Things I've Learned These Last Months

I'm alive! I know it has been an epoch since I last posted. I have spent the past several months focusing on health, work, and my novel-in-progress. And I'm happy to say that over those months, I've wracked up most of my achievements in the wisdom and intelligence categories, with a few in the mishaps and WTF groups.

Here are seven things that I have learned:

1) I am not a prisoner of anyone but myself.

I can give away my power to others in regards to time and opportunity, like I'm the slave of these commitments I make. Or I can seize them all and become extreme overlord of awesome and take control of my life and its course. My time is not someone else's to command. It is mine to prioritize with and I can either choose to do something or not, but the choice is always mine.

The Experiment

Well, it's been a while since I last posted. I blame a combination of deadlines and falling under the weather repeatedly. But I'm back with a new update.

My husband and I are trying something new. We've found ourselves trancing in front of the television in our spare time, to the point that plans to be productive after watching our favorite show are all too often sabotaged by our need to get through the backlog on our DVR. It's not uncommon, I think, given how convenient and tailored TV watching has become, but it was becoming an umbilical cord that kept us anchored in the living room and not working on other things. So we decided to do something dramatic.

Bad Guys We Love but Probably Shouldn't

I was watching Se7en the other day and it dawned on me that at the end, I'm actually sort of rooting for the bad guy to get away with it. A serial killer gets my vote for winning the day? What the hell?

So I had to examine why. What is going on in the story that I'm actually cheering for the antagonist to see his wicked plans come to fruition?

Nathan Bransford once mentioned on his blog that characters, even bad characters, have to be redeemable to be likable. I see this. I think it gives us some sympathy and humanity to relate to. Sure, Shaw is a major tool in Jaws, but when he takes a swipe at a higher social class and recites that haunting story of being in the water while sharks ate his war buddies, it draws the audience into his world, his life, and ultimately, his point of view.

I examined Se7en and the antagonist's twisted, brilliant opus, and I had to ask myself if I found him to be a redeemable character. His message is grounded in teaching the world a lesson, and there's something epically Lex Luthorian about how it's executed, especially how he fulfills the last two sins, but I am not sure that his desire to teach humanity a lesson makes him redeemable enough.

Am I just a sucker for brilliant psychopaths in fiction or is something else going on?

Hypothetically Speaking... It's Wednesday

Those who know me know I love a good hypothetical question. I love discovering where people stand on gray issues. Asking these types of questions often leads to deeper conversation and better understanding of a person's philosophies, beliefs, and reasonings.

Today is Hypothetical Wednesday and so I challenge readers out there to take the risk and answer me this:

Would you rather be moderately wealthy from the art you create (e.g., acting, writing, painting, photography, singing, software design, etc.) and be known for it in this lifetime, or would you rather become part of the canon for instruction in the future and globally famous but only after your death?

Why?

Would your answer change if you knew that you'd get a Nobel prize or Pulitzer posthumously?

I look forward to hearing the results!

Photo Courtesy of Flickr's purple.glasses.

What Is Scary?

I love being scared. I love curling up with my husband on an air mattress in our living room and watching some psychological thriller. The rush of adrenaline. The guessing. I like horror/thrillers that make me think and that still haunt me when the movie is over or the book's last page has long been read.

There are three things that terrify me most:
1) Intelligent, realistic threats that toy with my understanding of the world and help me see it differently.
2) Ghostly/Demonic movies that play off of the supernatural.
3) Creepy Southern People.

These things will have me running from a dark room to a lit room or looking over my shoulder when I swim in a lake. They will even have me getting a car check-up and locking my doors before heading below the Mason/Dixon line (I can say this, I lived in Tennessee for seven years. Very sweet people, generally, but there are some crazy, creepy southerners too.)

Why do these things scare me? Because they can be true. (I know, I know, my fellow friends who are skeptics may not agree with the entire list, but I assure you that creepy southern people do exist!)

In this day and age, it seems there are two types of horror: the startlefest and torture porn.