My wonderful, talented, smart, exceptional, incredible fiancé is heading to LA in a couple of days. While in LA he will be attending the Beverly Hills International Film Festival, where he is a finalist for his screenplay Tempus Fugit.
I've not read a lot of screen plays. In fact, I've read a total of two, but I've seen a lot of movies. I love movies from the silly to the astounding, I love the experience of watching a movie in a cinema, watching a movie at home on my sofa, watching a movie in bed on my iPad, however I watch it I passionately love movies.
And more than any movie I've seen, or heard about, I know that Tempus Fugit will be the greatest movie I'll ever see in my lifetime...if it gets made.
I may have a slight bias, but that aside, this is a touching, wonderful, beautifully written tale of friendship and heartbreak, that will leave you wanting more.
And my guy wrote it. And I couldn't be more proud of him.
I wish you so much luck in LA, my love. No matter the outcome we'll find a way to make this movie, because it'd simply be a crime if other people didn't get to see the movie that plays in the head every time I read this script.
You, my smoosh, are my favourite writer, and I'm so very lucky that you write wonderful things, like Tempus Fugit, just for me.
That last bit might not be true, but it's a little bit true in my head.
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Monday, 23 April 2012
The enemy within
Depression and anxiety are a terrible disease. Mental illness in whatever form is a terrible thing to experience. You can't see it, you can't pinpoint symptoms to a concrete disease, and diagnosis and treatments are, at best, good guess work by you and your doctor.
Medication for mental illness is dicey. Sometimes it will turn you into an emotionless robot, incapable of feeling, tasting, thinking, living. Sometimes it will make you so physically sick that the mental pain becomes secondary to the physical problems. Sometimes it will result in increased depression, anxiety, thoughts of suicide. It's a mixed bag that almost always comes with bad more than good.
I take a drug called dothep for my anxiety. It's a Tricyclic antidepressant, which basically means it blocks the reuptake of serotonin in the brain, resulting in an increase in its levels. Serotonin being one of the things in your brain that results in happy, it helps you cope with stress by helping you relax. Serotonin is the stuff that makes you feel good after a block of chocolate, or post orgasm, so more is better.
I'm on a really low dose. Like really low. It's basically enough to help me sleep at night, because I'm one f those people that doesn't do that much. I stress a lot. I spend all night tossing and turning and everything is a thousand times worse the next day because I didn't sleep.
The dothep works. Its great, I guess, in that I sleep most nights. I don't hear my phone chime that I have email ever, so I'm clearly totally dead to the world, but I wake up every morning exhausted, regardless of the apparent good nights rest.
I also struggle to function a lot of days. I'm angry at work, I'm sad at home, I feel like everywhere I go out of the house I'm wearing the angry face, because I am angry. All the time. And I hate it. This irrational anger is what drove me to cave on taking something for my anxiety in the first place. And then drove me to a slightly increased dose. And here we are, 9 months later, and wondering if it's time again to increase the dose.
Is this just a period of stress? Or do I need more help? Should that help involve therapy? Am I feeling so off kilter that I need more help than I get from my family? I really don't know lately.
The questions in my head make it hard for me to settle to sleep lately. Even with the pills the ability to actually drift off to sleep is harder than it was.
And I write blog posts in my head to try and stop the swirling questions. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I have to type them out to find a quiet place in my brain.
Mental illness is still so misunderstood. Confessing you have it is hard. Finding the right medication is hard. Finding the right therapist is hard. And sleeping, apparently is pretty hard too.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Medication for mental illness is dicey. Sometimes it will turn you into an emotionless robot, incapable of feeling, tasting, thinking, living. Sometimes it will make you so physically sick that the mental pain becomes secondary to the physical problems. Sometimes it will result in increased depression, anxiety, thoughts of suicide. It's a mixed bag that almost always comes with bad more than good.
I take a drug called dothep for my anxiety. It's a Tricyclic antidepressant, which basically means it blocks the reuptake of serotonin in the brain, resulting in an increase in its levels. Serotonin being one of the things in your brain that results in happy, it helps you cope with stress by helping you relax. Serotonin is the stuff that makes you feel good after a block of chocolate, or post orgasm, so more is better.
I'm on a really low dose. Like really low. It's basically enough to help me sleep at night, because I'm one f those people that doesn't do that much. I stress a lot. I spend all night tossing and turning and everything is a thousand times worse the next day because I didn't sleep.
The dothep works. Its great, I guess, in that I sleep most nights. I don't hear my phone chime that I have email ever, so I'm clearly totally dead to the world, but I wake up every morning exhausted, regardless of the apparent good nights rest.
I also struggle to function a lot of days. I'm angry at work, I'm sad at home, I feel like everywhere I go out of the house I'm wearing the angry face, because I am angry. All the time. And I hate it. This irrational anger is what drove me to cave on taking something for my anxiety in the first place. And then drove me to a slightly increased dose. And here we are, 9 months later, and wondering if it's time again to increase the dose.
Is this just a period of stress? Or do I need more help? Should that help involve therapy? Am I feeling so off kilter that I need more help than I get from my family? I really don't know lately.
The questions in my head make it hard for me to settle to sleep lately. Even with the pills the ability to actually drift off to sleep is harder than it was.
And I write blog posts in my head to try and stop the swirling questions. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I have to type them out to find a quiet place in my brain.
Mental illness is still so misunderstood. Confessing you have it is hard. Finding the right medication is hard. Finding the right therapist is hard. And sleeping, apparently is pretty hard too.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Wednesday, 11 April 2012
Oh Captain, My Captain
The nature of admiration and hero worship are an interesting thing. When we first come to admire someone, with me anyway, the hero worship is such that it prevents you from seeing the flaws in the person you admire. You place them on a pedestal, and you think every move they make, every decision they come to, is genius. You'd support them unquestioning no matter what and damn to hell anyone that doesn't agree with you, or your idol.
And then a time comes that you grow up. Or circumstances change. Your morals or values change. Your directions change. Your passions change. And the person you so admired no longer gels with the direction you're going in.
They've stayed the same, while you've changed. Or you've stayed the same, while they've changed. It doesn't really matter how it came about, but the person on the pedestal is suddenly real and fallible, and it's kind of a shock.
And it's kind of sad.
Or is it?
Is it just normal that as you grow up, learn, start to define who you are, that the idols you had in your youth no longer make sense. You find out that the Easter bunny isn't real, Elmo has a human hand up his ass, and sometimes even the best of people make mistakes.
You don't think Hillary should have forgiven Bill, but you still love Hillary for her strength of purpose, and courage, and ability to stand strong in a room full of men and you know she's kicking ass and holding her own.
You don't agree with Michelle's fat shaming of kids that are already getting bullied for their weight, but she's a strong, intelligent, passionate woman who doesn't shy away from saying what she thinks and so you continue to admire what she does for women.
With others though, perhaps the departure of values is so extensive, that it feels impossible to find that spark that caught your eye when you were young and impressional. You wonder about what you were thinking, were you just young and stupid, or have you changed so much?
It's like that moment when you realise that there's no fixing the precious teddy that has lived on your bed since the day you were born and you finally have to be a big kid and learn to sleep alone.
A hero falling from grace (in your own mind), much like your teddy ending up in the bin, is a moment of self-realisation where you take stock of yourself. Your changes. Your strengths and weaknesses.
And you hopefully come to realisation that admiring someone is wonderful, but hero worship is a thing of youth, and you no longer need to place someone on a pedestal from which they will inevitably fall.
And then a time comes that you grow up. Or circumstances change. Your morals or values change. Your directions change. Your passions change. And the person you so admired no longer gels with the direction you're going in.
They've stayed the same, while you've changed. Or you've stayed the same, while they've changed. It doesn't really matter how it came about, but the person on the pedestal is suddenly real and fallible, and it's kind of a shock.
And it's kind of sad.
Or is it?
Is it just normal that as you grow up, learn, start to define who you are, that the idols you had in your youth no longer make sense. You find out that the Easter bunny isn't real, Elmo has a human hand up his ass, and sometimes even the best of people make mistakes.
You don't think Hillary should have forgiven Bill, but you still love Hillary for her strength of purpose, and courage, and ability to stand strong in a room full of men and you know she's kicking ass and holding her own.
You don't agree with Michelle's fat shaming of kids that are already getting bullied for their weight, but she's a strong, intelligent, passionate woman who doesn't shy away from saying what she thinks and so you continue to admire what she does for women.
With others though, perhaps the departure of values is so extensive, that it feels impossible to find that spark that caught your eye when you were young and impressional. You wonder about what you were thinking, were you just young and stupid, or have you changed so much?
It's like that moment when you realise that there's no fixing the precious teddy that has lived on your bed since the day you were born and you finally have to be a big kid and learn to sleep alone.
A hero falling from grace (in your own mind), much like your teddy ending up in the bin, is a moment of self-realisation where you take stock of yourself. Your changes. Your strengths and weaknesses.
And you hopefully come to realisation that admiring someone is wonderful, but hero worship is a thing of youth, and you no longer need to place someone on a pedestal from which they will inevitably fall.
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Life
Life is an incredible gift, one I fear that not enough of us appreciate. I certainly don't think I do.
We wake up, blindly struggle through the morning routine of shower, coffee, news, drive to work, and then slave away at at a job we hate before coming home to friends, family, pet, or the aloneness that we've created for ourselves. We make dinner and zone out in front of TV or the Internet, or a game, and don't really think about the world around us, or the stunning gift of our own bodies that allow us to follow this mindless routine day after day.
Without you even thinking about it your body sustains your existence. It takes in air, oxygen, just by itself, it takes the nutrients out of food and turns them into the energy you need to function. it helps you learn that touching hot things is bad, and the freezing salt water is not fun to play in. It is capable of so much, and so many of us do nothing with it.
We don't test it, or train it, or help sustain it by treating it with kindness and respect.
We feed it salt laden, sugar laden, fat laden, chemical laden, genetically modified foods that really couldn't be considered food by any sane person. I'm so guilty of this. Every meal I ate, for a whole week two weeks ago, was in some way processed. Refined white flour, processed fat reduced salami, cured prosciutto which is heavy with tasty tasty salt, processed cheese, meat from cows that were most certainly not raised ethically.
And I guess the worst bit is that while we do it, poison our bodies, we don't really think about it. We enjoy food, as we should, because it's wonderful and sustains us, but we maybe shouldn't consume so much, and so many things that our poor bodies aren't designed to deal with.
I very much doubt that I'll stop eating pizza, or cake, and you'll have to pry my flat white from my cold dead hands, but I am going to try to be more aware of what I'm putting into my body.
I'm going to buy more regional fresh produce grown by people that don't cover things in chemicals. I'm going to buy free range meats so at least my steak had a good life before it became steak. I'm going to try eating fruits a d vegetables. And eating at a table concentrating on this wonderful fuel that is going to sustain me from day to day.
We, society, have become sinfully indulgent in our constant search for happiness and gratification, and I'm terrible ashamed of how much I contribute to that description.
Time to be more better at this thing called life.
Onwards and upwards my friends, let us embrace being better people to prove humanity is not a lost cause.
Ps. Just read this over, sorry about the typos and pretentious twaddle, it's been a very tiring confronting week.
We wake up, blindly struggle through the morning routine of shower, coffee, news, drive to work, and then slave away at at a job we hate before coming home to friends, family, pet, or the aloneness that we've created for ourselves. We make dinner and zone out in front of TV or the Internet, or a game, and don't really think about the world around us, or the stunning gift of our own bodies that allow us to follow this mindless routine day after day.
Without you even thinking about it your body sustains your existence. It takes in air, oxygen, just by itself, it takes the nutrients out of food and turns them into the energy you need to function. it helps you learn that touching hot things is bad, and the freezing salt water is not fun to play in. It is capable of so much, and so many of us do nothing with it.
We don't test it, or train it, or help sustain it by treating it with kindness and respect.
We feed it salt laden, sugar laden, fat laden, chemical laden, genetically modified foods that really couldn't be considered food by any sane person. I'm so guilty of this. Every meal I ate, for a whole week two weeks ago, was in some way processed. Refined white flour, processed fat reduced salami, cured prosciutto which is heavy with tasty tasty salt, processed cheese, meat from cows that were most certainly not raised ethically.
And I guess the worst bit is that while we do it, poison our bodies, we don't really think about it. We enjoy food, as we should, because it's wonderful and sustains us, but we maybe shouldn't consume so much, and so many things that our poor bodies aren't designed to deal with.
I very much doubt that I'll stop eating pizza, or cake, and you'll have to pry my flat white from my cold dead hands, but I am going to try to be more aware of what I'm putting into my body.
I'm going to buy more regional fresh produce grown by people that don't cover things in chemicals. I'm going to buy free range meats so at least my steak had a good life before it became steak. I'm going to try eating fruits a d vegetables. And eating at a table concentrating on this wonderful fuel that is going to sustain me from day to day.
We, society, have become sinfully indulgent in our constant search for happiness and gratification, and I'm terrible ashamed of how much I contribute to that description.
Time to be more better at this thing called life.
Onwards and upwards my friends, let us embrace being better people to prove humanity is not a lost cause.
Ps. Just read this over, sorry about the typos and pretentious twaddle, it's been a very tiring confronting week.
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
May the road rise up to meet you
This amazing kid I know died today.
I didn't know him that well, didn't know what he liked for breakfast, or how he had his coffee, but he was my little brothers best friend since the age of, maybe 13, and so this kid was a presence in my life for the last 10 years.
And he was an amazing kid. He was smart, passionate, dedicated and kind. He was the kind of kid where, when you met him, you just knew he was destined to change the world. He was just that kind of amazing. He would laugh, and the world just seemed brighter, because he was so bright.
As they say, those that burn the brightest, burn the fastest, and so it was for Jerome.
The story of his final months is a sad one. You see, he just got married 3 weeks ago. He's been living with his girl for years, and they're incredibly committed to each other, but they only just got married 3 weeks ago. And the wedding was beautiful, his bride was stunning, he was happy, though he looked incredibly gaunt and had no energy and needed to sit down a lot.
Today, and yesterday, before he passed away, the cancer had effected his memory and he didn't remember his marriage. He remembered things from years ago, but not his marriage or his bride.
I can't even imagine her heartbreak. Not just losing her husband and partner mere weeks after their wedding, but losing his emotionally due to his memory before losing him to death. The emotional toll of that moment where he didn't remember her must have been so shattering. To lose someone so bright and vibrant in itself, without everything else surrounding it, would be hard but to lose him like this...it breaks my heart to think of her hurt, and my brothers hurt, and his families hurt, and all his friends who loved him like family.
We all deserve a chance to live a beautiful life full of love, and Jerome fit more love in his short life that many would in 80 or 90 years.
Hug someone you love today. Tell them you love them. Live life in a way that not just makes sure that people remember you, but they remember you with love, and talk about your passion and kindness, and how you changed their life.
May you shine as brightly in whatever comes next as you did in life, Jerome, you lit up every room you walked into.
I didn't know him that well, didn't know what he liked for breakfast, or how he had his coffee, but he was my little brothers best friend since the age of, maybe 13, and so this kid was a presence in my life for the last 10 years.
And he was an amazing kid. He was smart, passionate, dedicated and kind. He was the kind of kid where, when you met him, you just knew he was destined to change the world. He was just that kind of amazing. He would laugh, and the world just seemed brighter, because he was so bright.
As they say, those that burn the brightest, burn the fastest, and so it was for Jerome.
The story of his final months is a sad one. You see, he just got married 3 weeks ago. He's been living with his girl for years, and they're incredibly committed to each other, but they only just got married 3 weeks ago. And the wedding was beautiful, his bride was stunning, he was happy, though he looked incredibly gaunt and had no energy and needed to sit down a lot.
Today, and yesterday, before he passed away, the cancer had effected his memory and he didn't remember his marriage. He remembered things from years ago, but not his marriage or his bride.
I can't even imagine her heartbreak. Not just losing her husband and partner mere weeks after their wedding, but losing his emotionally due to his memory before losing him to death. The emotional toll of that moment where he didn't remember her must have been so shattering. To lose someone so bright and vibrant in itself, without everything else surrounding it, would be hard but to lose him like this...it breaks my heart to think of her hurt, and my brothers hurt, and his families hurt, and all his friends who loved him like family.
We all deserve a chance to live a beautiful life full of love, and Jerome fit more love in his short life that many would in 80 or 90 years.
Hug someone you love today. Tell them you love them. Live life in a way that not just makes sure that people remember you, but they remember you with love, and talk about your passion and kindness, and how you changed their life.
May you shine as brightly in whatever comes next as you did in life, Jerome, you lit up every room you walked into.
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