It's All in Your Mind....

     I have never really been into scary movies. I like to think that it's because my imagination can take a harmless scene and morph it into something horrifyingly morbid--like flying dreams where you just can't land and suffocate when you float away from Earth into outer space... For most kids the dream about flying would be fun.

Photo by: Riccardo Cuppini

     Sometimes real-life situations are creepy enough to inspire horror movie scenes without my imagination going overboard. Like when I was about twelve and watched a Stephen King movie about dead pets coming to life. I don't remember the ending, I just remember being terrified when I saw my cat's glowing green eyes at the level of my window that night.
     Other times it's simply the feeling that there's something just beyond my field of vision and if I don't watch out for it something unspeakable is going to happen. Like that feeling of being home alone when the electricity goes out. That dead silence is one of the most frightening sounds I've ever experienced, not because there's no television or internet or anything to keep me entertained, but because it can mean freezing to death or having no ability to make people aware of dangers. I still wake up when the power goes out in the middle of the night.
     I was reading somewhere that people who experience chronic pain say the anticipation of pain is actually more painful than pain itself. I feel like the unknown is like that: more terrifying by the imagination's anticipation of everything that could happen. That loud crashing sound could be someone slamming a door, or it could be someone breaking into the neighbor's house; chances are it's just the janitor at the school throwing trash in the dumpster.
     So why do hundreds of people every day watch movies that make them experience the fear I feel when walking in a dark parking garage or down a dark street? Maybe it's the thrill of surviving that unknown. For me, it's enough to just read a scene from a book or watch Supernatural, I let my imagination fill in the rest...

Just a thought...
Stephie

New Year 2014!

     It's a whole new year!

     As exciting as that sounds, it is also completely terrifying! While a year is only a measure of time and there isn't really anything different between Tuesday December 31 and Wednesday January 1 we place so much more on the differentiation between that specific Tuesday and Wednesday.
     This is the time of year when people make promises for the future, when we look at the past and make plans. This is the time when we have hope and expectations are running high. It is also the time when we make resolutions.
     Resolutions aren't just goals, they're promises we make to ourselves. For some, resolutions are plans we don't believe we'll achieve. For others, resolutions are our deepest darkest hopes that we want fulfilled. Making it a "New Year's Resolution" makes it possible, caught up in the hype of a new year, the hope of a new beginning we have the drive to make those goals become reality.
     I've never been good at keeping to my resolutions, but this year I'm making it my resolution to work every single day to keep my resolutions. And, unlike many years in the past, this year I only have two resolutions:

      1. Be happy with me--this one doesn't sound like much, but I'm going to work on finding the things that I've enjoyed, the things that make me feel one hundred percent me, and incorporating them into my every day. 

      2. Keep up with my writing--I love to write, but when life gets going it's difficult to get online to update my blogs or work on my fiction. But I'm not limiting myself to just blogging or working on my stories, I'm also talking about keeping a journal or exploring ideas by writing them out. Playing with language and working with it is something I enjoy and something I'd love to continue working with. 

     This year my goals aren't earth-shattering, but they are things I haven't had time for in the past few years. I'm excited to be getting back to the things that bring me joy, and to have time to devote to them. 

Just a thought...
Stephie

Night Before Christmas Surprise!

     One of my favorite holiday traditions is the Christmas Eve gift. My parents have been doing this since I was born and it's a little odd to think it might be ending soon.
     Each year Mom and Dad will pick a present for each of us to open. When we were little my sister, brother and I were super-duper excited about it because it was the one time we got to break the no-presents-until-Christmas rule and we never knew what it would bring. Now that we're older and have had many years of this same gift we know what it will be, but we're still excited to follow through on the tradition.

Aren't these guys just rockin' the pjs?!

     So what was the gift? Pajamas! Well, one year they were robes (bath robes not wizarding robes) and another they were slippers, but the Christmas Eve gift is always something comfortable we can wear when we open our gifts.
     I think the excitement now isn't so much that we don't know what we'll get. I think it's more that we can still feel like little kids getting to open that one present when all the others are forbidden. I'm sad to see the tradition fade, but it definitely will be something I start with my children.

Merry Christmas!
Stephie