My taxes are done and the Easter weekend comes to an end and spring is finally starting to arrive in earnest here in western NY. I have a bunch of random thoughts I'll group together, differentiating thought-changes with a color-change.
I spent last night with a friend who provided me the seed for my message in Now What about material things not providing true happiness. It's very interesting how often I am using Brokeback Mountain as a parable for various life situations these days. It's a story with many parables itself, so I suppose that's inevitable.
My usual reaction to people hurting is a desire to help them find ways to stop hurting. I've always been a problem-solver kind of friend to people. Unfortunately, when you figure you have found some answers and the person just can't pick up what you are putting down, it gets frustrating real fast. Here's a guy who tries incredibly hard to be well-liked and accepted, and he needn't bother because he has those inherent qualities by default. In fact, his efforts end up backfiring when he lays on the praise and generous thoughts so heavily that you start doubting his intentions, especially when his actions don't match his glowing words. Then you start believing the person is playing you by buttering you up.
I am convinced we all have these self-doubt demons in us that lead us to doubting we can make this or that work in our lives. That sure has been the case in my own over the years. The only way out of Demonland is to, step by step, prove those demons wrong. BetterMost has helped there.
Learning about IdahoLonely's plight tonight was a bit shocking to me, if only because I hadn't noticed he'd been offline for more than a week and I hadn't heard from him. Doing your taxes will do that to you, as well as spring cleaning and trying to catch up on the things you didn't accomplish for half the winter because you were too busy visiting Brokeback Mountain over and over again.
My personal goal is to not let the movie's message slip away from me, because that could be a major threat to my drive to change. It's easy to fall back into bad habits when you stop believing.
Showtime has been running The Game, circa 1997 starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn once again. It was definitely a message-movie, complete with some paranoia about what is real and what isn't. It is a great film for an adult audience who enjoy watching characters stuck in a grinding life pattern find change in their lives by something shaking them up. If you haven't seen it, consider renting it or watching it. Yes, there are scenes over the top that seem to lack "real world" credibility, but it's still entertaining.
