A Brief Link Love

Sorry, everyone. Been under the weather the past few days, and I need to sleep. However, saving Oscar Link Love for next week didn't make much sense. Drew live-blogged the Oscars from a different dimension. Apparently, he didn't like the nominees... or having to blog about the Oscars.

The Academy Awards is one show I actually watch every year, and this year was... meh. Billy Crustal Crystal is old, but he had a few good zingers. Parts of his routine, like the whole "what are they thinking", made me roll my eyes wasn't that funny, but it was still better than James "where's the weed" Franco. Emma Stone was awesome, and if you haven't seen Easy A, you need to download rent it immediately. Meryl Streep won. A classy white lady. I'm certain that after nominating her for seventeen years and wondering if Viola Davis was really as good as she was she deserved it. Hey, nothing says art like The Iron Lady.

Jennifer Lopez apparently wore a dress with nipples, although my wife and I were pretty certain they were hers. And Angelina Jolie's Right Leg made an appearance. Too bad her arms didn't show up. Pretty sad to see Lara Croft without the ability to hold a gun anymore. And a terrible example for young girls fretting about being skinny. Look, I love Jolie, but she looked like a crack addict did NOT look attractive.

And if you didn't hear, the Iranian picture that won for the best foreign movie, according to a group of  Iranian jerkoffs the Iranian government, was a win over the Zionist Jews. I get that I'm Canadian, and that I'll never understand a 4000 year-old blood feud, but at some point you have to grow the f*ck up and realize that you're a bunch of racist assholes show some maturity. What a bunch of douchebags.

As for the GOP "leadership" race, Romney won in Michigan and Arizona, and Santorum thinks Obama is a "snob" for wanting kids to go to college. Whatever. There's nothing to say here. Santorum isn't a conservative, he's a fundamentalist. A total whack job. And not even worth talking about for those of us who read books without pictures. What's frightening is that the GOP race is all about men. Good grief, it's like they're channeling their inner Roman. (You do remember Rome, where women had the legal rights of chickens and infants. and no, that's not hyperbole.)

There were some good things that happened, but I'm wiped. I'll post more in the next few days. Thanks for your patience, everyone.

-Steve

Link Love is Coming

Link Love will be up sometime today, folks. I wanted to catch the latest Celebrity Apprentice see the results of last night's GOP leadership race first. Apologies.

-Steve

D&D: Who Are You?

(Have you tried the Monday Challenge yet? You won't be disappointed. Give it a whirl!)

There’s a full length mirror in the hallway in our building that my wife and I both like. It stretches you out, so if you’re short, like my wife, it projects you as being a bit taller. And if you’re built like a brick shithouse, like me, it almost gives you the illusion of being lean. But even mirrors that reflect more accurate dimensions don’t tell us much about ourselves. Self-reflection doesn’t always work either. It can help, but there are really only a couple of things that can give us an accurate picture of who we are. The first is the way others see us. The role we fill in their eyes. (the caregiver, the comic, the perky happy girl, the intellectual, etc…) Who they believe we are matters, because we usually act to meet people’s expectations. (Which is why you always hear psychologists talk about setting high standards when you’re leading people, for example.) The second, but more important way to understand who we are is to figure out the self-narrative that drives our actions. If your life was a story (and it is), what would that story be? If there was a film about your life, what would the theme be?

Until we know we are, or at least understand the narrative that drives us, it’s impossible to think about pursuing our dreams. Over the years, I've worked with a number of young adults who had no idea what their dreams were, no idea what they wanted from life. Now part of that goes back to our environment as a child, how healthy or unhealthy it was, and subsequent issues as a result of it. And sometimes it’s clear to people what they want at an early age. I have friends who wanted to be writers when they were twelve, and have never wavered. But for the rest of us (I didn’t figure out the writing bug until I was twenty three) even the concept of dreaming isn’t part of our makeup. Or maybe we had a dream, but for whatever reason, the opportunity passed us by, and now we’re supposed to “move on”, but have no idea how to do that.

The easiest way to understand who you are, is to figure out what stories you find compelling. What kind of books do you like? What kind of movies do you watch? Why do you like certain types of music or certain bands? There’s a reason you like action films with strong female leads (as rare as that is). There’s a reason why you like that indie band that talks about life in the suburbs.

Humans connect to one another through story. That’s the link, and it’s the reason certain people connect more easily to some than others. Look at your friends. Why do you like them? What is it that you find so compelling about them? What’s their story?

There are other ways to figure out who you are, of course. Like taking a personality test. (I recommend the Myers-Briggs) But understanding the story you tell yourself is more important than even understanding the particular characteristics of your personality. We profoundly influence ourselves more than any person we’ll ever meet, and often that persuasion is negative. We tell ourselves that we’re just a mother, just another guy at the post office, just another ______.

This week, take a few minutes to think about the stories that you identify with, and ask yourself why they register. Why they mean so much to you. Once you begin to understand your story, you’re ready to change it. To create something new and profound. It won’t happen all at once, but if you're patient, you'll find the journey more rewarding than you ever imagined. 

Steve