Obleck

Time is like obleck, I have decided.

"What is obleck?" you're probably asking... Besides being a silly word, obleck is that crazy stuff that hopefully everyone experienced in their childhood. Obleck is what results from mixing the right amounts of cornstarch and water. Obleck is fabulous. It runs and drips through your fingers like a liquid, but squeeze your hand together, and it somehow feels solid.

How this works continues to boggle my mind. (No, please don't explain. I'm not a science person; I prefer to see it purely as MAGIC.). But today when I was thinking about the end of the year and the end of the decade (!!!), I came to see that obleck makes a fabulous metaphor for time.

When you're in the middle of everything, time usually just slips by. A few minutes, an hour, a day, a week, even a month go by fairly quickly. It doesn't take that much effort for time to pass - it's just like you're holding your hand open, and the obleck is slipping through your fingers.

But as soon as you make your hand into a fist, as soon as it's December 31st, and everyone is talking about where they were in January 2009 or even January 2000, time feels solid and real. It's mind boggling to consider everything that happened in a year, and almost beyond comprehension (for me, at least) to talk about the last ten years put together.

So there's your metahporical dose for the day, thank you, goodbye.

On a more serious note, I am doing a lot of reflecting and planning for 2010. Though it sometimes seems silly to tie up all our homes and dreams for change with a date and a holiday, 2010 really does seem like a chance for a fresh start. I spent a great deal of time this morning writing out a great many personal goals I want to work on starting tomorrow (or tonight at midnight, I suppose). Somehow, writing them out feels like chiseling them in stone (though of ocourse with much less effort, thanks to computers) - it makes the idea of having "resolutions" more real.

I'm not going to get into all the ways I want to be a better person - those are things for me and me alone to comtemplate and work on for now. The one goal I do want to share has to do with the very website you are currently reading this from. I want to blog more. I know, I know... If I had a nickel for every time...

But I really do want to make an effort to update this site more frequently. I wrote in my resolutions list that my quantitative goal is "at least three times a week with a goal of five" - but that goal is modifiable. I also want to write more for my official CU Blog more next year, and there might just be a limit to what I can do.

Overall, I have a lot of thoughts and I want to share more of them in written form on here. I'm going to work on writing more casually, not as if I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY in big captial NEON letters, but just as if I have something to share, feel free to read it. I want to return to reviewing more movies, particularly the ones I watch for class, so I can solidify my thoughts about them and practice analysizing and describing films.

That said, I will soon be following this up with other entries. I want to review Avatar (OMG) and some of the other movies I've seen recently. I want to talk about the Oscars. I want to dig into some of the books I've been reading lately.

One last thought before I hit the big scary orange "PUBLISH" button... Last year, I wrote some of my resolutions in a blog post here, and I think for the most part, I can put check marks by them (with the exception of "make films," I suppose). The one resolution I don't see on that list but that was a goal for me was to read 52 books this year. I failed at this goal. At last count, I have read 44 (although that list does include the GARGANTUAN Mists of Avalon which should probably count as more than one. Anyway, I want to read MORE than 52 books next year. Nice quantitative goal. Let's make it happen.

That's it from me for now, folks. Hope you have lovely New Year celebrations when the clock stikes midnight - and more importantly, I hope you have a lovely NEW YEAR. May 2010 be awesome for us all. Cheers!

(Feel free to share your thoughts on the passing of time, this decade, this year, and new year's resolutions, if you are so-inclined).