Internal Monologues

While traveling home this evening, it occurred to me that one of the pluses of the new job, is I no longer feel this overwhelming desire to distract myself by posting every random thought or reaction that pops into my head. That's right, you, dear readers, are no longer privy to the internal monologues and rants that pop into my head. Trust me, count yourself lucky. (I can't help but wonder how many folks I scared off in the early days, when they discovered that nope, she's not just writing essays on tv and movies. These are rambling monologues about whatever pops into her head at any given moment.)

Sticking with the theme of rambling...work is going quite nicely. After four or is it five years of hellish looking, I find a job that I actually sort of like. It utilizes my brain, is friendly, and keeps me busy. Also nice location.
No I haven't made any best buds there yet. But have only been there two months.
Stuff like that takes time. And the utilizing the brain part is good - mostly.
Down side is I don't appear to have much energy when I get home - to read, analyze or write. Probably will change as time goes on and things become less hectic. That said, did read a good portion of my flist last night - and found myself commiserating with oyceter post about juggling work, livejournal, tv, books, and life. Have no idea how she finds the time to write posts or respond to others? I come home, make dinner, then collasp in front of tv for the remainder of evening, brain feeling like jello. Upside? I am less inclined to make a fool of myself posting shit online. Downside? I feel as if I am losing touch with the online friends who kept me sane the last three years.

At any rate, while traveling to and from work the last two days, I found myself pondering the following topics:

1. I miss Spike, not Spike the character per se, but rather the rich and loopy character arc. And how that arc isn't really done that often. Taking a complete villian turning the villian gradually, bit by bit, into a tragic hero. Having them struggle with being a hero. Sort of a reverse Darth Vader. Or Darth Vader meet Han Solo. Usually you see the tragic hero bit or you come upon the character after they've become the tragic hero, a la Angel, with only a few episodes showing what they'd been before. Or you get evil character, who begins to turn around at the very end, stays in the background - a la Scorpius/Crais on Farscape, Darla on Angel, or again Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. Or the good character who turns evil then becomes good again. (A La Connor and Cordelia and Willow and to some degree Wesely). Oh I've seen soap operas try it. But no one did as interesting a job as Mutant Enemy. I miss that character arc. And it remains my favorite.

2.This ponder about who my favorite characters are lead me into an tangent on the Spike/Angel wars that I witnessed and *cough*partaked*cough* in during 2002-2003. Why do we fight over dumb things? I wondered. I mean, think about it, does anyone really care which character is your personal favorite besides you? Or which character you think was more ahem interesting and heroic? OR which character the writers preferred? OR which character belonged with the short skinny heroine who could wallop both? The thing about art - is once it's out there it is open to any number of interpretations. The creator really doesn't have much say in how others choose to interpret his/her art. Nor is the creator's intent, however honorable, all that important in the scheme of things. 60 years from now? Whose going to really know what it was anyway? Or care? Do we care what Shakespear's intent was? Or know? Heck there are scholars out there arguing over whether it was *really* Shakespeare who wrote those plays or someone else. Yep, arguments over stupid things.

3.This lead me to thinking about cjlasky's question (posted in the replies to my last rambling monologue) - "how do we define we?" or rather "who are we"? My answer? I define "we" as every human being on the planet regardless of shape, size, color, creed, heritage, race, ethnicity, orientation, or whatever you choose to use as identifying agent at the moment. We is basically the human race, which is one huge squabbling family that can never agree on a place to meet for dinner or what to have for dinner for that matter. And probably shouldn't meet for dinner, because chances are they'd either have a food fight or kill one another over something as inane as who gets to cut the turkey or get's to sit at the head of the table. This in a nutshell is why I do not believe an alien race has wasted time on us. Why? We argue amongst ourselves too much to pose much threat to them and are more than likely to do ourselves in. [Farscape did some interesting episodes on this idea by the way. The best are: "Human Reaction, S1", "Constellation of Doubt, S4", and "Terra Firma, S4". All play around with the idea that until the human race can find a way to put aside their own petty differences and come together as a planet, exploring space and time is probably *not* a good idea. ]

Which in turn lead me back to my original thought...it is a good thing no one is privy to these internal monologues any more. (Unless I write them down like I'm doing now, with sizable editing). And gee, it's nice to be happy and working at a job that uses my brain and appreciates my abilities. Funny, BTVS and ATS and Spike came at the perfect time in my life - when I was lost, frustrated and in desperate need of distractions. Now, three years later, when I've found a job...and those two shows are over, I find myself feeling oddly grateful that they came into my life when they did and left when they did. Almost as if it was meant to be. Somehow. Like there's a purpose or pattern behind whatever happens. I don't know if there is or not. But I find the thought that there is, oddly comforting.

See aren't you glad that I'm not posting these monologues anymore?