Little Thing #8 and #9

#8: Getting the year started

I’m going to Portsmouth!

Got a really exciting offer from a woman who does fundraising for the theatre there and she wanted our performance society to write a short adaptation of some of Charles Dickens’ work. One of our members wrote the short play, an adaptation of The Signalman. I sent it to the fundraiser and she loved it, so we’re taking it to the next level. We held auditions for the two roles yesterday, we have a producer and I’m directing.

There’s been a press release and interviews with the local paper in Portsmouth. It might not sound like much at first, but we’ve managed to get the society outside of Bournemouth, we’ve got it on the map. It’s a huge step forward and I’m just so happy that I can be involved in any way.

I might even get to meet Simon Callow, who has been in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Doctor Who, etc.

So yeah, pretty interesting start to the year.

“The successful always has a number of projects planned, to which he looks forward. Anyone of them could change the course of his life overnight.”

- Mark Caine

#9: Exhaustion Insanity

It might not sound like a source of happiness, but the things that happen when you’re so tired stuff doesn’t make sense anymore is hilarious!

I was up until 4am this morning in the writers room of the university. We had a deadline today for a group project. I crazily volunteered to edit the document, which was about 50 pages long.

Fortunately for me I wasn’t the only one, there was plenty of company to go around. We stocked up on energy drinks and snacks and hit the computers.

At around 2.30am we decided to play remixes of Lord of the Rings. Such hits as ‘Potatoes’ and ‘They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard’. Then there was a reenactment of certain scenes, including an epic portrayal of Sam accusing Gollum of eating the bread, while Frodo snubs Sam in favour of Golum. It was pretty powerful stuff.

Then a battle of wills and intimidation on wheelie chairs across a very small space. Luckily there were no casualties, just a few tears of laughter.

All in all, a very good, productive and slightly insane night.

“Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

- Gandalf, Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings

Little Thing #7

#7: Sticking to the New Years Resolution

Yes, it’s only 10 days in, but usually I’ve broken my new years resolution by now so I’m pretty proud of myself.

My resolution is probably shared with at least 1000 other women: to lose weight!

It’s not original, so sue me. As long as I get back to the wonderful size 8 I must have been at some point in my life then I don’t care. Currently standing at a size 12, it is apparent that I over-indulged in the homemade mulled wine and the shop-bought mince pies.

However, an inner cheer rose up today as I conquered my lust for a jacket potato stuffed with chilli and cheese. I looked at the canteen’s display of golden spuds in all their glory and my mouth started to water. I just couldn’t help myself. I reached into my bag, pulled out my purse and counted the exact amount of change it would take to purchase one of the said golden spuds.

I reached the start of the line, my heart pounding in my chest, screaming at me that I would regret gorging on such carby goodness. When the dinner lady asked me what I wanted I could see myself reflected in her eyes and my reflection was pounding its fists together, its mouth hung open in what I can only imagine as a resounding ‘NOOOOOOOOOO!’.

I stood strong and excused myself from the line, going instead to pick up a plastic container and fill it to the brim with salad. As I held that container in my hand it no longer felt cheap and plastic-y, but glorious and shiny, like a trophy one would win after a race.

That salad tasted better than one could ever imagine.

This was a good day.

“In the Middle Ages, they had guillotines, stretch racks, whips and chains.  Nowadays, we have a much more effective torture device called the bathroom scale.”

- Stephen Phillips

Little Thing #5 and #6

#5: A good day

So #5 isn’t actually that little . It’s pretty big.

Have you ever had one of those days where everything is nice? Where you just feel content with everything around you and that nothing has to be spectacular to make you notice it (which of course makes it spectacular)?

Yesterday was one of those days. It happened to be my mum’s birthday. I don’t know how to describe it, but I realised when I was in bed at the end of the day that I hadn’t had a single negative thought, about myself or anything else. I can’t remember the last time that happened.

Usually I look in the mirror at the start of the day and pick apart the reflection, telling myself all the horrible things about my face and appearance until I feel numb. Or sick. Either way. If I’m in a public place and someone looks my way all I can hear is what they’re thinking of me. I hope it’s not actually what they think of me, but the voice is just so persuasive. And horrible.

This has been happening for as long as I can remember now.

What I felt yesterday was relief.

I slept the best I have in years.

“My crown is in my heart, not on my head, nor decked with diamonds and Indian stones, nor to be seen: My crown is called content: A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.”

- William Shakespeare

#6: Laughter

Today I packed my bags and left for Bournemouth for the start of term. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it for several reasons.

The course isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, the house I live in is cold and falling apart and I never have enough time in the day to just sit down and think.

But I had forgotten about the people. My housemates for one. I’d forgotten just how much they can make me laugh without much effort. One of them has a mind dirtier than the inside of a vacuum cleaner, another doesn’t speak a word until he has had a drink (then we can’t get him to shut up) and last but not least is the one who conjures up the most wonderful (and sometimes deliciously awful) metaphors and similes. The one I always remember is: “It’s like a pork pie without the pastry; just awful.”

So I’ve spent the day watching films with our newest housemate, a French exchange student whose English is rather lacking, making sex jokes, burning pizza and unpacking whilst wearing a thong over my jeans.

It feels like I haven’t laughed this much in ages, which probably isn’t the case, but it feels great nevertheless.

There may be hope for Bournemouth yet!

“At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.“

- Jean Houston

Little Thing #4

#4: Catching the killer!

I don’t mean that I literally caught a killer. Although that would be cool.

For someone who was raised on Poirot and Midsummer Murders it’s easy to get hooked on the whodunnit murder mystery style TV. Like I love The Mentalist, I’ve watched the occasional episode of CSI and tonight I watched a few episodes of Bones with my family.

What I usually do, just because I don’t want to risk my reputation as an observant film student, is I keep my thoughts on the identity of the killer in my head. But tonight I was feeling a bit edgy and a bit wild (no, I don’t seriously think that voicing my thoughts on a fictional murderer is edgy or wild) and therefore spewed out my reasoning behind my favourite people for the killers.

I got 2/3 right, which made me pretty happy- especially as one of them I guessed within 10 seconds of meeting the character. A camera catching a shifty look is all that’s needed nowadays.

So yeah, it did make me feel a bit perkier knowing my powers of observation hadn’t let me down. Although I can’t help but think that the whodunnit format is a dying art. Take the film Red Riding Hood for example, not an awful film (mostly), but it tries so hard to shove red herrings down your throat that eventually you know that the only person they don’t draw attention to was the wolf. Bless.

Not the longest of posts, but who needs to over-exaggerate a little bit of happiness?

“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”

-Will Rogers.

Little Thing #3

#3: Waking up to a gory film

Yes, I’m a bit weird. Not really your typical girly girl. Waking up to a bit of American Psycho makes me happy.

SPOILER ALERT

I didn’t necessarily enjoy it because of all the sex and Christian Bale’s body, more because I just love a bit of the good ole fashioned blood, guts and gore. There aren’t many guts, but there’s certainly a lot of blood. And despite a girl getting struck down in a stairwell by a chainsaw there isn’t all that much gore.

Maybe I’ve been desensitized by it all, I dunno. I thoroughly enjoyed the film nonetheless. I loved the strangeness. I adored the first proper glimpse you get of Bateman’s dark side when he’s in a bar about 5-10 minutes into the film. The language he uses just caught me by complete surprise and I was kept on my toes for the rest of the film.

Bale is on fire in this film, managing to get across the creepy killer vibe all the while still boring us to death with his opinions on Huey Lewis, Phil Collins and Whitney Houston’s music careers. The symbolism of the mask throughout the film was brilliant, especially the voice over at the beginning of the film as he peels off a cosmetic facial mask.

Not to mention the appearance by Jared Leto. Another film in which he pulls of a spectacular death. Cheers to him for that.

Knowing me I’ll probably watch this film again in a month’s time and I won’t find it as good as I did this time. Maybe it was the anticipation of it all (it had been sitting on the side for around two and a half weeks before I got a chance to watch it), maybe it was the time of day and the fact that I hadn’t properly woken up yet that did it.

But for now, I’m just going to enjoy my little moment of perverse pleasure in a little fictional media violence, as any good student of fictional media violence would do.

Bateman’s voice over concludes the film, and just reading this quote makes me feel a little in awe of the film. He doesn’t learn anything, still has the uncontrollable urge to kill and isn’t punished except for the realization that he wants to be punished but won’t be. He ends the film how he starts it; thinking to himself while sitting with a group of friends in a nice place.

“There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.”

Little Thing #2

#2: Making headway on a project

I’m a writer. A script writer to be exact. That’s what I’m studying at university, anyway.

I’m trying to write a 60 minute script (roughly 60 pages) before January 16th so that I can enter it in a big competition- The Red Planet Prize. It’s a pretty big deal, even if you’re only shortlisted and if I do well it might even be enough to get an agent when I leave uni. I don’t have much hope in getting shortlisted because so many people, with much more experience than me, enter it. But I can dream.

The tough thing about writing, in my opinion, is getting the beginning bit over and done with. Introducing the characters, setting the scene and giving just enough information to make someone curious, but not so much that they can work the whole thing out. Exposition. It’s key to any story, but doing it in an interesting way is what separates the good stories from the bad. If you want to tell an audience that someone is being beaten by their step-father, you can’t just spoon feed it to them and have your character tell a friend ‘I’m being beaten by my step-dad’.

Not that my story has anything to do with a character being beaten by their step-father, but you get the idea.

Anyway, I’ve been working on the first 20 pages for just over a week now and finally I’ve got the story to a point where I can just run away with it. I know that tomorrow, instead of struggling to write a couple of shoddy lines of dialogue, I can hopefully write 5 pages of decent material.

I’ve been trying to get my head around the whole narrative. It’s quite complicated. And that’s an understatement. I’m going to be very artsy and just say that the story is about identity; mistaken, lost or forgotten identity to be precise. With a supernatural twist.

There’s a kind of relief of getting round that first bend in the road. Writing for character bios is a completely necessary part of the writing process, but for me it’s always seemed boring and lengthy. I like to get to know my characters while I write them, I like them to have a piece of their personality or part of their behaviour that I never expected them to have. But when you’re writing an hour long script about identity it’s a bit more complex than that. Especially when you have one character who is technically three different characters.

Confusing, I know.

But I feel a sense of pride, knowing that the bit that I don’t like- or probably ever will- is over and I can get on with the rest of it.

You never know, maybe one day it’ll be showing on your TV screen.

Probably not.

But I can dream.

Here’s a quote given by an anonymous writer which I laughed at when I read it, because it is so very, very true.

“Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet.”

Little Thing #1

#1: The kiss at midnight.

Now, this isn’t just any old kiss at midnight. It’s the New Year’s Eve kiss at midnight.

Not once, in my 19 years of living have I ever been kissed on New Year’s Eve at the end of the big countdown to the next 365 days. Until now.

It might seem silly, I know. But that’s the fun of it.

I’d driven for 2 hours with a friend to Bournemouth, where I study at university, to go to a party with some friends I hadn’t caught up with for a few months. There was a light 80s theme, so some people were walking around in their modern day swanky party gear, mixed in with Adam Ants, the Lost Boys and those who had gone with the neon. Luckily I’d managed to pull off a slight Desperately Seeking Susan look, with maximized shoulder pads, over-sized jewellery and hair so big a nest of average-sized birds could fit comfortably on top (birds bigger than a sparrow but smaller than a particularly plump pigeon).

We got to the party fashionably late, slightly wet from the rain, but excited for the night ahead.

We weren’t disappointed.

And when it came to that moment, after everyone had finished counting down and the ’3…2…1…’ still lingered in the air as everyone cheered and hugged, that kiss just seemed better, longer, more satisfying than an ordinary kiss. Maybe it was the anticipation, the alcohol, or the general festive mood. Maybe it was that I genuinely liked the guy (a rare thing for a commitment-phobe such as myself). I’m still not sure.

But I was definitely happy.

At that point, I didn’t worry about anything. I didn’t even think about whether my hair had fallen flat or whether my eye-liner had smudged making me look like a racoon. I didn’t worry about what the next year would bring or how bad my hangover was going to be in the morning (very bad, by the way).

It was just nice. A little piece of happiness as 2012 began.

I leave you with a quote from Woody Allen, describing his reaction to his first kiss;

“I was nauseous and tingly all over… I was either in love or I had smallpox.”

 

Mission Statement

Ok, so I don’t actually know if Mission Statement is the right term for what I intend to do with this blog.

But if it is a mission statement, then this is what it’s all about:

I’ve recently discovered that actually I’m not a very happy person. I should be a happy person, but like a lot of other people I get a bit weighed down sometimes and I need reminding of the things that can make me smile, laugh and feel good. I understand that I’m not the only unhappy person in the world and that a lot of people have much bigger problems than I do.

So what I propose to do is remind myself of the little moments of happiness I get out of each day. And, hopefully, by the end of the year I will have around 365 reasons to be happy.

In case you were wondering, a minutia is a small thing. Therefore, the minutiae of life are the small things of life, those moments where a little thing can make or break your day. Example: having a satisfying cup of tea in the morning can make your day, or having no milk so that you can’t make the satisfying cup of tea can break it. Someone suffering from depression, like myself, usually focuses on the latter example.

Around 2 in 3 adults in the UK alone have suffered from depression at least once in their life. Sometimes the period of depression lasts no more than a few weeks, but in some cases it lasts for years. It isn’t dependent on age, although sometimes the typical ‘mid-life crisis’ is caused by it.

Before I start to sound like a medical article, here’s a quote from the Dalai Lama;

“I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. … We are all seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness.”

So, all in all, my mission is to seek happiness.