my sister used to read with her middle finger...

she did and mom taped her "pointer" and "tall man" together and she never got sent to the princiPALs office after that.

anyways, that's not what this post is about, at all. I just got done watching Dan in Real Life and if you haven't seen it you should. Anyways, I won't ruin it for those who haven't but at the end steve carrell's character has a voice over that says something along the lines of " normally we tell our kids that they should be making plans about the future. plans about what they will do, wo they wil be, who they will be with and so on. but really we should tell them to plan to be surprised" and for some reason I thought that was so cool and true. All of these plans that we're making right now, they aren't going to turn out just so--i mean that's just the way the world works. I guess it's the way to keep us humble and to just assure us that we aren't superheroes and that life is going to suck a lot sometimes. I was also thinking about scripts when I watched the movie and about how people become screenwriters. I googled screenwriting and came up with this site that was basically a "how to" site. I mean, it had some good points, but when a person honestly alludes to "Jingle All the Way" with Sinbad and Ahnold as an example of good screenwriting, can you really trust it? no. i mean sinbad was only good at being a genie in that magic basketball movie. anyways, i was thinking about that and then I was thinking about life and how I listened to Donald Miller once give a talk or whatever about the story and about how our lives should be like the stories that people write and the stuff that people use as templates for movies--i mean, that's what many movies are based on--right? so here's my deal. every good movie has the protagonist involved in a conflict---they need to get something, they need to fight for something, they have to overcome things in order to resolve their conflict---and a lot of the time I feel like my life has no conflict--no epic desire or thing that i really, passionately seek--even though there are things that i WANT to seek. but it really all comes down to fear. it comes down to the point where you see this desire, this passion off, driving away and someone whispers to you "go, now" and you have to say screw it and just do it or end up kicking yourself for not taking the chance. i hate diving into conflict, into muddy waters, but thats what makes life exciting, that's what makes movies worth watching--nobody wants to watch a person just being, just painting their nails or watching tv--that's just boring. and i mean, i know where i'm going to be at the end of this life and it's so short, so logically what do we all have to lose? nothing really. nothing at all. but prepared to be surprised.

and probably scared to death.