the real state of the union

In honor of the I-bought-and-lied-my-way-into-the-whitehouse-president's speech tonight, here are some bushisms (I still can't believe this fucking idiot is running the country...)


"I'm occasionally reading, I want you to know, in the second term." --Washington, D.C., March 16, 2005 [just like he kept reading a children's book for 7 minutes after he heard about the plane hitting the towers]


"I'm going to spend a lot of time on Social Security. I enjoy it. I enjoy taking on the issue. I guess, it's the mother in me." --Washington D.C., April 14, 2005 [yeah, the "motherfucker" in him]



"I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?" --in a note to to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a U.N. Security Council meeting, September 14, 2005 (View photo) [I remember seeing a pic of this note online last fall, it made my day]



"Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling." Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004 [maybe he should take another spin through 3rd grade grammar....]


"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 (Watch video)



"This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating."as quoted by the New York Daily News, April 23, 2002



"My administration has been calling upon all the leaders in the in the Middle East to do everything they can to stop the violence, to tell the different parties involved that peace will never happen."—Crawford, Texas, Aug, 13, 2001



"The good news is - and it's hard for some to see it now - that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house - he's lost his entire house - there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."
— (The White House, "President Arrives in Alabama, Briefed on Hurricane Katrina," Sept. 2, 2005.)
[Lott's house getting knocked down is the one good thing that came out of that tragedy]



"I don't think anybody anticipated the breech of the levees."
Bush, on "Good Morning America", six days after repeated warnings from experts about the scope of damage expected from Katrina, Sept. 1, 2005.



"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him... We haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."
—Bush, answering a question about Osama bin Laden at a March 13, 2002 news conference.



"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations."
—Bush, during the final presidential debate, attempting to refute Kerry’s claim that the president boasted he was not concerned about Osama bin Laden.



He's up there right now peddling the same bullshit he's been throwing for the past 5 years. Alternating the words "freedom" and "terror", mixed in with his not so secular vocabulary (maybe they taught grammar and the separation of church and state while he was off on one of his coked up drinking binges before he was born again).

And now he's talking about "activist courts trying to re-define marriage". Well, FUCK YOU pal. It's a civil rights issue motherfucker, not some biblical bullshit. You are de-valuing the queer citizens of this country and denying them the rights that everyone else has. It's the equivilant of the Jim Crow laws during the civil rights era. Separeate is not equal. And it's also unconstitutional. And one of the many breaches that you deserve to be impeached for, if only the fucking mindless masses of this country could somehow manage to unbrainwash and re-educate themselves. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is death, both figuratively and literally.

Watching this idiot is making me want to throw my TV out the fucking window right now. No one, not even my ex-girlfriend, pisses me off the way this schmuck does. To calm myself down, I just keep repeating this date to myself: 01.20.09. It's the assholes last day in office.


one of my new favorite web sites:

http://www.bushslastday.com/

pot, work, rain and lesbians

To borrow a quote from Annie, who borrowed it from the Beatles "I get high with a little help from my friends". And I got stoned out of my mind Saturday night with a very good friend. He's the one who introduced me to the whole wide wonderful world of pot early on in our freshman year of college and taught me how to hit off a bong and blow shotties; if that's not a good friend, I don't know what is. To this day, every time I'm high, I think about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. See, me and Matt had a weekly ritual of smoking up and watching the show together, a tradition we were very protective over considering all the shit we got for watching it (which I will still defend, bring it on - and Laurs don't even try after all the nights you'd leave our room and come chill at Matty's w/me pretending you 'just came down to hang out and didn't know Buffy was on, but while you're here you might as well watch...") My creative thinking session w/Matt along w/a chat with my with my platonic life partner (and art director) earlier in the evening re-infused me with ideas for my script. Just what I needed (well, that and a vacation). That along with an impromptu visit from my childhood friend that afternoon (she's been my best friend since I was 12, that's half our lives now...melis, all i can say is "peaches"), made Saturday an all around kick ass day.

Today I wandered around in the rain, shopping and running errands and then headed off to work. Even though it's not the first place I'd choose to be on a Sunday evening, I do really enjoy having the place to myself. I wish it was that chill during the week...At the end of my session tonight, I decided I really need to keep track of all the cracked-out things that come out of Naomi Judd's mouth, next time I'm keeping a notebook with me. For example: As she was introducing a semi-regular on the show, who happens to be a female Korean rabbi "And [insert name here] you're a rabbi! But you were raised all Korean and Buddhist! Now that is weird!" The poor woman looked taken aback for a minute and then regained herself enough to chuckle along with our probably-lithium-infused host. Luckily the female pastor on her right made some comment about how she was weird too in an attempt to salvage the moment, all of which will probably end up cut out of the version to air. Sometimes I look at my life from afar and wonder what parallel universe I've stumbled into....

On the cab ride home I started thinking about all of the times I took cabs in the other direction; usually drunk around 3am. I used to live in the neighborhood I now work in, but until my job interview 9 months ago I hadn't been back down there since I left for Italy and then came back and got my own place 3 years ago. We drove up through Soho, passed some shop/gallery/something called Moss. And I wondered if the massive amount of diamonds hanging in the window were meant to be symbolic of all the rock Kate Moss has been stuffing up her nose lately...

Back home just in time for L word. The last two episodes have actually impressed me. Their writing has improved since last season, hell since the first episode of this season. It seems when they stop having so much sex they actually have interesting conversations on interesting topics and even manage a little character development. They could hook up just a little more tho....Especially Carmen and Shane...oh and Bette and well, someone. Speaking of the lack of Bette and Tina's love life, I'm really upset that they're pulling this "Queer as Folk" shit with Tina now. Not cool. Next week's story with Alice and the (vampire? did they really say that?) looks promising though as far as sex is concerned.

I so need more gay people in my life. I love my gay best friend, but I need some girls. I need to find New York's L word scene....


You should download these songs:

"Fruitloop Daydream" by Linda Perry

"Breathe Me" by Sia (it's depressing but gorgeous, the opening notes remind me of Counting Crows "Colorblind").

trying to remember

On my way back from the deli a little while ago, I did something I almost never do in the city anymore: I looked up. When my parents used to take me into the city for day trips as a kid, I couldn't look up enough. Even in the car, I'd press myself up against the window, straining my neck to see as far up as I could. Now, I sometimes forget that sense of magic and fascination that I felt about this city as a child. Running back and forth, usually lost in my own world or short on time or both, I forget the magic that made me know at the age of 10 that this was where I wanted to be, this was where I belonged. I don't think my parents realized how serious I was about this until it was time to apply for college. With the pull of the city and one of the top film schools in the country I knew that NYU was the college for me. The only college for me. The more brochures and campuses I looked at only solidified my feelings. None of them could compare. I didn't want a quad, or frat houses, or football games; I wanted my city. I was so sure of my decision that I only applied to one school. Just NYU, early decision. My parents were freaked out, and I had a pile of other applications on standby just in case. Waiting to hear back once my application was sent was one of the most nervewracking experiences. I received my acceptance letter a day before Christmas. It came in the big envelope, the good one. The mail came while I was still asleep, and my parents waited all of 10 minutes before they couldn't take it anymore and woke me up to open it. I still remember what I felt, sitting alone on my bed, holding that envelope, holding my dreams and my future, in my hands. That was one of the best days in my life. It was my first big dream that came true.

After living here for 5 and a half years, that magic, along with a ton of new dreams, are all still in my heart, I just get so wrapped up in the day to day bullshit sometimes that it takes something out of the ordinary to make me remember. Well, tonight, I looked up. It was nice outside, no jacket nice (at least for the half a block to the deli) and as I turned the corner on my way home, I looked up, half a stretch, half a breath, half a release, I stretched my neck and shoulders back and felt free for a moment. And in that moment, I saw something I almost never see. I saw a star in the city sky. Three of them actually. And that totally made my night. My whole day actually. It made me remember the magic. An great end to an otherwise long day.



"Cherish your vision and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements."
-Napoleon Hill

lesbian fix for the week

Spent my Sunday night with a bottle of wine and about 8 hot lesbians in my living room....what more could I ask for? Well, ok....the lesbians were all on my television, which is in my living room....so yeah, I guess there are a few more things I could ask for....

Who Are You?

Serious:

http://www.kisa.ca/personality/


Fun:

http://www.geocities.com/mylezisme/purity.htm


This is who I am:

http://www.personalitypage.com/INFJ.html

My purity test results are by request only (and require your score in return)...I will say I didn't realize how much I've "accomplished" this year until I took it though....damn....(note: those score lowering experiences were all "accomplished" in a monogamous and at the time, loving, relationship...so don't go getting the wrong idea there)

Sugar, we're going down swinging

I think someone must have forgotten to mail me the full "ex-girlfriend handbook". I got the parts about feeling hurt, disappointed, angry and betrayed, but I must have missed the memo on acting like a psychotic bitch. My ex could write her own encyclopedia on the topic, and it seems she planned to start it by bombarding my cell phone with a variety of insulting button-pushing text messages in the middle of the night. I thought that a full month later she'd be done with the "I hate you and I want to let you know how much I hate you and hurt you even more if possible in the process", I thought by now she'd have worked that out of her system...silly me. I wonder if the girls who drag out the psychotic bitch phase realize that it only solidifies the other persons resolve and reminds them of why the relationship ended in the first place...silly her.

She must have missed the big memo, the most important one, the one about trying to move on. That one, I got. And when it first arrived, sure I ignored it, I wasn't ready to read it, because reading it meant I was letting go and I wasn't ready to start letting go. So it sat, unopened on my kitchen table for weeks, until I finally picked it up and flipped through it. It had some good things to say. It even acknowledged the fact that letting go is hard, and it has to be done at your own pace, but little by little, you do move on, and moving on is the only way to find peace and balance. I rather walk around with intermingled peace and sadness in my heart than hate, especially towards the first person I ever really loved. I hope she gets her copy soon.


Random confession: I secretly like bad pop music. I download it and listen to it on my ipod with guilty pleasure glee. The soundtrack of my life for this weekend comes from one of the current queens of pop music, and if you've turned on a radio at all in the past 6 months, you'll know where this comes from.


"But since you been gone
I can breathe for the first time
I'm so movin' on, yeah yeah
Thanks to you, now I get what I want
Since you been gone"

Solace

"art is why i get up in the morning
but my definition ends there
and it doesn't seem fair
that i'm living for something i can't even define
there you are right there
in the meantime

i don't want to play for you anymore
show me what you can do
tell me what are you here for
i want my old friends
i want my old face
i want my old mind
fuck this time and place"


looking foward to this weekend. happy hour here i come...

Zen And The Art Of Jury Duty

The only meditation-like experience I've had was in an old acting class. At the start of each class, we'd do a bunch of silly warm up exercises- improve tag, circle story telling - to get our minds working and our excess energy out. Then our teacher would have us all lay in a circle on the dusty wood floor. In a deep soothing voice, he'd tell us to close our eyes, and feel the floor against our bodies and our bodies against the floor. He'd tell us to let the weight of our bodies, our feet, legs, arms, shoulders, backs, fingers, necks, toes, sink into the floor. As he was speaking, little by little, I became aware of every inch of my skin and not aware of it at the same time. I felt my weight melt into the floor and I felt the floor against the backs of my legs, my palms, my back, and the heaviness of being melted away, little by little as I became more aware and not aware. He'd then talk us through what I now refer to as "ball of light". I still use "ball of light" when I have trouble sleeping (this week I must be fucking glowing). He'd tell us to imagine a ball of light in the center of our bodies, to imagine what it felt like and try to actually feel it. This magical ball of light was warm and soft and released tension and stress and brought awareness to every cell it touched. He'd tell us to move and spread the light around our bodies, from out toes to our ankles, to our knees, backs, lungs, shoulders, necks, arms, wrists, palms, fingertips. And he'd tell us to release the light from our fingertips, back into the floor. We'd all get up, more focused, more centered, more relaxed, more in touch with every cell in our bodies and our minds. Ready to feel and experience, to embrace a new character, mindset, emotion, situation with every open cell.

What does any of this have to do with jury duty?

A lot more than you'd think.

If you're not actually in the middle of being questioned as a potential juror for a case, there's not much to do at jury duty. You sit around with a hundred or so strangers in a big room. There's only so much reading, napping and waiting around for one of the crappy connected-to-the-internet-via-phone-line laptops to 1) work 2) become available. All of a sudden, I was left alone with my mind with more time for that than I've had in a very long time. And since I didn't bring my laptop, it wasn't time to work, or to even think about work - ok I did spend some time outlining plot points and mentally designing my dvd in between pages of Angels in America - but after a while, I just put my ipod on and sat. This is something I normally reserve for the subway. My ipod think time usually only lasts about 15min (23min if you count walking time, which I don't, because trying to get anywhere in rush hour in this city can often turn into an olympic event) each way. Now, I had hours laid out before me to do nothing but sit, think, listen, and daydream. This forced hiatus from my daily life ended up being more of a mental vacation than a pain in the ass.

Sure I spent some time almost getting on a criminal trial. I was the last person called for the second round of juror questioning on the second morning, and by that point I was actually hoping to get a spot in the box. I have far too much curiosity to hear the outline of what looked to be a pretty good case just to get dismissed in the final round. I think it was the defense lawyer, he didn't seem too keen on the fact that I have two retired and one active cop in my family. If he only knew how far to the left of my family I fall, not to mention my powers of logical persuasion (I never really got in trouble in high school because I could always out-argue my parents, my dad always wanted me to go to law school...) he'd regret his decision. I could have possibly won that case for him. I also really wanted to see the drug dealer that was allegedly burglarized and shot at by the defendant.

Once I was dismissed, it was back downstairs to my one hundred or so new friends and my last few hours of zen filled mental vacation.



Want to find your own zen? Check this out:

http://www.do-not-zzz.com/

(it's amusing)

sleep continues to elude me

Once again, I should be sleeping. Too much to do and not enough time to do it all in. You'd think I'd be use to it by now. Actually, I am. But right now I actually want to put the work away, stop thinking about the best design for my up and coming web site and new dvd, stop thinking about character motovation and plot points, stop thinking about the right song for that montage, the right cut for that beat...and just finally sleep and it's just not happening. This is when it's good to have friends on the other side of the country where it's only 9:30 and I don't have to feel guilty about keeping someone on this coast up on the phone with me and therby making both of our work days hell tomorrow.


Coming up next: Zen And The Art of Jury Duty

Sand In My Teeth

I spent months floating around in the ocean confused and conflicted, sometimes letting the current take me, sometimes trying to swim my way halfheartedly through choppy waters to the shore. I finally realized that despite it's sweet allure, I had no choice but to make my way back to land and leave the ocean behind me. It's waters were too turbulent and too many times I'd found myself trapped under the waves, lungs full of water, desperately pushing towards the surface for air. So I struggled against the current, even as I craved it's pull, needed it, wanted it, knew I'd feel lost, shaky, disoriented on my feet, like the earth was still swaying under me once I hit land. I struggled against the current and swam toward the shore, push and pull. The waves propelling me toward my destination one minute and then sweeping me back into the sea's embrace the next. I struggled against the current, inside and out. I still swam with half a heart, even less of a heart than my first feeble attempt to shore months before, but somehow with more determination. Everytime I felt the saltwater scratch my lungs, it made up for my lack of heart. The salt that once held me happy and buoyant in the water was now tearing up my insides, swelling through my pores. And my sense of self preservation kicked in, overriding what little heart I had left, telling it that it would meet it's missing pieces washed up on the shore, and I'd sit down and try to piece it back together the best that I could. I struggled against the current, my lungs shouting "swim", my half heart whispering "take me".

I struggled against the current, and finally hit the shore; bruised from the rocks, dizzy, disoriented, choking on lungfulls of water and sand, gulping the air, feeling around for the missing pieces in the sand. My eyes facing forward, my half heart facing back, I felt for the missing pieces lost in the sand. The solid earth less solid than when I left it. Full of ocean wet water, sucking at me with every step, rocking under my feet, I looked for the missing pieces with my eyes facing forward and my half heart facing back.

The not so solid earth rocked under my feet and my body missed the soft sway of the sea. I dug through wet fistfulls of sand, full of the ocean that my eyes determinedly avoided and my half heart refused to lose sight of. I pushed through the ocean soaked sand, finding the first pieces. Fumbling and clumsy, trying to remember how they fit. And as I pushed and fumbled the slippery pieces, starting to re-learn their delicate grooves, the tide snuck up on me. The damp earth was becoming the ocean floor and a too familiar feeling of mixed pleasure and panic crept over me. My still fragmented heart whispering "take me", my lungs readied themselves for the sumbersion as the first wave crashed and pulled. My fragmented heart whispered but my eyes stayed forward and my hands held on, searching for a grip in the slippery wet sand. The ocean pushed and pulled, but my lungs, still burning from old salt filled wounds, would be damned if they let themselves get sucked back under. My heart whispered, but my lungs fought and my hands held on through the pounding waves, crashing onto the shore with angry sadness. My lungs fought and the waves pulled but my arms pulled back. Back up to the shore. Back to the missing pieces, pushed further away by the waves, but now out of reach from the tide. My heart still whispers, but my hands dig through the sand, fumbling and finding and fitting back together slippery ocean wet pieces.

too awake for my own good

Oh my god, why can I not sleep? A few hours ago I was exhausted, waiting for the Globes to end so I could get to bed. A few conversations with a few friends later, I finally get to bed, and now I can't sleep. It's too hot, it's too cold, too soft, too hard. And none of this is actually the problem. My head is the problem. I can't get my mind to stop spinning. I guess I can't blame it, it's been a bit (ok, a lot) overloaded lately. The more you try to avoid thinking about something, the more it haunts you at night. That and all the work I've taken on right now is getting overwhelming. In reality, I know that none of it isn't anything I can't handle. Work wise, I'm used to juggling, I thrive on it. I think I just surprised myself this time by dropping some of the balls a few months back and now I'm trying to pick them back up with out losing the others in the process.

I wish I had anticipated this earlier. Now it's too late for wine, pot, or that great "simply sleep" that Tylonol makes now...any of those things will leave me way too groggy to wake up with the time span I'm working with here. I hope you don't have to be too attentive at jury duty...maybe I can claim to have narcolepsy and just get the hell out of there.

My Deli Man Is Going to Egypt

I have the best deli man in all of Manhattan, possibly in all the world. I've lived in this apartment for 3 years now and when we first moved in Al and I befriended our deli man pretty early on. We grew to consider him our "Uncle Rafi". He is by far the most poplular guy in the neighborhood and every customer greets him like an old friend. I know more about him and his life and he about mine than some of my real family members. He's our blocks equivlent of the neighborhood bartender. He knows if I'm having a bad night and freely offers words of advice and comfort, he proudly shares the pictures of his neice/godaughters wedding, and tells stories of smoking the houka (how do you spell that?) with his friends in Brooklyn on his one day off a week. When there was a homeless man sleeping on my stoop and blocking the door Al and I didn't want to get the guy in trouble by finding a cop, it was cold and raining, but we were a little leary about trying to climb over him. So we went to Rafi and he sent the sandwhich kid to escort us home and persuade the guy to move over enough to let us in. When I was getting hit on by a very drunk and very sketchy 50 yr old man while trying to buy my cigarettes one night Rafi had his business partner walk me to the corner and wait until I was safely in my building after he saw the drunk man hanging around outside waiting for me. In short, he's the best. And now he's off to Egypt for 2 months. Every two years, he goes back home to see his family there and relax before returning to his 6 nights a week work schedule. I'll miss him, but his replacement this time seems more promising than the last one. He too is friendly and will at least chat about the weather. I'll miss Rafi though b/c for me, he brings a sense of community to a city that can be so huge and impersonal. He's like a little piece of old New York, when neighborhoods really were communities.

random2

Apparently I'm in a blogging frenzy tonight. After a great day with my family, I'm spending tonight much like last night (working) but this time with a bottle of wine. I don't know if it's the wine, or the z100 live from Webster Hall I've got going in the background, but I kind of feel like going out. This is monumental. Not b/c I never go out. I do, and I used to, a lot (that's how I blew my savings in college, in retrospect, it's not the best idea to let an 18yr old loose in this city for their first real taste of freedom...it gets expensive...but it was all worth it.) This is monumental because it's the first time I've been in this good a mood and felt like going out since "the break up". This is either a very good sign, or (as my therapist suggested last week) I'm not letting myself feel my sadness. This mood feels pretty organic tho, not forced, so I'm going with the "good sign" option.

I'm also getting a bit nostalgic. Especially for Italy and my Florence girls right now. I've been missing it like crazy lately, maybe just b/c I need a vacation, but tonight they're playing songs that we danced to there (at our infamous - at least among our circle - drunken dinner dance parties at our adorable apartment.) and at Dulce and what ever the name of that other place was...I also just spoke with the girl I consider to be my "platonic life partner". She was my roommate in Florence, and after just the first few weeks there we cemented a life long friendship. She was my roommate for the next two years and then she graduated from college and went back to California and I miss her like crazy. She's like the sister I never had (I have a theory that only children are constantly looking for someone to fill that role in their lives, do you concur Annie?). I spoke with her tonight, but not nearly long enough b/c she has a boy over (rock it Al!) and that's all good, but I still miss her. And Al, when you get around to reading this after your debaucherous weekend, I'm officially inviting you to do a guest post on your theory of time...that whole thing is starting to make more sense to me now.

Back to work now...drunk(ish) posting can be dangerous....

All That Jazz

As I sat in a darkened theater this afternoon, watching 72 yr old Chita Rivera strut her stuff on stage in a reprise of her career, I knew exactly what I wanted to write when I got home. But somewhere during dinner with my boisterous family, the magic of the theater slipped away and now the words are lost. I'm listening to the Chicago soundtrack trying to re-find them. The tickets were a Christmas present for my gram and I honestly wasn't expecting to enjoy the show as much as I did. But there's something about a 72 yr old Broadway legend with pins in her knees performing the hits of her career that's inspiring. That woman is probably in better shape than I am at 23. Just being in the presence of someone who's worked with creative forces like Sondheim, Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse is amazing. Sitting in that theater today, I remembered watching movies like "Bye Bye Birdie" and "West Side Story" with my mom when I was younger, and to be able to see the woman who originated those roles on the stage gave me the chills.

I love the theater, and I'm lucky enough to have seen a lot of it. My shortlist of favorites: Night Mother, Proof, Long Days Journey Into Night, 3 Tall Women, Rent, Chicago...ok I don't know if I can actually do just a short list so I'll just stop now. My mom introduced me to the magic of musicals and theater at a young age and it stuck. There is still no feeling in the world like the moment when the house lights go down, just before the footlights come up and you can feel the tingling anticipation in the air.

I ended up in film because of the theater. When I was younger, I took acting classes, went to performance camp, and did a little community theater, but I wasn't really cut out to be on the stage or in front of the camera. I loved the process behind it all though. I loved the process of building a character mentally and physically, of the great crazy rush that happens behind the scenes, the excitement of the last dress rehearsal before opening night....And while I still worked backstage during my high schools plays, (eventually working my way up to the title of "Goddess of the Props" which mostly involved raiding my friends attic, making sure everything was where it needed to be and giving my freshman apprentice a ride home after rehearsal) I had already decided that I was headed to film school, not more acting classes.

But the theater will always be my secret passion. When I was 14 I even spent the summer ushering for free (with the occasional tip) at the theater where I took my acting classes just to be around it as much as possible. When everyone was seated, I stood in the back, waiting for the lights to go down to get my fix of that incredible feeling. The summers, nights and weekends I spent at that playhouse where invaluable. It's where I really began to know, understand, and accept myself better as myself and not just as what other people perceived of me. In school I was the introspective, quiet (unless you were in my circle of friends) smart kid. At that playhouse, I could be whoever I wanted to be. And in trying on all those different personalities, I began to discover more of my own.

random

"Making someone gay is exhausting...I don't know how my mother did it"
-Jack on "Will and Grace" (him and Will are doing some Queer Eye type thing)


That quote has nothing to do with what I intend to write about, but it just made me laugh out loud so I wanted to share. Jack and Karen should get their own show. They get all the best lines as it is.


So, as you can tell, I'm spending my Friday night with the TV on in the background while I edit a clients wedding video. (check out me and Rhi's company link on the right, we do wedding videos, fashion shows, general event videography...the site just has wedding stuff for now, I'm still in the middle of cutting our new and improved demo reel). It can be a little depressing to cut someone else's wedding right after your own cataclismic break up. That's why I've been putting off finishing this project for weeks, but sometime soon this couple is going to expect the "most important moment of their lives" to show up on a shiny new (and personalized) dvd in their mailbox. I guess it's good to know that someone out there could make it work, and in some ways it's an honor to be a part of that. 40 years from now when this couple wants to share the experience of their wedding day with their grandchildren, they'll play our dvd for them. Sundance it's not, but it'll do for now....and it pays good. "When money talks, I hate to listen, but lately it's been screaming in my ear" -Ben Folds, "Emaline"

So for now I'll let other peoples happiess bankroll my future.

Hold

On the brink of an exciting but scary change, a good friend of mine wrote this in her blog (check out It's All A Test, link on the right, for the whole post):

"Dreaming leads to hope and hope, so much of the time, leads to disappointment. I am tired of being disappointed.
Giving up would be easier too, because any time there actually seems to be a light at the end of my dream tunnel, I get scared.

Really I am just scared to change. And following that little light in the tunnel would definitely mean change. And I am scared of the dark too. It'’s a long, dark tunnel toward that light. I feel like a little kid armed with only a flashlight, a dream and some intense lygophobia (a fear of dark places). "

This was my comment in response:

"just run through the darkness, toward the light, as fast as you can and you'll get there. as long as you can still see the light, the darkness will never be completely dark. so just hold onto the light and keep going. i know i'm running as fast as i can right now too. and that's all we can do."

This hits home for me on a variety of levels. For one thing, Rhiannon and I have some of the same dreams. In some ways, we are running toward the same light, and since we're business partners and friends, sometimes we're running together and I can't speak for her, but I know for me, that makes it a little less scary. I've been telling her for the past few weeks that this year will be our year and on some level I really do believe it. Career wise I've never felt so close and so far from my goals as I do right now. I finally know how to get where I want to be this time next year, and how to go from there to the next step for the next year and so on, but it's going to require a lot of work and a lot of patience, something I've been told I lack when it comes to my career. Well, I'm working on that and the past 6 months have definitely been a lesson in patience above all.

Change can be hard and change can be scary, but change is the only constant. It can be overwhelming to let go of what's comfortable and leap into the unknown with nothing to catch you but the hope of something better on the other side. Hope requires faith. Faith in other people and faith in yourself. Faith that the people you lean on won't let you down, faith that you're ready for what you're jumping into, and faith that you can endure what ever comes your way. Making a change often requires making a decision and decisions can be complicated. Often there isn't a clear cut difference between good and bad, right and wrong, so often in deciding something, you have to commit to making the decision and to making it work. And it's the making it work part that can be the hardest, the scariest, the running blindly down a dark tunnel trying to get to the light. But having faith in yourself and in the dream at the end of the tunnel will get you there.

One of the most valuableuble things I remember from college is when a professor of mine told us that half of making it in this industry is just holding on longer than everyone else. While all the pressure and competition convinces others around you to give up, those with a true passion for the industry and for their craft just have to ride it out, hold on, and they'll be the ones left standing at the end, they'll make it to the end of the tunnel with out shifting course. I know that there is nothing else out there for me but this, no other career would make me happy, would fuel and inspire me, this is truly where my passion lies. So holding on is my only choice. I'm not the only one with this "hold on" theory. I just finished "A Million Little Pieces" (I don't care if he embellished a bit or not, it's an amazing story) and holding on is how he kicked over a decade of substance abuse. That's pretty damn impressive. If anyone is proof that believing in, and staying true to yourself pays off, it's him. This theory applies for any rough time you may be going through; heartache, the frustration of your goals seemingly out of reach, loss, withdrawal from people or things, as long as you can hold on, it'll be all good.

I see my light at the end of my tunnel, and it often feels so far away that I don't know how I'll ever get there, but like I told Rhi, I'm just running like hell, and using what I find in the darkness to help me along the way. As long as I keep my eyes and my mind focused on the light, I won't see the darkness, and I'll get there.

Time

"You can never plan the future by the past"
-Edmund Burke


Time is like a flame, it destroys while it creates. This simultaneous creation and destruction has always fascinated me. It's one of the many reasons why I chose to have the words of my tattoo form the shape of a flame. They say that time heals all wounds. If you cut your arm, it bleeds, the blot clots, a scab forms. Over time, new skin cells are created as the scab fades away. In the end, your skin is healed, sometimes leaving a scar behind to remind you of the memory of the cut. While memories connected to physical scars don't bring back the physical pain, emotional ones can. When you have an emotional cut, time works the same way, your heart metaphorically bleeds, and then, slowly heals, as the passage of time puts distance between the pain of the cut and the present. But emotional scars are harder to overcome than physical ones, and while time is healing that pain, it is also destroying some of the good memories. In order to put distance between yourself and painful memories, you have to get distance from the good ones too, b/c it's the good ones that make the bad ones so bad. The more you love someone, the more it hurts when you have to let them go. In order to let time heal the pain of a break up or a falling out and everything that led to it, you have to let go of some of the good memories too, b/c remembering them hurts. And that is the hardest, and worst part.

But the only way to move is forward. You don't have a choice. If you sit and dwell in the past the world will continue to move forward without you. I know someone who has spent the last half of her life living in the regrets of the past, and trust me she's not happy. I've known her my whole life, and she is my constant reminder to never plan the future by the past. You have to let time heal things, learn how to hold on to whatever good memories you can, and let the pain fade into the past.