Monthly Archives: February 2012

Entertainment? I Like What I Like and I’m Not Gonna Lie…

Entertainment Musings

Last night I admitted to being a Once Upon a Time fan.  What makes this admission brave is that I admitted it to someone who was involved in a rousing discussion on the excellence of a particular cult favorite cable show.  I almost bit my tongue, but then thought “whatever.” I like what I like and I’m not embarrassed.  While I was pleasantly surprised that this person was fine with my confession, it has been a more common experience that people who consider themselves “artistic” exhibit snobbery regarding main stream entertainment.

Let me put this out there: I watch General Hospital daily, I blog about the Bachelorette, I love Survivor, Once Upon a Time, and Suburgatory. I don’t have cable. With a digital antenna and Tivo, I haven’t felt the need. I can find everything I want to watch on broadcast TV or the internet. I like romantic comedies, and sometimes really cheesy adventure films.  It doesn’t have to win an Oscar or an Emmy for it to be my new favorite experience, in fact most of my favorites don’t.

I dislike when people put down my shows for lack of “artistic” quality, or the fact that they’re too simple or have been done before! Entertainment…hmmm…I see the word entertain in there.  Yes, television and movies can change society and the world.  Yes, television and the movies sometimes have the responsibility to educate.  But for the vast majority of people, television and movies are entertainment that allows escape from the doldrums of daily life.

I want to watch people fall in love, be saved, die, get hurt, forgive each other, and seek revenge.  In my daily life I don’t tend to see much of that.  I want to watch it somewhere safe where I can experience things but not on such a level I can’t sleep after watching it. And if “artistic” endeavors give you that experience then all the more power to them and you, but don’t think that what I felt when I cried at the Huntsman’s death on Once Upon a Time was any less important or different from when you cried at The English Patient.  Don’t think that my experience of Allie and Noah’s love in The Notebook or Jack and Rose in Titanic is any less of an emotion than yours when you watched Casablanca.

Good entertainment elicits a feeling of communion with what you’re watching.  Just because I easily commune with shows that don’t push the envelope doesn’t make me any less a connoisseur than you. In fact, I think it gives me an edge because I have infinitely more chances of finding something good to watch!

Singledom, Marriage, and Divorce

Personal Musings, ,

Lately it seems I have been surrounded by divorce.  Having grown up in a family of relatively stable marriages my experience with divorce has been somewhat limited. Now however, it seems every which way I turn, another friend has filed.  Some of these separations weren’t shocking.  I knew sitting in the church that divorce would one day rear its head in those relationships. Others shook me; I had truly believed they would make it. All of them have caused serious contemplation of life and partnership.

I think I like being single.  I am pretty sure that I enjoy my alone time and own space. What has been hard over the years is the disappearance of married friends as they built homes and families. Of course, I have been included in their lives as much as possible, but it was obvious our life experiences were miles apart and that they had as much interest in my latest date as I did in their child’s diaper rash.

As divorces take over the present, I have found all of a sudden friends that have shared custody of kids have free time on their hands.  My social life has been on the upswing.  And I’m not talking about nights of drinking and looking for men.  I’m talking about friendly lunches, dinners, movies, and conversations where more is discussed than the daily routine.  Recently though, one friend – after a few glasses of wine – confessed that while she was happy to be out of that particular relationship, she wanted to find a new love to commit to and build a life with.  She didn’t want “this” life. My life.

I have to admit at first it was hard not to be insulted. But, I do realize that just as she’s not lived my life – I’ve not lived hers.  While she is unaware of the bliss that can come from true independence, I lack perspective on the bliss that can come from true partnership. Still, as more and more of my friends separate, I kind of feel like I dodged a bullet.  If they were all going to end up where I am anyway, (because most say that even though they want a committed relationship again, they don’t want marriage) then why bother with all the societally induced angst over missing out on marriage?

I have seen good marriages, a lot of them later in life and a lot of them second and third marriages.  I think that if I ever met someone that I wanted to build a common dream with, I might be convinced to sign on the dotted line, but I’m not 100% convinced it’s worth it.  My friends and I have taken different paths but in a roundabout way we’ve all ended up in the same place.  The biggest difference is children. For some friends they were the primary reason to marry to begin with. The older I get the more I feel like that ship has sailed anyway.

I don’t really have a conclusion to draw from all this.  I think some friends will re-marry and get it right the second time, some will re-marry and divorce again, some will stay single and love it, and some will stay single and be miserable.  As for me, I can honestly say that up to this point in my life, I have never experienced misery from being single.  I have experienced joy and the feeling of loving my life.  I think if you can say that, then you’re on the right path no matter what lifestyle you’re living.

Losing Weight and Gaining Self?

Personal Musings

On the way out for a dinner with friends I started getting anxious about the fact there would be people attending I almost never see.  Not only that I almost never see, but people that when I do see I feel incredibly awkward around, people that I edit myself around to the point where I am not myself.  As the anxiety wrapped its familiar grip around my heart, I was suddenly overcome by a sense of peace and confidence.  It was like my soul was speaking to my ego saying, “No, that’s not who you are anymore.  You know yourself, you like yourself.  They’re people – just people and you are a good and impressive person.”

That comfort stayed with me through the evening, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and is still humming in me as I write this.  I have been pondering why now? What is it in my life that has finally allowed me to feel this authentic confidence in myself?

When I was younger I was physically confident.  I liked my body and knew that others liked it, too.  I knew I wasn’t going to be excluded from things or judged because of my looks, and I often used my looks to gain acceptance.  I think that maybe that’s where I was in my personal understanding of self when I met this group of people.  I remember clearly thinking that I didn’t want to talk for fear they would think I was a fraud or didn’t have anything good enough to say.  I knew that they wouldn’t judge me negatively on the outside, so why give them a chance at the inside? This refusal to open myself up to criticism or rejection played out in my personal life as well.  I would choose relationships where I knew the other person liked the outside, not realizing that it was the inside stuff that sustained real romance.

After years of relationships that never got to the level I wanted, I started to see that I needed to be seeking someone who was into the inside me.  Unfortunately this also ended in self sabotage.  My discomfort now came from my physical self.  I didn’t want to be used for it and started to hide it.  This manifested in weight gain.  I put on 60 pounds in 8 years.  The relationships I was in during that time and the friendships I formed were deeper and sincerely based on my inside self, but I was still hiding. I hid beneath the fat and used the defense that if someone really loved me for me they would look beyond the weight.  It didn’t matter.

About 4 months ago I joined Jenny Craig and have lost 30 of those 60 pounds I started hiding behind. I am feeling really good about myself physically and spiritually.  I feel like I am finally ready to be my whole self. That was what dawned on me in the car as I drove to dinner.  I felt pretty and smart.  I felt like I was ready to let these people see me, all of me.  And, I did.  I left the dinner feeling gratitude for the experiences that have shaped me, gratitude for the changes that are taking root in my life, and genuine affection for my dinner mates. I can’t wait to see what the future holds now that I feel like I both know myself inside and like who I am on the outside.