Tomorrow Is Another Day...

I Want to Believe

I had the greatest plans for this weekend, including the Highland Games with my pals BJ and Lori on Saturday and then a solo double feature on Sunday watching Mamma Mia and The X-Files.  Unfortunately, I volunteered to be the group leader for a pretty intense school project, so instead of being creeped out all by myself in one cool, dark movie theater, and then dancing in the aisles in another, I stayed rooted to the couch trying not to cry while creating tables in Word.  Have you ever created a table in Word?  Let me tell you right now:  DO NOT CREATE TABLES IN WORD!!!  What a nightmare.

I finally wrapped up enough of the project last night to take a break and read a few blogs, and the most heartbreaking one I read was a review of the X-Files movie describing it as slow moving, boring, and lacking that paranormal spark.  I'm not going to lie, I was pretty fervidly hoping that this "episode" would be amazing and spawn a whole series of X-Files movies, rather like Star Trek. 

I've been an X-Phile since the very first episode my parents allowed me to watch, I think sometime during the second season.  Once I was hooked, I started recording the episodes as they came on in syndication and the entire top row of my bedroom closet was filled with VHS tapes painstakingly labeled with 2-3 episodes per tape in chronological order starting with the pilot.  I was mad about Dana Scully's red hair and skeptical eyebrow raise, madly in love with Fox Mulder, and completely conflicted about my feelings for the Cigarette Smoking Man.  When Diana Fowler was introduced in the show, I hated her with the fires of a thousand suns mostly because she threatened the possible union of my preshus Mulder and Scully.  And when John Doggett came on the scene, followed shortly by Monica Reyes, I knew my love affair was over.

I was a senior in high school and then a young college undergrad when the X-Files wrapped up its final two seasons, and my Friday nights got too busy to keep up with the show on a regular basis.  This was before the dawn of the TiVo or TiFaux, and my parents would record episodes for me, but I think deep down inside I just didn't want to watch the show anymore without that magical Mulder and Scully combination.

I eventually moved away from home and in doing so, cleared out my overflowing X-Files VHS collection.  The show was pushed to the back of my mind for years, until I just happened to catch an episode late at night on Sci Fi, and I was amazed to find out how well the show held up over the years.  Sure, some of the effects are a little cheesy, and early Scully's hair and wardrobe is a bit dated, but at the heart of it, the ultimate quest of the show--to find the truth--is still just as compelling as ever.  I'd been looking forward to the movie since I first heard rumblings a few years ago, but now I was completely sucked back in to that dark and broody world of unexplained events.

So, now, hearing that people don't like the movie upsets me.  It's like hearing one friend talking trash about another, maybe even closer friend.  I want to stand up for the movie and defend it, but I'm not even sure what to defend yet.  I'm hoping that some time this week I'll be able to get to the theater and experience the movie myself.  I really do want to believe that it's going to be an incredible return to the characters I've known and loved for so many years, and even at it's worst, I figure it HAS to be better than sitting through "Home" again... shudder.

Blogging About Blogging = SO BORING

I've been spending the past week or so mentally composing my goodbye letter to the internet.  I think upon review of my past couple of months of blog posts, it seems more than a little bit apparent that I began reaching blog burnout long before I realized it.  I've been writing sporadically, I've been stressing over comments and page views and return visits to new visitors.  More recently I haven't been able to keep my Reader at a manageable level and feeling guilty about writing on my own blog before reading and commenting on my blog friends'.

At first I blamed it on the fact that I was busy entertaining one set of friends at my house, then visiting another set of friends in San Francisco, then having my parents in town for another full week.  Combined with school my attention was completely diverted from blogging and I spent all of my computer time writing papers or outlines and trying to keep up with email.  But then I was alone again, and once more I had plenty of time to blog.  But then I got caught up in Smallville and I started job hunting and once again, there was always something to do other than blogging--even though I was on the computer practically non-stop.  Anytime I would click over to Google Reader, I would immediately recoil in horror at the absurdly high number of unread items glaring back at me accusingly and then I would just click the X on the tab.

The thing is, I just can't keep up anymore.  Joining 20 Something Blogs was like Dorothy leaving Kansas and landing in the beautiful Technicolor world of Oz.  Prior to that day, I read mostly mommyblogs or infertility blogs, and I LOVED them all--still read them in fact--but I was so envious of the community that those bloggers had that I didn't fit into.  But with the 20 Somethings, I found blog after blog written by amazing women (sorry boys, I'm sure yours are great too!) whom I completely identified with and I promptly began adding one after another to my list of daily reads.  It was so great, but at the same time, the burden of blog interaction got a little heavier.  That unwritten, unspoken social contract that states "I comment on your blog, you comment on mine."

That was fine for the world that I was living in a few months ago.  I had a desk job and reading all of these blogs kept me sane and gave me something to do during those long, horribly boring days.  But then I quit, and I started school.  And it occurred to me that the only job I can really take on right now is an hourly, retail job, and that's not terribly conducive to blog reading throughout the day.  And eventually, I'll hopefully be working as a teacher, in a classroom all day, where I think it would be frowned upon to spend the school day glued to my phone, checking blogs.  All of these realizations have hit over the past week and I figured it was time to just throw in the towel.

But then I realized something else.

I have always loved to write.  I have two partial manuscripts and a whole slew of Word documents filled with story ideas, but every time I sit down to work on them, I am paralyzed by this overwhelming pressure.  Pressure to write something that someone else will want to read.  Pressure to write something that someone else will think is "good".  I write a few pages, and then read over it with a critical eye and I want to cry.  Because oh my God, I suck.  But blogging is writing that I used to do just for me.  Before the page views were in the triple digits, before the comments were in the double digits, I still loved it.  Before I started worrying about writing something that someone else will want to read.  That someone else will think is "good".  And I loved my community, even though it was a small one.  It's not that I don't love all of the new readers and the new blogs that I've discovered over the past year, it's just that I find myself unable to live up to my own expectations.

And so, to make this very long story longer, I'm not giving up blogging.  What I am giving up is that narcissistic hope that I'll ever be an Amalah or a Dooce, or even a Molly or an Isabel.  And I'm okay with that.  I haven't totally wiped my Google Reader slate clean, but I have pruned it back a bit.  And I may not comment on every single one of those blogs that remain, but at least now I'll be able to say that I AM reading every single one.  In a day and age where businesses and schools are focusing on getting back to basics, I'm going to try to do the same thing.  I'm going to try to find that same joy in blogging that I felt even if I didn't get a single comment on my post and my most consistent readers were my parents and a creepy Spam-Bot.  So, for now at least, you're stuck with me.  And honestly, I hope I'll be around for a very long time.  That I'll always have this living document, this story of my life, even if it's of absolutely no interest to anyone else.

Not to mention, have you seen the teaser for the next season of The Hills??  I couldn't live with myself if I didn't have this outlet for my recaps...

Still Kind of on a Blogging Sabbatical, But...

Given my blog header and well documented, almost unhealthy obsession, I had to share this news as soon as I read about it.  This is pretty much the most exciting entertainment news I've heard since I found out that they were making Phantom of the Opera into a movie, and then not, and then making it again, and then not, and then they finally really did it.

"Platt and the studio are taking formative steps toward a screen adaptation of Wicked, the stage musical that Universal co-finances and Platt produces with David Stone.

After crossing the $1 billion mark in worldwide stage gross and opening its eighth production in Australia, "Wicked" has become one of the studio's most profitable investments and could follow a stage-to-screen track reminiscent of "Mamma Mia!" which U bows Friday."

(from Variety)

I know a lot of people get their panties in a twist about Broadway shows being made into movies and how they lose their integrity and special, special snowflakeness, but I'm one of those people who believes that the easier access I have to my favorite shows, the happier I am.  And since I don't plan on moving to Manhattan anytime soon, if a musical lands on my DVD shelf, that's pretty much the happiest day of my life.  Well, aside from that whole wedding thing.  Oh, and the day we arrived in Italy.  And maybe my last day in the Air Force...  You know, it's just mostly a saying.  Don't read too much into that.

Seeing Wicked on Broadway (2005)

Seeing Wicked in Seattle (2006)

 

My sister and I performing our (we think) award winning performance of Loathing at our Wicked party.

In fact, I think it's safe to say that if this story turns out to be true, I couldn't be happier!  (With the exception of the glee experienced at aforementioned events as well as any others that may occur to me after I post this.)

Letters to the Internet

Dear Typepad,

Things have been distant between us lately.  I know it.  You know it.  There's no sense in pretending that we haven't hit a rough patch.  I know that I've been ignoring you, spending very little time at home with you and then on the few occasions when I have turned on my computer, glancing guiltily at your button there on my favorites toolbar and then navigating over to my class website or Facebook.  I just want you to know, it really isn't you, it's me.  I've just had so much going on lately and I haven't made an effort to keep you a part of that life. 

But you see--it's just been so hard.  (That's what she said.)  First there were the visitors from out of town, so of course I had to take some time away to show them around Seattle and drink lots of wine and cocktails.  There was even a brief moment of rockstardom at the Experience Music Project where we morphed into the Bourbon Belles and took the stage with an enthusiastic rendition of "I Love Rock and Roll"--I was the guitar player.  Oh, and then there was the time that I went to my first major league baseball game and came this close to being smacked in the face by a speeding baseball!  I wanted to tell you about it right away, but then life got even more hectic and our distance grew.  Then there was the 4th of July weekend in San Francisco!  It was so much fun, Typepad, I wish you could have been there.  I know you would have loved to have heard the stories about hiking up Telegraph and Russian Hill and even finding Scottie's house from Vertigo on Lombard Street.  And the Korean Karaoke!  Oh, the things I could have told you about that night in a private room with seven other friends, an endless supply of Asian cocktails and a heaping collection of classics from the 80s, 90s, and today!  One day, I even won a game of Wii bowling--can you believe that?--and my tennis game really is improving.  I knew you would have been so proud of me if only you could have seen it.

I'm so sorry that I've kept all of this from you for so long, and I hope that we can find a way to make this relationship work.  I have a pile of homework to get through now, and my parents are coming to visit tomorrow for a week--you've met them, they really like you--so I can't promise that everything will be back to normal right away, but please know that I'm thinking of you often and missing you desperately.  It's not often in life that you can find a connection like the one that we have, and I want you to know that even when it seems like I don't care, I really do.  You are the cheese to my macaroni.  The Harry to my Sally.  You complete me.  I'll never let go.

Yours always (even when I have better things to do than blog),

Dear Google Reader,

You are killing me.

Go to hell,