Thursday, February 24, 2011

The game of life? Yeah, you just lost it.

I don’t want to write this blogpost. I like having Aaron Paul smiling and saying ‘Hey!’ to me when I open my blog.

But all good things must come to an end.

Everything, actually, has to come to an end. One day, all your teeth will have fallen out, the love of your life will be dead and you can’t remember what you had for breakfast because your mind is slowly eaten by dementia. And that is the best case scenario of you getting to live a long and full life.

Depressed yet? Yeah. Me too.

But what if the fact that everything ends, is a good thing?

Stick with me, as I try to explain.

Once you realize that all that you have and all that you want is nothing but temporary and will come to an end, you are free to let that which does not matter, truly slide.

(yeah – I just paraphrased a line from Fight Club*, so sue me)

If all things come to an end and everything is temporary, that means this precise moment in time is all we’ve got. Just this one moment and what we choose to do with it.

What I‘m trying to say is that if nothing really matters in the grand scheme of things, then YOU get to decide what you want to assign value.
All the ‘Bad stuff’ doesn’t matter nor does all the ‘Good stuff’. What matters is what you choose to let affect you.

You get to choose if you stress over the next exam or feel bad for eating too much ice-cream or laugh at a funny joke. You get to choose if getting dumped was the worst thing that happened to you or not.

I’m not saying you should deny the existence of ‘Bad stuff’. ‘Bad stuff’ is real and it happens (sometimes it seems like it happens all the time). But you get to decide what impact it has on your life. Does it destroy you? Or do you shrug it off an keep on going?

Another spin on this topic is this vlog. Enjoy.



* If you’ve never watched this movie, you really should. It’s fantastic. Every time I watch it, it gets my mind thinking, bubbling with ideas. It’s not for the faint-hearted, though.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Thumbing through the pages of my fantasies...

I thought about writing something deep and meaningful that would totally rock your world. But really, I just want to tell you about Aaron Paul. 
Aaron says, ”Hey!”

If you don’t know who he is, allow me to enlighten you.

Aaron Paul is a 31-year old actor. He is totally cute and he also seems like a genuinely nice person (no, I haven’t scoured youtube for interviews with him, just so I could see him smile, why would you think that?)

 
Aaron Paul on the left. Co-star from Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston, on the right. 
Doesn't Aaron have the cutest smile?

First time I saw him was in this video (warning, contains vomit in the end [but still totally worth it!])


It’s a music video made by the heavy metal band Korn. For some, their music is a bit too … heavy metaly? But I absolutely love them, especially this song. And not just because of Aaron, though he certainly makes it better.

He’s currently playing a character on the TV-show Breaking Bad. If you haven’t seen that show, I really urge you to do it. It’s awesome (and it has won several shiny emmys, including one to Aaron for best supporting actor in a drama series 2010).


It is a dark show with humor and deeply flawed characters you can’t help but cheer on. This is one of the consistently great shows on TV at the moment.
  
I like how several of my favourite things are connected to Aaron Paul. It's almost like a spiderweb of cool things and he is in the center. Except he's not a spider. Or so I hope (I really don't care much for those eight-legged monsters).
 
I love a man in a suit, and Aaron suits up very well indeed. With no room in there for eight legs, so definitely NOT a spider.

And on that note I will see you soon.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Instant gratifiction

I’m taking a basic programming course this spring and do you guys know what I love about it? Everything! Even the homework assignments (is it obvious that I miss going to school and actually exercise my brain?) But today I’m going to talk about something I think is characteristic for writing simple programs in computer code, and that is instant gratification.


I love the fact that you can tell your program to do something and then it actually does it. Even if it’s something as simple as adding two numbers, you’re the one that made it and you get to see that it works instantly.
 
It’s an exhilarating feeling.
 
Of course, the more complex the program, the more delayed the gratification gets (because you have to figure out the best way to make the program do what you want it to do, define variables, code different classes to do different things, etc.).
 
It made me think about my writing. First off, you don’t begin writing seriously if you can’t handle the whole delayed gratification bit. It’s kindda in the job-description. But maybe, just maybe, the fact that the gratification is now so delayed, is proof that I’m writing at an advanced level.
 
Do you guys remember when you wrote one paragraph and just the fact that you had opened that word-document and started typing was enough to make you happy and feel proud of yourself? You then finished a chapter and thought, oh yeah, first chapter done!
 
I’ve lost that childish joy and the instant gratification in writing has disappeared. It’s been gone for so long that I actually forgot that it was even there in the first place. I’ve been a little caught up in the whole “I’ll never be good enough/why even bother”-phase.
 
If Cat-from-the-past could see me writing regularly, having finished drafts (yes, plural!!), and beginning to revise current stories? She would have her mind blown and be so incredible proud of me. It’s a heartwarming thought.
 
There is no longer instant gratification in it for me when I’m writing, and that’s a good thing. It really is. It means that I’ve evolved as a writer, that I’m a better writer than I was before.
 
But you can bet your ass that I’m still going the enjoy the instant gratification I get from writing computer-code.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Fluffy mind-melt

I stayed up all night and watched Doctor Who with a friend. 12 episodes, booya!

But alas, I am now paying the price. I feel like I've been zombiefied ( huh, so the spell-check doesn't think that zombiefied is a word. That's a shame.)

 
Picture of Doctor Who because I mentioned him. And because I like looking at him. He seems like he's thinking deep thoughts too. Or maybe trying to use a psychic mind-melt power on me.

Anyway. I've been doing a lot of staring into space today and thinking really deep thoughts that go absolutely nowhere because I can't seem to focus on them long enough. I was supposed to do my homework today. To research how to pay taxes in the US. To write on my WIP.

I've done none of the above.

Instead I've been contemplating what the core of my stories are, and in extension what the core of my life is. To explain. I recently read this blog entry about the core of the your novel and how you can change anything in your story, as long as the core remain intact.
It seemed like a really good concept and it got me thinking about what the core of some of my stories have been. Of course, being nothing, if not narcissistic, I also started thinking about what the core of my life is. What is the one thing that I absolutely will not change about myself? The one constant in my life?

(It's easy to base the core of your life on something that isn't really yours, but that's a blogpost for another day.)

I didn't find the answer I was looking for - my brain is pretty much mush today after all - instead my mind wandered into the territory of what my philosophy of life is.

I believe that it doesn't really matter what you do with your life or where you are in the world. Those things are simply the extra filing of the cake that is your life, so to speak. What matters is how you act. And I believe, that as long as you act with enthusiasm and kindness, you will find happiness - no matter where you are and what you're doing.

So this is me, being an enthusiastic and kind zombie for the rest of the day. 

Friday, February 18, 2011

Hello?

I haven't been updating this blog. I have a lot of good reasons and even more bad ones. But it's not like I haven't been thinking about this blog. Thinking about appropriate topics and I even have a few drafts prepared.

Confession: When I'm stuck at work and have a few idle moments, I like to write and send myself emails. I write whatever is in my head and sometimes it frightens me what comes out in the page. Some of it would fit perfectly on the blog. Most of the time - not so much.

But dear Cat, you might think to yourself.  If your thinking and writing, why aren't you blogging? (yes, I'm imagining that people are actually reading this [don't judge]).

The answer? It's embarrassingly simple.

It's because I'm afraid that I will scare you away. I'm afraid that if I let the world peak into the twisted wonder that is my mind, I'll be rejected. Truly rejected.

I'm tired of living in fear.

Which is why I'm going to click on the 'Publish'-button now.