This Day

I'm not going to be posting much in the way of content tonight.  I've been in a pretty lousy mood today and that doesn't cater to creativity.  Hopefully I shake it off by morning.  I'm not the type of person that's prone to lousy moods, although I do have one hell of a resting bitch face if I do say so myself.  Basically everything about my day irked me in one way or another.  Everyone has those days where literally nothing seems to go the way it should, where you're constantly being bombarded by stupid shit.  Even the customers at work were brutal today for clearly no valid reason.  But, it's over, I won't take it personally, and tomorrow is a new day.  In the meantime, here's a little fun from my all time favorite comedian and the penultimate master of language-- George Carlin.  Incidentally, I did have the opportunity to see him live three times.  He's been gone too long...

(  ^^ How I feel about work today ^^ )

Tonight's Selection

Enjoy!

On Why Star Wars is Important to Me (No Spoilers I Promise!)

First, I'm not going to talk about plot or the movie itself.  There are no spoilers described below.  This is because it's not the movie itself that is important, but the role that the movie series had played in my past. 

Allow me to explain...

I was raised in a very protective, conservative, Catholic family.  Go to church on Sundays, Catholic school, sacraments, the entire thing.  I'm also gay.  (Unsurprising I'm sure if you've read anything I've written in the past.)  Growing up with very controlling parents being a gay boy is very difficult, doubly so because of their religious and political leanings.  I am the oldest child, and in being such also dealt with the worst of my parents' controlling nature.  I knew I was different than everyone else from a very young age, but it wasn't until college that I was comfortable being gay-- hell, I didn't even know what gay was (WHAT I WAS) until high school.  I was very, excruciatingly sheltered as a child.  I could write for hours about growing up and the challenges I faced being the gay son to two people who hated gay people, but I'll try to stay on topic.

Star Wars.

Star Wars Episode III came out when I was in high school.  It was also around this time that I seriously needed to get away from my parents.  I had walled them off from my life as much as possible--granting the fact that I still lived in the bedroom next to them in their house.  I was figuring out who I was and it was very, very painful.  I wouldn't say that I was depressed, more like clueless.  I really didn't even know who I was because who I really was was so much different than the person everyone told me I was.

I went to see the Star Wars midnight release on my own.  Up until this point I had never gone anywhere to speak of on my own.  I had just recently gotten my license.  Just recently, I had been allowed to drive my mom's Jeep alone.  I'd just recently began along the long path to understanding and eventually embracing my sexuality.  And no, I didn't go to the movie with some cute guy and made out with him and had a gay ol' time.  I actually went alone.

I had told my parents that I was going with "friends from school".  I lied.  I didn't really have friends from school.  I had a few "school friends", people I would talk to at school occasionally, but no one I knew outside of the classroom at all.  My parents would never let me go do things with kids outside of the immediate neighborhood (ie. the street I grew up on).  But, this time I convinced my mom that I should be able to go.  It took me a long time to work up the courage to even ask.

In getting to go to the movie, it was the first time I was able to break away from my parents in a meaningful way.  It was the first time that I could get away from them and be me.  It was the first step on a long journey into becoming the person I was on the inside.  I liked the movie, but the point wasn't the movie, it was the action of going on my own that was important.  After it was over, I took the long way home so I could soak up the moment of freedom just a little bit longer.  

It was an important first step into being the man I am today and that's why Star Wars holds a meaning to me.  So, I went to see the one that came out tonight and enjoyed myself, but I'll never forget where I came from, the boy that I was.  I'll never forget the struggle it was to embrace the person I was on the inside and to show him to the world outside without fear of persecution (or worse, my parents finding out at the time).  While my story about Star Wars is probably not the same as maybe anyone else's, it is the reason why I treasure the movie franchise.  It was the first in many steps to becoming me.

When Love Strikes

Love is a very difficult thing to understand.  The reason for this is because of how our brains are set up.  We have the ability to be both logical and emotional.  Love is not logical.  It is emotional.  Obviously.  So, who we fall in love with, when we fall in love (or out of love), and that we want to fall in love are not easily, logically explainable concepts.  Love does not know logic.  In my experience, it frequently drops in on you unexpectedly (though never unpleasantly).

For very logical people such as myself, falling in love can be a somewhat frustrating thing.  It upends your life as you know it.  Your priorities change over night.  You begin to spend a lot of time with someone you probably didn't even know a few days or weeks ago.  Granted I'm speaking about infatuation or "lust" as well.  Love is a progression from interest and infatuation.  It is deeper than any other feeling you'll likely feel in your life and it is amazing.

While that is all true, it's also frustrating sometimes.  You can't plan whom you fall for.  And you should never ignore it either.  In the past five years or so, a lot of my friends have graduated college and moved into the working world.  It's a time of great change in all of our lives and it's an amazing period of learning who you are.  It's also frequently the time in which you fall in love and begin a life with another person.  

With everything going on in your 20's, falling in love does add an incredible amount of complication to your life.  While focusing on yourself and establishing your life, you meet someone and fall for them.  You go through all the steps of dating and really, truly fall for them.  It's not an easy process as you now have to meld your lives together.  If you do truly love each other, however, it will happen.  It's not logical.  It's emotional.  And, the emotional side of your brain is generally stronger than your logical one.  (Look at every silly thing you've ever done to attract someone you're attracted to for evidence on this.)

Sometimes people make excuses, bury themselves in careers, and avoid the potential relationship.  It's true that for a while after my own last break up, I did the very same.  Everyone does in this case, for a while.  You regain your bearings and stabilize your personal life.  But, after a while, you put yourself out there again.  Sometimes however, people rationalize that love would be an imposition in their life, that it would be easier to avoid love until the "time is right".   The fact of the matter is though that there's always something else you could be doing.  There is no "right" time.  "Right" is a logical response to an illogical situation.  

When in doubt, I'd suggest always going with your heart on matters of the heart.  True, sometimes it won't make logical sense.  Sometimes you'll end up getting your heart broken as well.  But, at the same time, you can't choose whom you fall for any more than you can choose when it's going to happen.  It just happens.  I learned this lesson for myself and now I pass it on.  In short, let your heart decide on emotional decisions and let your logical brain decide on logical matters.