Saturday, August 2, 2014

I'm Back!

"Boyhood" Source: www.mrmovie-review.com
I watched the Richard Linklater masterpiece "Boyhood" last night, and it inspired me, to say the least.


For starters, the movie is a sweeping American story that was filmed over 12 years. Regardless of outcome, already you're witnessing the work of someone who is swinging for the bleachers.

The outcome is a series of moments filmed over the years, like waking up to your sister mock-singing "Oops I Did It Again," a fight over a haircut, and a make-out session in the back of a station wagon. 

Overheard on the way out of the theater was a woman saying "I kept waiting for something to happen," and I found myself feeling that way too.

And then I realized that that was the whole point of the film, what it was prefaced on. Life is a series of moments, and more than the graduations, the awards, and eventually the marriages, the divorces, and inevitable deaths, the moments that add up to make the person are the kid down the street who you never got to say goodbye to when your family moved, the exchange with the neighbor whose door you knocked on when helping campaign for Obama, and the photographs that you developed in the high school dark room.

I walked out of the crowded theater with the rush of the Arcade Fire melody playing over the credits streaming us outdoors, and felt myself inevitably examining the moments of my life. Shattuck Avenue. Midnight. Alone. At the movies.

If honest moments are what life's all about, then I at least want to be writing and writing honestly.

I opened up Twenty-Something Biz-Op-Ed this morning for the first time in over two years. A lot has changed for me in the past two years. The end of a relationship, the start of a business, the move into a place of my own, and the blossoming of many next phases of my life. I feel like I'm the Alyson 5.0 to the Alyson 2.0 of May 23, 2013. 

It's embarrassing to put yourself out there. It's embarrassing to have to submit to saying 'Yes, this is me, this is it,' and putting a stake in the ground. And it's embarrassing to see versions of your old self-- and your current self-- and see massive changes in some respects, and in other respects complete and utter sameness to the person you always have been.

Ellar Coltrane talked about how he felt watching Boyhood for the first time from beginning to end, and he said it was brutal.

I changed the name of the blog from 'Twenty-Something Biz Op-Ed' to 'Twenty--Scratch That-- Thirty-Something Op-Ed.' I didn't want to just drop 'Twenty-Something.' It started as that. I wanted to show the progress. I did, however, drop the 'Biz' because I have a business for that now. 

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