Wednesday, December 27, 2023

My Random Thoughts on my “Random Thoughts” 2023.


The month of January gets its name from the Roman god Janus who was the god of beginnings, gates and transitions and obviously apropos for the 1st month of the year.[i]   Often Janus is depicted as having two faces with one looking forward and another looking backwards.

There are plenty of forward and backward moments in January that might please the god Janus if the god Janus existed.   We look forward to receiving our W-2’s from our jobs that reveal how much we made in the previous year that we have to report to the IRS by April 15th.   By the time January rolls around most Hollywood pundits are pondering which actors/writers/directors/sound mixers will be nominated and perhaps win that coveted Oscar (ceremony to be held on March 24, 2024) for their performances in 2023.  We realize we eventually have to take down all of the Christmas decorations we put up in 2023 which if you recall was my 1st blogpost published January 9th, 2023.  (to sum up you have anytime between December 26th and the descent of Christ at his 2nd coming) and maybe look forward to when we can put them up again in 2024. 

However, the need to look backward as well as forward I would say primarily takes place during the eight days between Christmas and New Year’s.  News organizations like Time magazine often sum up the year in review in addition to their naming of the Person of the Year[ii].  For 2023 it was Taylor Swift probably because she was that ubiquitous during 2023 and yet, somehow, we weren’t complaining about her ubiquity.  Plenty of YouTubers also have their best/worst lists of the year out as well. 

 But most importantly for me it has now been a year since I’ve started this blog so I thought I’d might reread several of them to realize what I have learned about my “Random Thought” in 2023. 

And this is what I have learned.

.1.      I have to work on getting my blogposts out in a timelier manner.

 My blogpost where I tried to get myself cancelled because of my LGBTQ+ views should have been published at the beginning of June not at the end.    By June 30th most people especially in the LGBTQ+ community were probably over the whole rainbow pride celebrations and didn’t want to think about Pride month any longer.   I also should have published my open letter to Prince Harry and Princess Megan sometime in January 2023 when Prince Harry was promoting his “Spare” autobiography instead of June when even most devout royalists were shrugging and going “So what who cares” about whatever problems Prince Harry and Princess Megan were having with the tabloid press and palace courtiers.  And if I had charged ahead and make sure my “Give Peace a Chance” post came out on October 17th instead of December 11th maybe world peace would have broken out by now and many of the 20,000 Palestinians and a few thousand Israeli’s would be alive instead of dead.[iii]     Then again my husband has just accused me of being that arrogant to assume me singing “Give Peace a Chance” would be all it took to end that war in the middle east even if it did get published by October 17th.   I realize that in order for me to be timely I may need to work on my blogposts weeks if not months in advance.   For example, my most recent blogpost published December 18th, 2023, explaining why “The Toy Story that Time Forgot” was the one Christmas special that best exemplified the true meaning of Christmas I began in July and rewrote after spending time with family on Thanksgiving.

 2.      I need an editor. 

I published four blogposts between August 26th and September 5th going on about how I was OK with the end of the Hollywood world as we know it and why I felt fine.   In hindsight I realize the paragraphs upon paragraphs I published could be summed up in the following single paragraph statement-

Hollywood movie studios need to pay their writers and actors more because the general TV viewing and movie-going public is no longer going to spend their hard-earned time and harder to come by money on mindless drecky entertainment.   Ironically this may mean that fewer movies and TV shows will be made because society at large isn’t giving the Hollywood movie moguls the money they want/need like in the past.  However, with over 100+ years of movies to explore and over 70+ years of television shows to watch Hollywood could cease to exist and we will still find plenty of stuff to entertain us on the various streaming platforms that are out there that ironically probably helped to kill the Hollywood entertainment model to begin with.   Besides, I’m more likely to stream something on YouTube for free from an amateur to semi-professional content creator than stream something from a streaming service owned by the movie studios or a dot.com movie company.

I’m also worried my verbosity may have hindered rather than helped Dallas Jenkins get his $160 million to continue his work on “The Chosen” series.    Maybe me going on and on why Jenkins’ crowdfunding may be drying up and why he still needs lots of money wasn’t the way to go.  Maybe I should have gone on and on about how there a plenty of wonderful jokey moments that are in good taste like in season one episode two when Jesus is sitting down with Mary Magdalene and her friends at Shabbat dinner when Mary Magdalene's friend Barnaby remarks something (or really someone) good can come from a po-dunk town like Nazareth was back in biblical times.  Jesus smiled at Barnaby in agreement instead of scowling at him all wrath-of-God-y.    Maybe talking about 14-minute single take shot of an extremely long line of sick people waiting for Jesus to heal them while the camera followed various apostles dealing with this situation from episode three season two was not the way to go. The general viewing public probably doesn’t understand how technically hard that shot was and how multiple things needed to go right to be perfect.  Maybe I should have gone on and on about the wonderful performances Shahar Isaac and Lara Silva gave as Simon Peter and Simon Peter’s wife Eden especially during the season three story arc where Eden miscarries their child while Simon Peter is away preaching the Gospel (And Eden doesn’t tell Simon Peter about it at first) creating tension between the two of them and eventually between Simon Peter and Jesus.  The whole show makes a point that all of the apostles Jesus surrounded himself while He was here on earth were flawed and fully actualized human beings instead of some lofty marble statues Catholics allegedly worship.    So yes, that show is wonderful with plenty of great dramatic moments.   And that is the point I should have made so the money can come Dallas Jenkins’ way.

By the way it's not too late to donate to Come and See  foundation if you want a tax write off for 2023.   (Or maybe you actually have watched the show and want to make sure Dallas Jenkins gets the $160 million needed for the rest of the show's run).   

3.        3.      I am wondering if I should even be a blogger.

I began the blog because I wanted to get back to writing.   I always wanted to be a writer, and this was my way of getting back to that dream.  I want to take a moment to publicly thank my husband for all of his ongoing support like giving me a how-to blogpost tip book this past Christmas and for giving me time and space to work on this on my own.  

However, just because I want to be a writer and have been writing this blogpost for over a year now doesn’t mean that I should be a writer.

I personally think my blogpost on everyone having Thanksgiving off is the best one I’ve published to date.  However, just because I think it’s great doesn’t mean that it is actually great.    I don’t want to be like a 2000’s "American Idol" contestant going before the judges believing they’re the next Kelly Clarkson only to have Simon Cowell emphatically state a garbage disposal griding metal nuts and bolts to smithereens is more melodious than that tone deaf caterwauling Idol contestant.   I want to know if I am actually good at writing these blogposts.

I haven’t received much in the way of feedback as to whether or not what I'd written was good.   I haven’t also received feedback that what I'd written was awful either. I often wonder if anyone is taking the time to read my blogposts and if not why not?    Am I that boring?  Is my writing style still stuck in the arrested development age of my 13-year-old moody snarky self who began to write?   Is my grammar and borderline run on sentences too much of a turn off in the age of Tik Tok and pithy Facebook memes?    My writing can be very cathartic for me as I try and focus on something other than that customer that screamed at how badly I suck as a human being during my day job.   However, catharsis was created by the Greeks in conjunction with the invention of the play where someone like Sophocles probably wanted the audience to gouge their eyes out at the same time Oedipus learned the truth about his marriage to his wife Jocasta.     Catharsis shouldn’t be an act one does alone.

A writer wants an audience to share their thoughts with.   I could easily just keep a private journal and write my self-loathing thoughts of how I’m a lousy Catholic especially in Lent (My most active time with 10 & ¼ blogs written about it) because I do a lousy job fasting, praying and almsgiving and because of this I’m going to Hell because I love being selfish and self-centered instead of loving Jesus/God/Others.   But, there is part of me that was hoping that maybe me going on and on about how Elvis is likely to be playing in my brain while praying the rosary instead of some biblically appropriate Gregorian chant will make you smile and maybe give you some schadenfreude about how you are better than me.

So, lastly.  Please I really need to know what your random thoughts on my “Random Thoughts”.        What do you think?    

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