Is There Anybody Out There?— Pink Floyd

Welcome to my blog, newcomer!

If you’ve come to this blog, you’re probably wondering a few things. Like “What’s going on here, lads and ladettes?” and “What’s this insignificant corner of the internet? When I came on the internet, I was promised funny cats and memes!” Well…apologies in advance, there probably aren’t gonna be a lot of funny cats or memes. Funnily enough when I used the internet back when I was a child, one of the first images I saved was a grey kitten with a sniper pointed out a window. So to me, the internet was a crazy place. That, and playing Oompas Outrageous Rush from the Willy Wonka website. Ah, the days of simple Flash games…how I miss thee.

I think I’m getting distracted…where was I?…Ah yes! I was introducing myself and why I’m doing what I’m doing. I am Liam, a guy from New Zealand (for any international readers, if this goes anywhere beyond our small country) and I’m gonna watch two movies a week and spout what comes to mind the morning after. Or at least try to…depends how life is going how well I will stick to the schedule.

More about me? Uhhhhh…I studied graphic design, as a younger person I played Age of Mythology and Rayman 2: The Great Escape (I’m not gonna deny buying the digital versions of both of them in recent days), I like most nerdy things, as I’m writing this ‘Rocket Man (I Think It’s Gonna Be A Long, Long, Time)‘ by Elton John came on, my favourite Doctor from Doctor Who is the 10th Doctor, I love learning about mythologies, and I’m a size 13 shoe generally speaking for Converse style shoes.  I say Converse style shoes because I’ve never really been interested in shoes and only ever owned one pair of Converse shoes and that was for my high school dance which to bring full circle, I attended as the 10th Doctor. They were my special shoes. Those some random enough facts for you? If not, feel free to ask more in the comments. Blogs have comments, right? Sounds like a Youtuber saying ‘comments’ like that…

Now to the more complicated side of things; why am I sitting down around about 10pm on a Wednesday night with popcorn and some Coke and watching two movies, one I’ve seen and one I haven’t. If you are like me and need a warning of when the jokes finish, this is it.

This isn’t to start a professional blog as a full-time job, which would be fun; this is for my own health. Just over a year ago now, I moved home to look after my grandmother when my grandfather moved into assisted living. Before then, my mother, my uncle, and my sister had been taking turns of a week at a time to stay and look after her. Needless to say, this wasn’t a good thing for both of their jobs and my sister’s study. Considering at this point I was coming to the end of a flat lease and only had a part-time washing cars at a used car place, I volunteered to move home and look after her full-time. It is hard not to think this way, but I was the expendable one with no job and no place to live. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to do it. Just the short time my grandfather was in assisted living wasn’t cheap as it was; I can only imagine how much it will cost for my grandmother to move into a home. We’re not a family of money flowing out our pockets.

Looking after just an old person wouldn’t be too difficult, I imagine. But there is an added reason she needs someone looking after her. She has dementia. Specifically, Alzheimers. At first, looking after her was fine but if you know anything about dementia, it doesn’t get better. It’s not something that heals or can be fixed. It just gets worse as you get older and older and if anything is a testament  to that, it’s been this last year. The difference is vast. And it is tiring. I don’t pretend to know what people think of me when I say, “I stay at home all day and look after my grandmother with dementia,” but I assume people think it isn’t that hard. It is. The mental energy it takes to live with your work, with your work being a family member you love, and only have it become more and more difficult is not easy. I’d be fooling myself and everyone else if I said I have come out of this year unscathed.

Some of it is on me; I had a long hard think and after backing from my family I decided to juggle being in a production of ‘Phantom of the Opera‘ at the same time but my rational is I will never get to do this show anywhere else and can’t skip an opportunity to be in it. I’d kick myself if I did. But what I am getting at is it’s hard. And I have become over the course of a year very mentally drained. I barely have enthusiasm for anything. Anyone who knows me well enough will know I write. At the end of 2017, I began writing two story ideas I had been having and between then had 50,000 words. Now days when I pick up my notes and visual diaries and maps and anything I’ve worked on for a story, I get nothing. Just nothing. No new ideas. No thoughts on how to begin writing them. I have books I want to read! Deep inside, I am excited to read books but when I get one page in, I just have…nothing on the inside. This was most notable when I finally picked up Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and I liked it but it just hurt to focus and actually read. Kingdom Hearts 3; the long awaited, as in 14 years wait for the main story to continue, came out. I played it but it felt wrong. I would sit down and play and deep down be excited to, but the surface layer me was running on auto pilot. Kinda like nobody’s home upstairs. If anything, probably living close to six feet under. Long story short; I’ve had enough of it.

So! I made a decision. I’m gonna get my groove back and take back my mind. Which brings me to this. After a strenuous day of rehearsal which almost lead to me just walking out of the rehearsal and my grandmother having a not so good day straining me further, I was getting into a bad spin of thoughts. I’ve had them before; I’m open about that and not ashamed of it. Luckily, I have enough of a brain to realise this before I ever get to doing anything drastic. So I brainstormed…that is to say while running on low mentally, I just had a brain spark. I was talking in a group chat of people and they were spitballing a  hypothetical movie idea. For some reason, I got thought about ‘The Creature From The Black Lagoon’ and got thinking about about how many movies I had thought about and never seen or been recommended.

So I decided I’d set time aside for me, no questions asked, and pick two movies to watch, one I love and one I have been recommended or I have thought about watching and watch them and write what I think about them. It’s simple and I certainly don’t have enough friends to expect a huge audience, but I’m doing it for me. For my own wellbeing. Whether anyone likes it or not, reads it or not, I’m doing it. It’s something I can do and enjoy and that’s all that matters to me.

So this is my escapade to get my creativity and enthusiasm of life back. I began this in February on Facebook, so I will back log on here the old posts and probably expand on them. Only when someone brought up the excellent point that they needed paragraph formatting did I even think about having a blog. It’s gonna be an exciting endeavour.

Having done it for this long with a one week break at one point because of exhaustion, I will say I am feeling better. Honestly. I can’t say that it’s solely on this, but I have certainly enjoyed the excitement of running around setting up my monitor and speaker, getting some movie snacks together and just sitting down and letting go and relaxing. If you’re still here after reading this, I applaud you. If you have any other ideas on what else I could do here, let me know in the comments below (again, sound like a Youtuber) and I will think about it.

That’s really all I wanted to say; just to let you look behind the curtain at why I am doing this. Whether you care or not is irrelevant. The fact you took the time to read this means more than I could say. But that’s all I want to say so I’ll cut it off here. I’m even sounding like a Youtuber by finishing with a catchphrase:

As always, hope you’re all having a lovely day and stay positive!