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Last year: As far as I'm concerned, the current corporate structure of the country not only allows for frequent job changes, it encourages it. |
The preview made it seem that the issue of the movie was that the main character had been wrongfully placed in a mental institution - that she had nothing wrong with her aside from a little adolescent-to-adult transitional angst. You know, the way we all felt just about the time high school was ending.
But when I read the book, it was clear that while she wasn't as disturbed as some of her fellow patients, her problems ran a lot deeper than the usual trauma of late adolescence. I was pleased to see that the movie bore this out.
And I loved the acting. I wasn't quite comfortable with some of the bit parts - the psychiatrist who had Susanna committed in the first place in particular felt like a caricature - but the patients were all fantastic. Obviously insane without being too over-the-top. I wasn't sure Wynona Rider would be able to carry off her part, either, but she's got more range than I thought. But Angelina Jolie stole the show. She picked up an Oscar and several other awards for her role in this movie as the sociopathic Lisa, and after seeing it, I think she definitely deserved them. She was superb. Part of that was the writing - every time she opened her mouth, you knew that what was going to come out would be sharp, to the point, and that the squirming truth would be twisted just enough to do maximum damage. But anyone can deliver a line with malice. Malice is easy. Jolie managed to make me believe she was truly sociopathic - playful, rather than malicious; curious, not cunning. I could tell that for her, everyone else was only a shadow on a wall to be played with: stretched, warped, and illuminated bit by bit into nonexistence.
I certainly hope I can get my act together at work today. I was ahead of schedule on my project, but now I'm slipping behind again, due mostly to a lassitude and slipshod attitude over the past few days. And I don't have all that much time to put it together. I think I need to set a goal for myself for today, and stay at work - late if necessary - to finish it.
I've always worked better with deadlines and lists. I dreaded nothing more in school than an instructor telling me that I could write a paper about "whatever I wanted." I needed some direction, some suggestion to work with. Once I'd chosen a topic, the hard part was over. Done. I could even guess fairly accurately what my grade was going to be on a paper based on how comfortable I felt with my topic - not with my understanding of the topic, because I could always learn more about a specific thing - but with my sense of the solidity of the topic.
Now... When I travel, I make written lists before I pack, even if I'm only going to be gone for a few days. When I have a project to do, I break it down into discrete steps and manageable chunks before starting. If something is too big, I'm almost guaranteed to back away from it, to procrastinate until it's too late.
I think that's been my problem for this step of the project: I haven't broken it down far enough yet. Don't mistake this for a lack of intelligence. I'm not dumb, or even of average intelligence. My degrees aren't exactly Redbrick, and my capacity for problem-solving, I think, is moderately impressive. But in order to solve a problem of any sort, I feel compelled to break it down into its elemental pieces. Is that a bad thing? I don't know. It's just how I am.
Word of the Day: redbrick - built of red brick; (capitalized:) relating to a British college or university built in the late 19th or early 20th century (slightly derogatory) (Do you have any idea how hard it was to work that in??? What do I care about the relative age of British schools?)
- Lord of the Fire Lands by Dave Duncan
Current Projects:
- Mom's Christmas stocking
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