Jumble of Thoughts, October 2016

A reminder you could always be a little bit better than this…
(Get Better ~ Frank Turner, 2015)

I really need or at least want to get back into the swing of things here. Writing more. Not necessarily long post, but just get back to write more in general. Write more than just 140 characters I write on Twitter. So here are a few rather random jumbly thoughts which were/are running through my mind these days…

° ° ° °

Work is insanely busy at the moment, because we are having two major events next week. An experts’ conference and a public event with various information booths, but also food and drink and games and such. I’m constantly worrying that both events will be a disaster or at least not as huge successes as we are hoping for.  These past few weeks I have often felt overwhelmed or dissatisfied at work, because of all the work and responsibility and stress involved with these events. I feel like we (I?) didn’t do our best in preparing for them. Feel like I lost track of some of the balls we were juggling and that basically it will all fail, because I’m not cut out for this kind of work. The whole “glass half (or more) empty” routine I’m so good at.

When I voiced some of these thoughts to my coworker today I was kind of stunned by his positive and self-assured way of thinking. He is convinced that we did the best we could with the time and ressources we had available and in spite of the various other projects we still had to take care of at the same time, while we were planning these events. He isn’t worried. These events might turn out smaller than we had planned or expected them to be, but he doesn’t consider that a failure as such. Whereas I do. And am worried about having to justify myself and how we planned and did what we did. And it’s such a different attitude than my own. A much healthier one probably as well. I doubt he has trouble sleeping or that he feels as anxious as I do these days.  I wish I had some more of that self-assurance and confidence myself. I guess I have to keep working on that.

The thing that helps to keep my spirits up at work these days are my coworkers. In my team and the other one on our floor. They are (mostly) a great bunch and even when we’re insanely busy, like we are right now, we still manage to laugh a lot and we all get along well, which is so important. I have no idea how I would have gotten through these past few weeks if it wasn’t for the lovely chats and laughter in the hallways.

° ° ° °

Last weekend (Saturday night) there had been a rather horrible car crash on the motorway I have to take on my way to work. I read about it in details in the papers the next day and it felt so weird driving along that path on my way back home on Monday afternoon. A most probably suicidal driver made a u-turn in a road construction area and drove back in the wrong direction. He collided head on with a car and killed two people beside himself. Scary. And so sad. And like I said, if feels weird to pass that part of the motorway each day.

° ° ° °

I’ve finally started watching a few new TV shows, even though my go-to-show for immediate stress relief at the moment are the Gilmore Girls for the fourth or fifth time :-) I’m really looking forward to the “A Year in the Life of…” at the end of November.

I’ve really enjoy “This Is Us” so far, because it’s the right mixture of emotions and humour and drama. I’m neither a triplet nor a twin, but I’ve got siblings and I just like watching adult siblings interact, because I can relate to that. That’s one of the things I loved so much about the Bravermans on Parenthood. “Pitch” is another show I’ve started and enjoy so far, but I’m only two episodes in, so I’ll have to see where it goes.

The 2nd season of “Lucifer” hasn’t lived up to my hopes so far, I’m afraid. Maybe I’m too set in my personal religious education and I don’t mean beliefs as such. But I just can’t quite get on board with the Dad (God), Mom (?) and all their children (angels, fallen or not) idea. No idea how to explain why that bugs me a bit. What got me interested in this show in season 1 was Lucifer’s special relation with Chloe. Why is she immune to his intense mind reading stare? Why is he vulnerable in her presence? None of this was came up again in S2 so far. Lucifer has his hands full with his “mom” to even really flirt with Chloe. They work together and that’s it. I really hope that will change soon.

“Madam Secretary” also started a bit weird for my taste. The premiere was all over the place (timeline wise), the 2nd episode was okay-ish, even though I rolled my eyes a lot, that once again Henry’s religious / historical expertise somehow helps with defeating Islamic terrorism. Really? Whatever happened with Dimitri by the way? They got him out of Russia and probably reunited him with his sister, but wouldn’t it have been nice to have that at least mentioned? Or did they do that at the end of season 2?

° ° ° °

My Outlander Season 2 Blu-Ray will hopefully arrive tomorrow and then I might start a re-watch of that season for real. I’ve rewatched each episode in the week after it aired, but nothing really after the season ended this summer. Maybe because my mind had already moved on to book/season 3 “Voyager”? But I’m kind of excited to (hopefully be able to) start all over again with Season 2 this weekend.

On my busy brain there hadn’t been much space to think about Outlander these past few weeks, so I didn’t read about or saw the deleted scenes from season 2 until the “Episode 7: Faith” drama hit my Twitter feed, where I don’t follow that many Outlander fans in the first place. I think I noticed the drama, because Terry got hassled once again and took a short break from Twitter because of it. I admit I don’t have a clear memory of the original edited version of that scene, so when I watched the extended (deleted) version I didn’t really knew what had been left out. Because of that I didn’t ounderstand the whole drama about it. But I hated that it once again seemed to have turned nasty for some people involved.

Why can’t we viewers / fans give Ron and everyone involved with the show a break? They are doing the best they can! They care about the story. I still very much believe that and I’m so grateful we have this show in the first place, because it is such a great addition to the Outlander world. But even as this great addition it will never replace the books in my heart or mind. If I don’t like something on the show or if I miss something… I just return to the original source and enjoy the story as Diana had created it. And thanks to the TV show now Jamie and Claire and everyone else has a face in the movie that plays in my mind when I read the books. So all is well.

It’s also very well, that all the actors (and lot of the crew involved) seem to be lovely people and I love how active some of them are on Twitter or elsewhere. How open and warm and interested they are when fans encounter them anywhere. But I admit during the “deleted Faith scene” drama I wished some people (in this case Sam, Terry) would have thought twice about what they posted on Twitter or Facebook. And then I felt really bad for thinking that, because I don’t want them to censor themselves and to not speak their mind, because then all we will get from them are empty phrases and soundbites. But unfortunately sometimes their statements just keep adding oil to the fire, even though they are not intended like that. It’s the fault of some (minor) groups in this fandom who use this statements to keep the fire burning.

I have no idea how the actors and crew are supposed to deal with these aspects of the fandom. I just know that I don’t like reading about it. There are so many more interesting and exciting topics we could discuss in regards to this show, the actors and everyone. And as I’ve stated at the beginning of this long, rambling post, I have enough drama in my work life at the moment, so I don’t need it on my Twitter or in my fandom.

My Voyager reread has reached Edinburgh and I’m almost done with chapter 25 (House of Joy) and hope to manage gathering my thoughts on chapter 24/25 for a blog post this weekend. So much to write about. Like… might they relinquish the whole Mr. Willoughby storyline and thus his character on the show? When that thought crossed my mind for the first time a few days ago, I thought “No way! There is so much happening with him later on”, but then I thought, that might as well be cut from the plot as well. It’s not essential to the core plot line of Claire/Jamie/Young Ian. And I think it might be difficult to keep Mr Willoughby in just as a funny sidekick on the show. It might turn too much of a cliche, if they can’t get into his backstory.

Think about that until I have written my post in which I might make my case for just leaving him out of the TV show completely. We’ve only got 13 episodes to cover the whole book after all! :-)

This entry was posted in Archive and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.