Sparkles
I don’t watch much TV, and if DVRs hadn’t been invented, I would never watch anything. But they do exist, and I have one sitting on top of my TV just three feet away from my bed (I have a very small room – also, I’m nearsighted), so I have favourite shows. The obsession with Doctor Who has been well documented here, and you won’t hear the last of it anytime soon. Eleven’s theme song is mum’s ringtone when she calls me, and she just gave me two seasons of David Tennant’s Doctor for Christmas, so at least we’re in it together.
I also really love How I Met Your Mother. I didn’t get into it until 2008, when I moved back to LA from San Francisco and my life was in a major flux. But it caught me right away, from the Belle and Sebastian and Violent Femmes references to the stupid drunken antics to Ted’s wide eyed romanticism in the face of serious let downs in love. It wasn’t until last year that I realized who I really loved on that show, and that’s Robin.
why I freelance now
As an aside, I have been doing an office job lately, and over the holidays my desk duty did involve eating too much chocolates and cookies and drinking. I mean, they didn’t tell me to do those things, but the opportunity presented itself and I did. Anyroads, Robin drinks like someone twice her size, smokes, enjoys life to the hilt, has grand ambitions and will live in various locations all over the world … and has the shittiest of luck with men. I relate to her so hard. This would be a spoiler to those who haven’t seen the show, but really, in an ensemble comedy about life and love, it’s really a given that all of the characters will have down times. Last year Robin had some huge setbacks, and it was not an easy time for her. The world pretty much handed her ass to her, and it was strange yet oddly comforting to see such a strong woman being reduced. I say comforting because it felt realistic, to me, and didn’t make me feel quite so weak and stupid during the waste that was 2011.
Tonight I finally caught Monday’s episode, because I never remember when TV shows are on and I’m often busy doing something I think is more important, like reading books or cataloging my entire music collection so I quit buying the same records, or inventing websites, and really occasionally, doing my schoolwork (like I’m supposed to be doing right now). Or writing blogs. It was a New Year’s episode, of course, and while of course self-improvement is a constant process and not something that magically starts on January 1st, it has felt different for me this year. I can feel it physically, and mentally, and best yet, creatively. Robin had a helluva NYE, but just before the ball drops, she realized that 2012 is completely new and clean and ready for great things, and she is eager for it. That’s how I felt. 2011 was ass. The end of 2010 was ass. But that’s the past, and this is something completely new. It’s a fresh sheet of paper, unmarked and waiting for a masterpiece to be made (and because it’s me, there will be lots of macabre doodles in the margins, some Beatles in there somewhere, and probably a Lewis Carroll reference). Baggage is hard to shake, because it’s not always something that you take the handle and carry; oftentimes it’s junk tied to us by other people that we have trouble reaching and shaking off. But it’s still up to you to take it off and go ahead. After all,
The Sparkles by Megan Helstone, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.