Living in the Margins

Hi friends,

This month, I watched about a third of a movie and am putting off the 2023 round-up yet again.

I feel sad about this somewhat dramatic and abrupt change in my ability to engage in two things that are really important to my identity as a whole person, not only a caregiver: writing and watching movies. I also feel a bit anxious about this change, because I don't totally understand why it suddenly feels like the already very thin margins on the logistics and demands of my life have suddenly gotten even narrower.  

That's maybe because it's not due to only one thing.  There are the obvious contributing factors, like our Second Child becoming more mobile and communicative in the months before and since his first birthday, and enduring the cliché parade of different kid-borne plagues, the latter of which at best slowed the rate at which we're able to handle the everyday tasks of life and work.  I've also gradually started to increase my work hours while simultaneously trying to stay on top of various routine obligations like doctor and vet appointments.  And then there are the "bonus" unanticipated disruptions, like being sent on a wild goose chase of possibly buying a second car because of a dubiously dire assessment from an unfamiliar mechanic about our current one (lesson learned: always get a second opinion, ideally from a mechanic you already know and trust), or rescuing a cat who showed up in our backyard and yelled at us through the window until we finally gave him the chance to walk right into a cat carrier and set up temporary residence in one of our bathrooms, or the surprisingly large lift of completing enough continuing education credits to renew one of my licenses.

On the lighter side of things, Husband and I have also recently rediscovered our love for Love Island as well as discovering a new show we're really enjoying, which together gobble up the potential movie-watching time in the evenings.  I've been putting a lot of effort into meeting and building relationships with other parents in our neighborhood, and also unwittingly but joyfully building relationships with several types of local wildlife who now frequent our backyard.

It all makes sense when I lay out all the things that have accumulated to the point that they fully color in the page of my life to its very outermost edges.  I just keep waiting for there to be a little more breathing room, a little more consistent reprieve from the happy relentlessness of this stage of life.  It truly is happy, but it truly is also relentless.

I started this blog as an accountability check during grad school, to hold myself accountable to myself for making space for my whole self as I engaged in a process that could easily consume everything I had to offer: learning to be a psychologist.  I am not only a caregiver.  I knew that then, and I know that now.

The happy trouble is, I'm really good at caregiving, and I love doing it.  I love my work and I love parenting and I love maintaining everything that is my family, including my home and all the living things within (and around) it.  It gives me a deep sense of fulfilled, values-directed purpose and satisfaction.  That signals a change in my caregiving that I've taken stock of recently--I'm caring for things in a way that doesn't feel like pouring into a bottomless vessel.  I used to do a lot of that impossible kind of caregiving, and it was at times pretty devastating.  At best, it was draining, made me feel devalued, and cloudied my mental vision.  I think I've become more realistic about what I'm responsible for and what my care can and cannot accomplish, and when I stay within the new boundaries that awareness creates, caregiving feels radically different.

Now, I feel the ways in which my love and care can create an echo chamber in the same way depression, fear, or trauma can.  I feel my own care and love reflected back to me, and added to, when I'm with my children and husband, when I see a fox in our backyard or hear birds singing around our house, when I know more of my neighbors, and when I do my work.  Each of these things is evidence of the love and care I've planted blooming.  I'm tired, overworked, and overwhelmed most of the time now, but I'm also happy and emotionally full most of the time, too.

So where in all this do movies fit?  I don't know.  They don't really, at least not with the regularity they used to.  I've taken to reassuring myself that however over-the-top things feel right now, my life won't feel like this forever.  There will be times when there is more freedom in my days for other things, and hopefully I'll enjoy those, too, because the love and care I plant continues to yield a bountiful and broad harvest.

I'm genuinely so excited for the movies I'll watch when it's possible again.  There's so much good stuff out there to see.

{Heart}

Decently Good "Good Grief"

Hey everyone,

I am accepting that I’m putting off my annual movie round-up for yet another month since this choice is just an honest indicator of what my life is like right now. This is not remotely to say my life is bad. It’s just immensely full, and it’s therefore giving me lots of opportunities to practice being gentle, realistic, and reasonable with myself about what’s possible and what’s a priority right now.

So instead of the heavier lift of a round-up post, I’ll squeeze in a February post on this leap day by writing about a movie I recently watched. 

On a possibly ill-advised whim while Husband was out for the evening for a family event and I stayed home with our children, I watched “Good Grief” (2023), a film about a person mourning the sudden death of his husband. Because how better to take advantage of a solo evening after the kids are in bed than to watch a movie that makes you sad and anxious about spousal loss? This was truly free time allocation at its finest.

Beyond the mild angst and regret I feel about that decision, I have overall mixed feelings about this movie. Let’s get into it.

The film is written and starred in by Dan Levy, who also made his directorial debut on this project. I am aware of how beloved Levy is following his role in “Schitt’s Creek”, and found his scenes in “Happiest Season” (2020) to be the most redeemable parts of that movie. He wields a unique combination of sass and pathos that makes him incredibly watchable, and for the most part I enjoyed his performance in “Good Grief”.

The movie starts out strong enough, quickly submerging us in the social world and relationship dynamics of Levy’s Marc and his two close friends, Sophie (played by Ruth Negga) and Thomas (played by Nimesh Patel). Knowing the premise of the movie (hell, just knowing the title of the movie) lends the raucous Christmas party at its beginning a somewhat obvious-feeling dread. This is not to say that the pivotal moment of the death of Marc’s husband Ollie (played by Luke Evans) doesn’t succeed in landing its gut punch of wrenching shock and grief—it does, but taken altogether it feels a bit artless.

And ultimately, that sense of artlessness, of emotional moments that land in a slightly faltering way, typifies the entirety of “Good Grief”. The turning point when this became inescapable for me, unfortunately, was during a monologue of Marc’s that went on a little too long, to the point that it took on an almost stage-y feeling. Rather than feeling authentic and organic, each major moment afterward was instead dogged by a sense of fastidiously checking off the necessary evolutions and catharses to which each main character was entitled. They felt forced and over-written when they could have been outbursts or conversations that sounded like things real people would say to each other. The performances in “Good Grief” were therefore limited by what feels like a lack of maturity in the film’s writing, which is a shame because the actors were otherwise very enjoyable to watch.

The movie’s settings are beautiful and the soundtrack is great. And the overall existence of this film, as an examination of gay married life, love, and loss, as well as adult friendships and grief, is unarguably a net positive. Despite the dubiousness of the timing of when I watched this movie, I’m glad I did. It won’t be the best thing I watched this year, but I think it’s still worth watching.

I gave it a 3.

{Heart}

2023 Movie Round-Up Preamble: Lightning Round!!

Hi friends,

As I was preparing to write my annual round-up post--like as I was literally highlighting the list of movies I watched last year to copy and paste them into a blank blogger window--I noticed I'd underlined a couple of titles with the aspirational intent to come back to those films and write about them.  I felt disappointed to move onto 2024 without talking about those movies.  This happens every year: there are always movies I meant to write about that end up simply getting passed over and, unfortunately, ultimately forgotten about.

Well NOT THIS YEAR.

Because it's better to write a few sentences or paragraphs than nothing at all, I'm going to attempt to write a lightning round-style post about (at least some of) those movies.

Here we go!

"Norma Rae" (1979)

The first thing that viscerally registers about "Norma Rae" is the noise.  The film opens in the thunderously loud warehouse where Norma Rae, her parents, and her neighbors toil, and the intense and droning din is instantly oppressive and overwhelming.  In this manner, the movie reminds me of the use of sound in the much-later "Children of Men" (2006) to wrenchingly ground its audience in its bleak world--the sounds of this world aren't only impacting the characters in the story, distorting their perceptions of reality, but you, the viewer, as well.

Beginning with this bodily experience of the consequences of the working conditions of Norma Rae and her compatriots, "Norma Rae" is still a remarkable, gripping, and inspiring film about the desperate importance of the labor movement.  It is just excellent!  I gave it a 5.

"Thelma and Louise" (1991)

I watched this movie shortly after watching "Norma Rae" in an attempt to continue watching some of the empowering lady movies of yore, but this one fell pretty flat especially by comparison to its union-celebrating predecessor.  "Thelma and Louise" is fun in a pulp fiction-y way, but also a bit rough to watch.  To my unpleasant surprise, despite being billed as an early women-driven buddy movie, "Thelma and Louise" struggled with the same casually compulsive sexism of movies from over a decade prior without reckoning with it in a clear-headed way.  Sure Thelma and Louise variously kill and inconvenience a variety of extremely shitty men, but I was still struck with how harshly critical Susan Sarandon's Louise was at times of Geena Davis's Thelma.  I'm glad I watched it given its importance in cinematic history, but it didn't move me nearly as profoundly as "Norma Rae".  I gave it a 3.

"The Princess Bride" (1987)

I know this seems ~*~inconceivable~*~, but I actually had never seen the "Princess Bride" before last year.  I was a bit hesitant to watch it because I couldn't imagine it would live up to the deep adoration many people have for it, and I feared that being a late-comer to the film would mean I would find it  particularly underwhelming.  On the other hand, I thought it would be convenient to finally get the jokes and references people make to this movie every once in a while.  

Happily, I honestly liked it!  It was cute and silly, and I understand why people find it so lovable.  I know this is probably the oddest of details to hang onto, but I really liked how you can see where the set designers incorporated crash pads into the set so the actors safely engage in dramatic leaps during one particular sword fight.  Something about the low-fi nature of the movie's stunts really endeared me to it.  Also apparently Andre the Giant was a goddamn delight!  I gave "The Princess Bride" a 4.

"Audrey" (2020) and "Funny Face" (1957)

An offshoot of my micro-theme of empowered lady movies was to watch a few Audrey Hepburn movies, starting with the documentary about her followed by "Funny Face".  Despite absolutely loving Hepburn as a person and actor, I unfortunately found both of these films pretty underwhelming.  The documentary is a bit lifeless, which is kind of astonishing given its incredible source material--Audrey Hepburn is one of the most magnetic, charismatic, lovely performers of Hollywood's Golden Age, so it's a crime that a movie about her dramatic, impactful, and jam-packed life be so dull.

I chose to watch "Funny Face" for the fashion and also because I wanted to see Hepburn's dancing.  While it delivers on those two fronts, I was again underwhelmed by other aspects of the film, including its unconvincing romance between Hepburn and (a comparatively much older) Fred Astaire and its overall belittling attitude toward Hepburn's Jo (are you kidding me with the title referring to her face??), but especially her intellectual interest in a new philosophical doctrine.  Blech.

I gave both movies a 2.

"Despicable Me" (2010) and "Despicable Me 2" (2013)

Especially after reckoning with how much I liked "Minions: Rise of Gru" (2022), I basically had to watch these movies.  I was genuinely curious to see how I'd feel about "Despicable Me" upon rewatching it, and whether "Despicable Me 2" would uphold the generally solid quality of this series of movies.  Neither disappointed!  I didn't enjoy them quite as much as the Minions movie, but both juxtaposed goofy slap-stick humor for children against competent and thoughtful relationship themes, first the father-child relationship and then the parent-new partner relationship.  I really like that these movies exist to model non-problematic versions of these relationships for children, as movies like that are bizarrely rare.

I gave both movies a 3.5.

I have a few straggling movies from 2023 that I genuinely hope I can write last-minute longer-form posts about, because I really want to dig into them a bit more than would make sense here.  That sure would be consistent with my first resolution for 2024, so here's hoping I pull that off!

{Heart}

Closing 2023: Resolutions Edition

Happy New Year's Eve, everyone!!

This year has been very full.  I'm glad for the opportunity to reflect on 2023 and think about what my hopes are for the new year ahead.

By far the most important thing that happened this year was the arrival of my Second Child and our transition to being a family of four--First Child's transition into being an older sibling, and Husband and I into being parents of two children.  Second Child has been such a source of constant delight and joy.  

In so many ways, parenting a second baby has been made all the more positive by the experience of having parented a baby already.  I am grateful both for the two unique experiences I've had parenting both of my children so far, but also for the greater degree of confidence and peace of mind I've enjoyed by being a somewhat more seasoned parent than the first time around--babies are each special and singular in their own ways, but they are also in many ways similar and therefore, mercifully, to some extent predictable.  (I did, for example, immediately remember my first round of googling "weird noises newborns make while sleeping" as soon as I blearily engaged in middle-of-the-night googling the second time.)

While there have been some other stand-out events this year, including the much-anticipated birth of my nephew, as well as some nice vacations, holidays, and time with friends and family, our family's transition has occupied most of 2023.  I had illusions that the bulk of the adjustment would be focused largely in the first few months after Second Child was born, but I now understand that of course it takes much longer than that, in part because both of our children are still growing and changing every day.  The ways in which they experience each other and I experience them as their parent are therefore going to be different as time goes on, requiring me to stay attuned and creative in ways I haven't had to before this year.  I don't think I could have accurately anticipated how much those tasks would stretch me to the absolute maximum capacity I can offer.  This year has been absolutely joyful and beautiful especially because our children have been its focal point, and it has also been a lot of hard work.

Having felt so humbled by the ways 2023 has surprised me, it's hard for me to predict what's realistic to aspire to in the new year.  I have been trying to take this into account as I start to formulate my resolutions for 2024.

With that in mind, let's reflect on this year's resolutions:

1. Practice and maintain overall emotional health.

2. Watch 52 movies.

1. Practice and maintain overall emotional health.

I further clarified this resolution with the following three sub-goals:

--Maintaining healthy boundaries in relationships.

--Maintaining healthy boundaries with work.

--Maintaining regular practices that prioritize peace, balance, and space for things (including people and pursuits) that matter to me.

--Maintaining healthy boundaries in relationships.

I think I've made slow yet steady progress on this one, especially if I consider a more expansive version of this goal as applying a lot of the principles I talked about in last year's post. I feel the benefits of this persistent work all the time, and I'm grateful that I've stuck with it despite some considerable challenges in the past year.

--Maintaining healthy boundaries with work.

I actually did this!  I moved my work hours to accommodate the needs of my family, scaled back my caseload, and deleted a major work commitment that wasn't going to be feasible given its work/reward ratio, plus made sure there was room for a semi-regular colleague consultation meeting.  I still occasionally feel this nagging little people-pleasing tug to re-extend my hours back into the evening, but it's just so much better for my life and my family to keep my hours where they now are and I'm grateful to Second Child for being the impetus for me to do it.

Moving forward, I will start to expand my caseload once Second Child starts daycare in a few months.  I'm hoping to feel gratified by the opportunity to work with some new people while still not taking on so much that I'm overwhelming myself.

--Maintaining regular practices that prioritize peace, balance, and space for things (including people and pursuits) that matter to me.

I did this to some extent, but not as fully as I needed.  I'm hoping that at some point in the new year I can more fully devote time and mental energy to the routine things that keep me well, in addition to the things that keep me in touch with the person I am beyond parent and psychologist.  I remember that became much more possible even with First Child's small initial moves toward a baby version of independence--being able to play for longer stretches and eat more things means I don't have to be on as a parent every moment in the same way.

2. Watch 52 movies.

As you'll see with my forthcoming round-up, I did absolutely demolish this resolution this year.  Parental leave gave me a massive advantage on this front.  I'm so glad that I was able to enjoy so many movies in the first half of the year, because my movie-watching-rate has seen a steep decline in the last quarter of 2023.

And now, let's decide on what my aspirations are for 2024.

Next year's resolutions are:

1. Prioritize the things that make savoring life possible.

2. Watch at least 30 movies.

First off, given the heavy lift that 2023 has been, sticking with only two resolutions seems like the smart move.  Secondly, as you can see, I've kept both resolutions somewhat vague to rig things in favor of success.  But of course, as always, I can get a little more specific about both of them.

1. Prioritize the things that make savoring life possible.

I know there are probably plenty less janky ways to phrase that, but in general the gist is this: 

a) I have to stay committed to my recovery/self-care stuff.  It is good for me, I benefit from it, my family needs it, and I need it.  I have cut corners in this endeavor this year--for reasons that are real and big, yet still ultimately aren't a good enough rationale for short-changing what I need to be the best possible version of myself.  I feel so much better being that version of myself as a parent and as a person, and I deserve that.

When I'm healthier, of course, I'm happier.  I'm more present, and I'm more available to the beauty the world is full of.  Life is short, and I want to absorb as much of that beauty as I can.

b) I want my hobbies: watching movies, reading, taking walks, working on plants, admiring birds, baking and cooking, playing VR, taking and printing photos.  I want my friends and family: especially this year, it has been such a struggle to connect with people outside of my home in a way that feels as fulfilling as I know it can, and that just has to change.  I also want to, finally, expand my world more fully post-pandemic: make more local friends and more fully explore and enjoy the beautiful, rich City I live in.

I love all of those things so deeply and they've brought me so much joy.  The space simply hasn't been available for a lot of them in the past year, and with truly the best possible reason--I have been dedicating myself almost exclusively to my children and our family, which is what I wanted to do.  For myself and for them, I'm hoping that a more expansive version of myself is possible in 2024.

2. Watch at least 30 movies.

This is controversial for me, of course, as this new year could possibly be the first year since starting this blog that I fall short of my usual weekly movie watching goal.  I am certainly open to still watching 52 or more movies in 2024, but what's more important than perfectionistically fixating on a certain number of movies, is that I keep watching movies in a way that I enjoy.  If I watch only 30 films next year, that still means I've watched them pretty regularly, but in a way that doesn't transform that into an obligation and instead allows more room for the potential realities of my life demanding other uses of my time.

As a sub-goal, if I do stick to this lower overall movie count, I want to write about at least 50% of the movies I watch this year.  That would still lead to writing at least once a month.  

Overall, I feel good about this hopefully temporary adjustment of my movie-watching aspirations.

And with that: I send you, dear friend, my best wishes for a beautiful, happy, healthy, and bountiful 2024.

{Heart}

Take A Rowdy, Raunchy "Joy Ride"

Hey team,

In the mood for a filthy and fun comedy about friendship, family, and identity?

Well "Joy Ride" (2023) might be just the film for you!

"Joy Ride" tells the tale of two childhood best friends whose lives have taken dramatically different paths and whose bond is tested as they embark on an epic trip to China.  Audrey (played by Ashley Park) is a highly driven and high-achieving attorney gunning to be the model minority posterwoman, whereas Lolo (played by Sherry Cola) has seemingly done everything she can to divest herself from that trope as a maker of genitalia-centric art living in the guest house in Audrey's backyard.

As their voyage together unfolds, they gain two travel buddies in Audrey's college roommate (and, with Lolo, seemingly only other Asian friend) Kat, played by Stephanie Tsu, and Lolo's off-putting yet earnest cousin Deadeye, played by Sabrina Wu.  Plenty of tensions emerge between each of the members of this motley party, including the rivalry between Lolo and Kat for friendship primacy with Audrey and Deadeye's wish to fit in despite their decided oddness.  The group navigates these tensions with ample debauchery and silliness as well as a healthy helping of raw emotion, ultimately forming deep bonds.

The overall vibe of the film is very reminiscent of previous buddy comedies like "The Hangover" (2009), down to Deadeye functioning as a stand-in for Zach Galifianakis's Alan (minus the proclamations about wolf packs).  That acknowledged, "Joy Ride" has more to offer than just another round of gags driven by an abundance of substances and sex--although there are definitely plenty of those.  At its emotional climax, the movie is a surprisingly poignant and emotional contemplation of Audrey's experience as an international adoptee, and that experience has cut her off from important parts of her identity and history.

I can certainly appreciate this movie won't be for everyone.  It's raucous and bawdy and therefore not exactly high-brow entertainment, but its unabashed silliness is nevertheless refreshing.  It's a fun ride for those who are game.

I gave the movie a 4.

{Heart}