The Man Behind the Curtain: May

 Over the last several months I have talked about a lot of why I am the way I am or why I do things the way that I do. Thus far, we have talked about a lot of positives. I don't want to say that what I am bringing up today is negative, but I look at it negatively a lot. 

Have you ever felt like no matter what you do your running around in circles. That it's the same thing over and over and over again? 

I know lots of movie characters feel like this. They they are stuff in a loop in their life and they have no clue how to get out of it, or how to cope. Adaline, in Age of Adaline, is a great example of this. 

Adaline was a normal 20 something year old in the early 1930s. She feel in love, had a baby, and was living her beautiful, but simple, life. When her husband died in an accident, she felt the first of a long live of sorrows they she didn't know were to come. Her daughter and her were able to live with the lose and built a life. However, on her way to her parent's house, during a rare snow storm in California, Adaline lost control of her car, feel in the ivy pond on the side of the road, and died. Not that long after, lighting struck the car, which restarted her heart, and changed the parts of her DNA. She would not longer age. 

This bit of information would not be known to her until many years later, when it was very evident, that her age was not lining up with what her face looked like. Looking like you are in your late 20s/early 30s and your real age is in the 70s is rather hard to explain. When the government takes notice that she is not lying about who she is, and that she isn't aging, she has to go on the run. She spends the next several decades changing her name, and coming up with a new identity, so that no one is the wiser on who she is, or want to speak to her. 

Adaline doesn't have many people in her life. She has one friends who is blind, so had no idea that she look way younger than she is, her daughter knows who she is, and her dog is always good a keeping secrets. Other than that, no one really knows her, and she prefers it that way. Though her daughter doesn't like that she is mostly alone. She wants her mother to find her own happiness, Adaline doesn't because she knows that there is no future with whoever it is she would meet. 

This all changes when she meets Ellis. 

While she doesn't want to fall for him, she does. She is faced with having to continue to live while he knows the truth, or to leave him and be alone again. 

Will she choose love till death does them part, or does fate have other ideas in mind. 

If you sit an think about it long enough, life really is the same things over and over and over again. You wake up and do similar things like eat, sleep, breath, blink, but that very over simplified isn't it? I feel "stuck" in my life is more ways than I care to admit. There isn't a whole lot that we can do to be "unstuck", right? To quote the movie Marry Me "If you want something different you have to do something different". Now, this is a great quote to learn from, but you can't live by it all of the time. If you do, you will cross a line of doing something different that you can't undo, or dramatically change your life and you could loose control over it.

However, this line is great for what Adaline does through the whole movie. She has a routine, she has her passions, and she is cautious about what she does do and what she doesn't do. Yes, sometimes you have to take big risks for things in your life, but really if you want something different in your life you don't have to change your whole life. Just a few small parts.

For me, I don't like my eating habits and my current walk with God. I'm struggling. I feel like my lack to talking with God is killing me spiritually (it is) and my unhealthy food and lack of exercise is killing me physically and slowly (it is). The problem with me is that I feel like in order to fix both of those things I have to over hall my whole life in order to fix them. In reality, if I commit to doing the things I know that I should be doing, and making small changes for more desired effects, it will help me. I don't have to turn over and be perfect in one swoop. I can't do things over time. 

The honest truth is, when I am feeling stuff, I know it's just my life telling me that I need to look around and make some small change in my life. That could mean getting out of town to a bit, or just not eat as many fries (though that it had). Being "stuck" has been a part of my life over the last few years, however, it's been a great guiding force to learn new things, and try new things, and reach out of my comfort zone just a little bit. 

It's a tool that I need to learn to wield, and fight against.    

Come Forward: April

So, let's talk about one of the secret projects that I am working on. I won't say that it is but I will say, I feel behind. Which I so odd because there is no deadline on this one project. Nothing, nadda, no pressure. The only person that even knows I am working on something, isn't hounding me to get anything done. So, why do I feel behind. 

Well, it's because I know what I am supposed to be doing and I'm not doing it. 

 

Coach Grant is the leader of the Eagles football team. He just ended this sixth year of coaching with another loosing season. He feels like he has done everything that he could, and it's not enough. On top of that, he house is falling apart, his car is breaking down, him and his wife are having trouble having a baby, and the world is falling down around him. 

He feels like he is going to throw in the towel when he decides that do the one thing that he hasn't done, give it all to God. 

Grant is a believer that hasn't be doing much of it for a little while now. The night he hits rock bottom, is the night he studies God's word and decides that he needs to get his priorities back on track. He has to put God in his life first, and then he has to have everything in his life fall in line after that. The moment that he commit to changing his life, God starts to show up. Not just in the areas of this life that he needs to be fixed but in other ways he never expected.  

Not only did his life turn around, but several members on his team's lives started to change. Several were saved, and turning their lives to God, their relationships turned toward the better, new members join and were successful in other way they never dreamed of, and the team ends up going to the the State Championships, and winning. 

I have always loved the movie! It's one that always fills me with hope, and reminds me who I belong to. Also, who isn't inspired by the death crawl scene? That scene is so good because if we have faith the voice that is telling us we can do something, and we blind our eyes to the goal we mentally set, we get farther than we ever thought was possible. I think that is how I feel now in the project. 

I took a break from my secret project, mainly because I have been very busy and not able to provide the attention that I want to give it. Also, because I needed to step back a bit and figure some things out. Listing to that voice is a good thing. God told me last year to take a break from these projects, and now I am doing so much better all around! I wasn't forcing myself to do something that I wasn't passionate about just because "it's what I have been doing the last few years". I listened the whole week when I was worried I was going to loose the moment on this project and God just said to slow down and wait. 

The reason that I was worried about the momentum? I am in a place I never thought I would be. I never thought I would get nearly as far as I have. I am in such scary and unfamiliar territory that I have no idea what to do with myself! 

I am very excited to get started again, but I know that I can't have it control my whole life and taking a step back is actually better for me in the long run. 

No Place Like Movies At Home: Babe On Broadway

 See, like I said the last couple of days. I am better in the area than I have been in the last couple of years! It also helps that I finally out of a rut of movies that I wasn't too fond of. We have a very long line of musicals that are starting to take shape here!

We are continuing the rolls of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movies with Babes on Broadway!

Tommy and his trio are out for the big time on the Great White Way! However, they closest that they have gotten is the cellar of an small Italian place in New York City. They sometimes pass by Broadway on their way home. Things aren't perfect but they know they are working regularly and they hope to make it big one day. One day is sooner than they think when they meet a woman who works for a Broadway Producer! She tells them that they can't speak a work of the audition that she is going to work out for them because it will upset her boss if everyone shows up!

So, what do they do? Tell struggling actor that they know while bragging. The creates chaos during the audition because hundred of people show up! They don't get their shot, and have to come up with another idea. That is when Tommy meets Penny. 

Penny is a actress herself, but just messed up her big chance and wondering what to do next. The two start talking and Penny invites him over for dinner, and they get to talking to a neighbor about getting the kids to the country. 

Tommy later finds out that the comity falls through on their promise to the kids, and he helps to put of a show to raise the money. However, the show gets so popular that the producer gets mad that he is being shown up right down the street from where his show is going on. 

Now, I love this movie but it doesn't have the same charm for me as Babes in Arms and Strike Up the Band have. I am not sure why because the music and great, and the movie is funny. however, If I am choosing to watch one of their movies it's not likely going to be this one. However, it's one that I would still recommend for someone who loves Micky or Judy! 

The Man Behind The Curtain: April

 So, here we are again! How fast is your year going? Is it possibly as fast as mine? Faster? Well, let me tell you it has flown by so far! I have gotten to do many different things so fare this year, and so much that is still yet to come. I am not sure how I am going to do it all. However, I am feeling good on it because this time last year was not doing to hot. 

I was living a in place that I hated! I wasn't on top of anything. I became complacent in so much in my life that I still feel like I am trying to get back into gear now. What I soon found out last year is that everything can change in a matter of moths. I am now in a much better place, and much happier. Yes, I do get behind and feel like I am not a certain level that I was in years past. However, I know that sometimes that I just part of life. I am loving what I am doing, and even though I am a bit behind. I am doing way better that I was so. Life can change when you least expect it. 

I don't think there are too many characters that know this lesson better than these two, Vivian and Edward. 

If you don't know the movie Pretty Woman than you need to go and see if soon! 

Edward is a millionaire who you would think would have his life together. However, we soon learn that is had failed at yet another relationship. In a blur, he borrows his friend's car, and travels that streets of New York and meet Vivian. Vivian is a prostituted that who basically had to grow up in this life style because she didn't know of any other way to make money. She takes the "job" from Edward thinking it would be like every other normal night. However, when the hotel she is taken back to is the one for people is a tax bracket she could only dream of, she has a hard time being a professional. 

The next morning, Edward asks her to stay for the week and would pay her thousands of dollars, and lost of new clothes, for her to be his date for the week. In that time she befriends many different people to help her to pass as someone in this totally different world she has been thrown into. She handles it beautifully, all while still being true to herself. 

Vivian and Edward part ways, and see that so many people saw more protentional in her than she ever saw in herself, she takes a leap of faith and leaves her life of prostitution. She soon realized that she doesn't have to do it alone as Edward has fallen in love with her and is willing to help her in any way he can. 

This is one of those movies that I have seen many times before, but I always forget just how good it is, and how much fun it is to watch. It's witty, personable, and has great character development through the whole thing. The truth is there to that where you are now is not what we are always meant to stay. That we can be better, or worse, than where we started. That sometimes to be better you have to be worse than where you are not. The most important is, your past does not define you. 

I think we all struggle with that. We all think that we are not good enough for something, or that we aren't capable of it. That thinking that daring to think that we can be better one day is a sin. That we are only as good as our last mistake, or our last success. That's just now true. There is more to each of us in that first encounter that we have with the world. That you can only be at rock bottom, or on top of the world with no in between and that is not true. There are so many parts of use that change all though our lives that one thing can be true at one point and then be the opposite later on. 

Knowing ourselves means that we are never fully going understand ourselves. 

We are constantly learning and changing and we have to be ok with that. We are never going to look, act, feel, or the same our whole lives. Knowing that we are constantly growing and changing is how we know to be kind out ourselves and keep learning about us. Being stuck in one place for took long can become a danger to us.

I think that this is way I love doing these yearly project. Trust me when I started out they weren't meant to happen every year. It started with and idea that grew into this! 

I love that they push me forward, and give me something to think about. That I get to have something that I enjoy without anyone else interfering in them, or telling me how to do them. I can set the limits, and create the rules as I go or enforce them how I see fit. The projects help me to have something to do and look forward to, and then also makes me feel good when I push my own boundaries, and do things I never thought possible, or would ever dare try to do! 

I think it's a great way to get out of your comfort zone, without having to go nuts and go too far. It's a great way express yourself and try new things in a manageable way.