It'll be great in 2008!

As for reflective end/beginning of year post, all I have is this:

My uni had a bowl game this year. My uni also had a bowl game last year. My uni is number one when it comes to number of consecutive bowl years (ok, I'll stop bragging now). Last year I was sitting in a hotel room on January 1st with my father and a friend just a few miles south of my uni town, snickering over how USC's quarterback's name was Booty, waiting for the time when we would drive into town, for the first time as a student, and move me into my new home. This year at 1:00 pm I came down the stairs to hear my mom shouting, "Oh, it's 1:00! Amy! It's 1:00 - it's time for the game!" I've hear that my mom has become quite the fan, but it made me smile that she was getting just as riled as I was during the game. My dad finally made it in about halftime and after a few minutes said that he might have to watch the game in a different room than us.

In between these two football games that were almost one year apart to the hour, a lot of stuff happened. Enough material for many stories. I won't bore you right now; I'll make you pay $9 to suffer through it on the big screen in about five years.

In writing, when you open and close a story with a certain image, motif, theme, situation, whatever, they call it "bookending." 2007 was perfectly bookended by two football games. For a girl who attends the uni with the longest bowl game streak, that may not seem like a big deal. But when you look at my writing, you'll see that I tend to like bookending in my stories. A lot.

I'm sure that says something about my psyche. What? I simply haven't the time to figure it out.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone

Things have been going awry here in the space/time continuum. For one, October was a lot shorter than a month. I feel like I went to bed one night and woke up and it was Halloween - and I don't even sleep that much! Not only that, but the physical area of this town has been slowly stretching. It now takes me 1.5x the amount of time to get to the USB as it did at the beginning of the year. If I didn't have to walk there so ridiculously much it wouldn't be such a big deal... *grumblegrumblegrumble*

So, apparently, what I've heard is, where I go to school, well, it's kind of a big deal. In the top twenty five in the nation or something. So how is it that Monday night I can collapse exhausted on my bed, get a power nap at midnight, drag myself up again at 1:30 to wrangle together a response essay for a lit class on John Milton's freakin Paradise Lost, and get a response back from my professor the next day that it was an "excellent response" and that it's good enough for me to consider turning into my term paper.

Shouldn't people be expecting more of me than this??

Why Our Brilliant B-School is the Fault of High School English Classes Everywhere

I knew this trend existed, I did, but I feel like I've seen it manifested a little bit more recently. People picking majors based on what careers will get them the six figures, figuring out specialties based not on what they enjoy but on which has the slightly bigger paycheck. Really? Really, people?

Don't your high school English teachers make you read Death of a Salesman?

My esteemed friend H. D. Martin said once that she wants to write for the "middle class crap." And if you're carefully watching, you can see exactly what she means. Most of your friends are probably missing out on their lives, and they don't even know it. Art is one of those things that tries to wake people up, point out questions and problems, study dilemmas, not often give answers but at least gets you thinking. The thing is, I'm not sure many people have spent time thinking about their lives in relation to their careers. And just why is it so important to be making the most amount of money in your field as possible. Everybody's chasing the American Dream now but maybe someone's forgotten to get some real sleep on it.

I am not a huge fan of Death of a Salesman. I find it long and tedious. It really hits you over the head. Which is why high school counselors should make everyone of their students read it as part of the college application process. And then write a two page response paper about it.

I've been ruminating on this because I had an idea for a screenplay about a young man who has the commendable middle class lifestyle but goes through several life changes about how that's not enough (cheesy in one sentence like that, yes, and without half the plot). It's a "coming of age" story in a different sense, in a sense when someone realizes that their B-school diploma is just a plaque on the wall. As I was thinking about this, realizing that it has so many themes of the tedious Death of a Salesman, I had to wonder if we needed another, reinvented Death.

The sad thing? I think we do. Maybe the B-school does need another prerequisite course in their major: "Your Career and how Art has deconstructed the myth that it will lead you to Happiness." A cumbersome course title? Maybe. But appropriate? I think so.

I'll Slice Your Life

It's weird the way your first impressions change - or don't.

I've had the privilege of making "home" a place where I had previously had only a handful of isolated memories. When I first moved here, most places were associated with my previous memories of them. But things change, and I can remember how I used to view certain aspects of campus - I even remember things that were gone before I made this campus home, like the tree stump with the brick wall in it they tore out to make room for the museum addition - and sometimes it makes me smile, how different my perspective was. Campus used to see so big and intricate - and it still is, but now it's familiar too. It's funny the way memories are retained and yet perspective can change, almost like there are two versions of a place, and the way sometimes you can see both of them at once. Some places don't change, though. Places I don't visit frequently, even a couple I do, still have the exact same impression on me as they did three years ago. I don't mind, necessarily. With a memory as bad as mine, it's nice to have some strong memories. It's just weird and interesting, at least to me, the way people's perspectives can shift and change.

Sounds like a great theme to build a story on to me. : P

Comeback Tours

Today my roommate from sophomore year is getting married. I luckily am getting to go to her wedding, which is halfway across the country, and visit Old School Land for the first time in a year.

I don't know how many people get to revisit their pasts a lot. It sorta happens a lot for me. Ever since I came back from England, every single place I have lived/visited has been an important place for me in my past. Sometimes it's hard because I don't feel like I'm making any progress forward. Sometimes it's hard because I realize that I have. It was a little ironic, because I flew back to campus on the same day that I got into England exactly a year ago.

I was on the plane Thursday, and I almost started crying a couple times. I was so excited to finally be going back to what had been my home for two years to see some of my closest friends, but I was also a little sad. I have no regrets in the way I've lived my life the past year. But at the same time, I thought of everything I had missed at my old school for the past year, what my life could have been like if I stayed. Now that I'm here, it doesn't feel like I've been gone for a year. Except when I'm hanging out with people.

One of my writing buddies for Script Frenzy has a plot that involves someone coming back to a place after being gone for a while. And as soon as I get home, I'm going to start typing out a whole bunch of notes for him about what that's like. Because, when you stop to think about it, it's crazy the cyclical nature my life has taken. But if that's really what my life is like, if I'm going around in circles, it's more like a spiral that's expanding outwards. We're at the same place again, only we're enjoying those memories as we pass by. I'm here again, but I'm not the same person I was then.

And sometimes moving forward is going back.

But for now I have a ridiculously cute dress that I have been patiently waiting to wear and lunch with one of my best friends in Old School Land ahead of me. Can life get any better? I submit that it cannot!

Standing on a road, Holding a burning match

If I had a super power, I would slow time. I wouldn't want to be able to speed it up or travel around in it, because I have this feeling that would get terribly complicated. Just slow it down. And be able to take people with me.

I used to have weird issues with time. I still do to some extent, but I'm getting better. I used to look forward sooo much. Now I'm much happier to live in the moment. In fact, the moments go by too fast. I don't get to appreciate them, I don't get to rest in between them, I don't get to think about them.

I miss reading for fun. I'm making time for it now, bringing scripts with me to meals and on the bus ride to work. It's so relaxing. I don't make time to write. Maybe that's why I'm up at 2:00 AM posting on my blog. If I could slow time, I would be able to do all my work, hang out with my friends, and get a decent amount of sleep. What a wonderful super power.

Really, I just want to be able to freeze time so I can think. I'd like to freeze everything and go sit somewhere with a pen and a journal and just *mull* life over. Sometimes I feel like I don't even know *what* I'm thinking, just that I have all these thoughts in my head that need to be considered. I'm just contemplative with things that I *know* are important, but I never really think about them. I can't even write about what I'm feeling. It hasn't congealed into a coherent thought yet.

I wish I could slow time. Freeze everything just to breathe.

Life in the Dorm I Don't Live in

Diane and I knew something was not right when our first response to the speed dating recruiter was not, "That's laaa-ame," but "We don't have the time."



"I *too* will have a small chocolate frosty... oh, you gave me two."