibly a new job. It all depends on where we end up. I'm looking toward it all as an adventure, and thankfully I think the boy is doing the same. He, like me, is just kind of going with it. The good news is we're not crumbling, but rather are pulling together. I guess I'll put him in charge of stirring, or perhaps the addition of sugar.

To those of you who know what is going on, thank you for all your support. I'm hoping it all works out fine.