Saturday, December 26, 2015

A review of Star Wars, specifically The Force Awakens

I haven’t written a review in a while, but I knew when the most talked about movie this year was coming out I’d be writing one. Those who know me personally know I’m not a lover of Star Wars, and after the prequels I was surprised anyone would ever want to try for more Star Wars movies. But, when I heard that George Lucas was no longer involved, and that one (or some?) of the original writers were back on, without George Lucas’ meddling, I was hopeful. I went in wanting to watch the movie. I was ready to suspend my disbelief, love some Space Fantasy and be happy.

That’s not what happened. I found myself doing everything I could to hold back groans and head shakes, especially in the last half of the film.

For those who are already done with this review, and cannot take my heresy any further, I’ll say this: I do not regret the money I spent on this movie. I thought it was worth it. But it was not enough to make me want to see the next 2 films, either. If anyone asks me if they should see it, my answer will probably be along the lines of “Well, everyone else and their grandmother has, so it’ll at least be a conversation piece.”

But, if you are curious as to why someone wouldn’t like the movie, you can read below. Note, I’m unabashedly posting SPOILERS from here on out. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s joy of this movie, so if you hate spoilers, stop now.

Let’s start with the good things, which is a much shorter and much less ranty list. First, I liked the new cast. I thought they were good actors who displayed a good range of emotions, and were consistent to their characters. I also, over-all, liked their characters. A Stormtrooper who isn’t sure if he wants to get tangled up in all of this, a girl with a huge destiny before her, and a cocky pilot who knows he’s the best god damn pilot out there. It’s very reminiscent of the first, and yet they play with it and I liked that. I even liked Kylo Ren and his temper tantrums. I thought they worked well for a character who is battling himself internally, and also shows why, despite him having a tendency towards the light, why he would be on the dark side (fear leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side).

With the characters, I’m also glad it was much more diverse. In the originals, wasn’t Leia the only female with a speaking part? and Lando Calrissian the only non-white human male? I’m glad this movie made that change away from blatant white-male superiority without being INCREDIBLY racially insensitive like the prequels were.

Film wise, I thought the editing and music was very reminiscent of the original, without being overdone or in our face like the prequels. A few edits made me grind my teeth, but as an editor that’s something I say about nearly every movie (but the most perfect movie, Fury Road). It kept me in the movie, and I never felt lost, despite the fact that I was sitting in the front row. Also, the long roving shots over the desert, or in the middle of a battle, were most definitely excellent and really made everything feel huge. Which is odd, since apparently the entire Star Wars Universe can be traversed in a matter of hours! … we’ll get to that in a moment. We’re still in happy land, for two more minor points.

I also loved that they reduced the CGI, and went back to more costumes and muppets. It really gave a variety to the alien life forms and made them feel much more alive than the animated Gungans from the prequels. I still want to know why humans significantly outnumber all the other races out there, but I was still happy to see so many interesting and unique creatures existing in this space drama.

There was also some good comedic events, such as BB-8 giving a lighter thumbs up. It added good, cute touches to the movie. Those comedic moments were well timed, too. They weren’t distracting, nor appallingly racist, they gave good, needed breaks.

That’s it. That’s the good about the movie. Decent acting, enjoyable characters, well produced, and some enjoyable graphics. And that’s why I don’t understand why Star Wars fans are so fanatical that I’ve read people impotently threatening to kill Neil DeGrasse Tyson because he jokingly criticized the science of the movie. I don’t understand how this C+, maybe B-, film has enraptured such a large portion of the population into a frenzy that it has jokingly been compared to more unifying than 9/11 was for Americans.

Star Wars is a Space Fantasy, or a Space Drama, yet many people call it Science Fiction. There is no science in this movie. The science is so bad in this movie that I’d believe that the entire movie was just a joke to see how much they could piss scientists off. If it was just small things, like BB-8 being shown as a sphere with no treads able to travel across sand, that’d be perfectly fine. But half the movie is dedicated to something that is absolutely ridiculous. I am expected to believe that 30 years after the defeat of The Empire, only two factions sprung up from the power vacuum left (I say only two because apparently no-one else in the entire universe gives a shit or can do anything about the First Order other than the Resistance funded by the Republic), and that the First Order has managed to build a new super weapon that is significantly larger (the Deathstar was compared to the size of a moon, and Starkiller is the size of a planet. The Earth is approximately 4x larger than the moon, so the Starkiller is probably around that much larger, too). The Starkiller is a habitable planet on the surface that is able to EAT STARS. The process of eating a star is just sucking it in through some port a la Space Balls technology and takes, apparently, a matter of hours (if that). The only negative effect this is shown having on the planet is that it goes from day to a cloudy, maybe duskish day, to a full moon night with a clear sky. If our sun was to randomly vanish, all life would immediately cease to exist. Some minor things would just be an unbearable change of temperature to the point no life could exist, a massive change of weather which would kill all life, add in that the magnetic poles would probably change which would just destroy any electronics, oh yeah, also absolute complete darkness… yeah, everything is dead. But hey, those are minor, and despite that there is a specific scene showing them turning off all the shields and protective stuff around the planet, maybe the Starkiller has technology that allows it to create its own source of heat and weather control, and controls its own magnetic poles. So next is the planet is no longer orbiting its star, which now means it’s wildly whirling through space, so everyone would die from that. Okay, maybe, despite never once being shown on screen, even with multiple shots showing how massive the planet is and showing no obvious sign of thrusters, it has thrusters strong enough to keep it in order despite the disappearance of its star. Fine, maybe I can believe all of that. I haven’t gotten to the bad thing yet. The planet just absorbed the entire mass of a star. Everyone on the planet has now been crushed by the massive change of gravity. The gravitational strength of the sun is 24 times that of Earth, and saying these are similar sized… yes, everything on that planet is flat. This is also all assuming that this is the only planet in this star system, and that there are no other celestial bodies floating around that also have a new center of gravity.  I will, for a moment, suspend my disbelief to all of that for a moment. We now have a planet wildly hurtling through space and everyone on the planet is flat, but the Starkiller still fires its ultimate weapon. It’s shooting a laser across multiple galaxies and hitting, compared to the vastness of space, miniscule targets with pinpoint accuracy. To describe this, imagine you are driving a car through LA. A semi runs through the red light, and plows through your car. While you are wildly spinning, you poke your head out of the moon roof, and throw four darts all at the exact same time. Your dart flies across the entire United States, and hits your arch rival and his three friends who live in New York city. My comparison is probably also wildly inaccurate (I an art degree, not a science degree), and it should probably be something like the dart circles the world a few times before hitting its target...but whatever, it’s impossible. I’m sorry, there is no level of suspension of disbelief that allows me to believe that. Or that, as soon as the Starkiller blows up (which was never the plan, they only wanted to cripple the cannon), it just reforms as a completely new star. If this was some minor thing, I’d ignore all of it… but the Starkiller was a big part of the movie. It WAS the movie. It would be like if I watched Battlestar Galactica, but I thought the concept of the Cylons was unbelievable. If I did that, I’d hate Battlestar Galactica. It’d be unwatchable.

All of this was easy to fix, too. All those shots of the Starkiller? Show it sucking up the star so that it doesn’t just take a couple of hours, but possibly weeks and months to do. Show it having some boosters. Maybe not have it suck up the ENTIRE star, but still harvesting its raw energy. There’s so many ways to have fixed this that still let me suspend my disbelief for a moment. But instead, it eats an entire star with no ill effects.

But this movie is a Space Fantasy. As a friend told me, I should hold it to the same standard that I hold other Fantasy movies. Well, for one, I’m not going to freak out that there was a 10 minute count down until the laser fired, and Han Solo and Chewie were able to put bombs on multiple levels while wandering a space station they’ve never been on while the base is on high alert. I’m letting that go because I love action movies, and that shit happens all the time. I’m not complaining about ridiculous battle scenes, because they were enjoyable.  But, when I compare Star Wars to a world that openly admits there is magic, Lord of the Rings, I find the world filled with magic more believable. First off, I don’t remember any scenes of Aragon just stopping arrows from hitting him with his sword, let alone constant hails of beams of light (note: An arrow travels at 184mph, a bullet at 1,840mph, and a beam of light at travels at 186,000 miles per SECOND). I actually let that go, because it’s cool. Seeing Kylo Ren stop that phaser blast mid air was actually really cool. I’ll accept the argument “because of the force” occasionally. Problem is, it feels like so many things in this world are only explained by the words “Because of the force.” There’s very few times in Lord of the Rings that there are impossible actions that can only be explained by “Because of Magic.” The most unbelievable thing in LoTR (outside of the Ghost army, which I counter with Star Wars has a race of apparently immobile giant slug people who are also, randomly and without reason, revered through the galaxy) is probably the Eye of Sauron. Sauron would most accurately be compared to a character that is so stupid I’m only going to mention him once, the Supreme Being. Sauron and that other stupid character are omniscient beings who are able to wield untold power over others, but themselves are impotent (at least in their current form). The Starkiller base is leaps and bounds beyond that on the unbelievable scale. Starkiller base be like if Orodruin (that’s the Volcano in Mordor of LotR) could instantaneously cause Gondor, Rohan, and the Shire all turn into lava.

But there’s something else that Lord of the Rings does amazingly well that Star Wars just fucks up entirely: Travel Time. Lord of the Rings takes a lot of care with travel time, and the fact that it takes time to get places is a very important aspect of the movies (and books, obviously, but I think it would be unfair to compare the LotR books to the Star Wars movies). It helps make the world feel massive. The Lord of the Rings world, to me, which only takes part on a portion of a single continent, feels larger to me than the entirety of the Star Wars universe. Things take time to do. Yes, sometimes the armies of good appeared at the last second to save the day against the forces of Sauron, but for these to occur, Gandalf or other characters vanished for weeks or months on end preparing.  The Millenium Falcon lands on Takadona. The crew enters Maz’s castle, and by the end of the day both the First Order and the Rebel army are there, and within maybe an hour of each other. Repeatedly the movie mentions they are going Lightspeed. So we all know, the closest Solar System to us is 4.37 light years away, so at the speed of light that would take 4.37 years to get there, saying that both armies are 1 solar system away, and that the solar systems are equidistant away. According to the wookiepedia though, in the Star Wars universe, entering Lightspeed puts you into Hyperspace, which allows quicker travel. I’m not going to argue that, that is the rules of this universe, and it doesn’t completely break all physics. I’m okay with that….

...But the Star Wars universe is internally inconsistent. For a moment, we’re going to pretend I can ignore the obscene disregard of science that goes to such a degree that a world that openly uses “magic” feels more scientifically accurate to me (I can’t, but we’re going down make believe land)… the world of Star Wars is inconsistent with its own rules. So there was The Empire, which was defeated. In its wake, The First Order came about. They have developed a super weapon unlike ever before seen, despite being a newly formed government. In 30 years, the only other empire to rise is The Republic, and they have created no technology greater than X-Wings during that time. If the Starkiller’s lasers can enter Hyperspace and completely annihilate planets, and it only takes a matter of hours to charge, The First Order has just won. I mean, honestly, they won just by killing The Republic planets, but if there are any other empires… The First Order has them dead before they even know about the end of The Republic. By the time an effective defense can be mounted, the Starkiller has destroyed 5 more planets. If the Starkiller laser cannot enter Hyperspace, which would make more sense (but, obviously, logic wasn’t part of this movie), and the Starkiller base is in a solar system SUPER close to all the other solar systems it’s going to attack, then it’s still going to take at least a year for that laser to hit a planet. Are we to believe, that despite they have developed hyperspace technology and star guzzling planet killers, that no society has developed the technology to just move an asteroid into the way of the laser and just block the attack? That with at least a year of warning, nothing could’ve been done to save the Republic?

Let’s back away from the Starkiller. I’ve focussed on it so much because it’s a HUGE aspect of the movie, and really killed the movie for me. But let’s look at another inconsistency: stormtroopers. It is a well known joke that stormtroopers are horrible aim. Despite frequently outnumbering our heroes and having firefights in long corridors, the only hit they’ve ever managed on the heroes in any of the movies that I can recall is in The Force Awakens, and it's to Chewie’s right bicep. Meanwhile, the various crews have dispatched untold hordes of these people in white. Despite the fact that the Stormtroopers are trained from a super early age for their entire life to be the ultimate soldiers, Rey is able to fire a weapon twice that she’s never used before (and actually misfires it, fixes it, then fires) and hits her target in the time it takes the Stormtrooper to shoot once. Okay, fine, the ultimate soldiers of the galaxy are bested by an untrained girl. Enter Finn. Finn is a stormtrooper who works in Sanitation. Finn is a garbage man. For some reason, Finn is just now becoming a soldier, and it’s mentioned this is one of his first missions. Finn is a great fucking shot. The ex-garbage man, newbie soldier, is a better shot than the elite veterans. Apparently The First Order is able to develop a weapon that can shoot a laser with incredible accuracy across potentially multiple solar systems, but are unable to develop a helmet for Stormtroopers that helps with aiming. Hell, they don’t even install technology that was standard in WWII (air filters that filter out toxins) into Stormtrooper helmets, despite Stormtroopers frequently entering alien planets and shuttles.

It’s hard to get this rant to flow together. Every paragraph I want to go into a hundred different little mini rants. But hey, the flow of The Force Awakens was also pretty bad, and so many people think the movie is amazing, so maybe they’ll love this, too. The first part of the movie was slow. I’m not going to say painfully slow, or dreadfully slow, or other adverbedly slow. It was just slow. It was like “Hey, we’re on Jarku, now we’re not, now we are again, now there’s a girl, now here’s Finn, oh shit, we’re going back to Jarku, oh look, we’re on Jarku again and it takes forever to travel across, and hey characters are finally meeting each other, and no Stormtroopers are finally there, but yay Rey got away, and now there are in space and Han Solo is there! That’s cool. But oh god, here’s space pirates. Now there’s aliens eating everything. Now we’re on Takadona. OhgodthefirstorderiscomingandReyishavingaflashbackandTheRepublicjustgotblownup-andwhizbangboom- Han Solo is dead, Starkiller blows up, Rey is with her father (oh shit, did I just spoil that for you?) WTF. Seriously, half the movie takes place on the desert planet of Jarkuu, and the second half just zips through everything else. It was so rushed, I don’t even know why The Starkiller was preparing to fire their laser after destroying the entirety of The Republic.

And no-one gave a shit about The Republic. There were no tears, there was no sadness, everything just moved on. Four massively populated planets just blew up. Untold billions of lives just vanished, and there was more concern over Chewie’s arm. Independence Day elicited more of an emotional reaction from me than this movie. I mentioned all the science and internal consistency and travel first because it made everything feel rushed. It made the story, especially the second half, feel sloppily put together. It took me out of the movie, emotionally. I felt nothing from the point of The Republic blowing up and on.

Yes, even Han Solo’s death. That was an extremely predictable outcome. No, I don’t mean from the moment I saw Kylo Ren walking across catwalk being similar to the shot of Luke confronting Darth Vader. No, from the moment Kylo Ren said he was fighting with himself and needed to purge the light and learning that Kylo Ren was Han Solo and Leia’s son, it was obvious one of the two parents would die. This movie tried so hard to be the original three and following the same dynamics, that it was clear. Chewie barely even showed any emotion to that, other than killing a few Stormtroopers. Everything kind of gets wrapped up after that. There’s a fight with Kylo Ren, the Starkiller blows up, and everyone cheers the death of Han Solo and The Republic, oh wait… i mean the death of the Starkiller, which I’m sure the First Order will just bounce back from like nothing even happened. Then Rey flies off with the totally okay Chewie, who just saw his best friend of what, like 50 years, just die.

So let’s talk about Rey. I liked her character, as in her emotions and goals and all that. But that doesn’t mean I like her storyline. Her storyline was that of a “Supernatural High School Movie / Show.” A Supernatural Highschool Movie / Show is one in which someone who is in Highschool just has the worst life. Probably relatively abandoned from their parents, they have no friends, they are barely making ends meet. Then one day they find some super awesome secret. They now have a destiny they must fulfill, and because they have a goal in life, all those “quirky” traits they had are now amazingly useful talents. There are plenty of movies that follow this pattern that are absolutely great, like Harry Potter or the X-men, but there are plenty of awful ones, like Twilight. The good ones don’t constantly fall back on the character being great because of their destiny, but focuses on them training and learning how to use the power. Harry Potter’s “destiny” really only explains why he survived Voldemorte, and why he can speak Parseltongue. After that, the explanation for things is because either he trains for it, or because he has people looking out for him (although they may be doing it in the background and letting him think it’s because he’s destined). The X-men’s and other mutants suffer from their abilities just as much as they benefit. Things don’t just get done for them, they don’t have incredible knowledge of all things because they are gifted. They still have to train. For Rey though, it feels like when I ask specific questions on how she did anything, it falls back to “it was the force.” Like, how since Rey used to scavenge shit from a long dead Star Destroyer, she has amazing knowledge on how to navigate any and all other spacecrafts in the universe, including the Starkiller, which is on a scale beyond anything that universe has ever before seen. Or since she knows how to pilot what I heard called a “Flying USB drive,” she is able to out pilot two well trained tie fighter pilots in a ship that she’s never flown before (that was described as a piece of trash in movie, and I believe has been described as hard to handle in other movies). She knows more galactic and alien languages than I can even conceive. I’m totally okay with her beating Kylo Ren, he was wounded and is a conflicted villain, but I still don’t understand how she had unsure footing, was bent backwards, and using all her strength pushing up, she was able to basically teleport behind Kylo Ren. I don’t get how she manages to be a better shot than Stormtroopers. You can only use the excuse “it’s the force” so many times before it sounds exactly like “it was just shitty writing.”

Real quick before I wrap this up… Rey’s lived her entire life, that she can remember, on a desert planet. The movie even mentions while she has dreams of islands, she doesn’t remember ever seeing an ocean. How is she able to run around in her desert outfit through snow perfectly fine. I’m not actually going to use this against the movie, but why isn’t she at least surprised to see snow for the first time, or shivers, or at least notices that she is somewhere completely new.

I got why the original three were great movies. Much like The Force Awakens, the originals, to me, were C+, B- films. They had decent acting, fun action, and entertaining characters sloshed into a world of piss poor science and mediocre storytelling. But the originals provided something new; they’re recognized (whether this is accurate or not) as the first movies of this scale. Galactic War, unique and varied alien life forms, and a not yet overplayed villainous theme of the Nazis. It brought a lot of new things to the screen that people never saw before, and I get why people jumped all over it.  But The Force Awakens wasn’t the first. In fact, other movies, shows, and games have dramatically improved on what the original Star Wars did, but Force Awakens just follows. And the Nazis as villains (First Order = Third Reich) is so overplayed that it’s really relegated to parodies, such as Kung Fury. The movie didn’t feel relevant nor new. It felt like it really REALLY really wanted to capture the magic of the original three. And, when I talk to people, they all just seem like they really REALLY want that magic again, to the point that even if they admit “Okay, the Starkiller was dumb, and the second half of the movie was rushed, and the storyline was predictable, and there were some serious problems with remaining internally consistent, and yeah, they constantly rely on ‘its the force’ to explain anything and everything, but it wasn’t the prequel trilogy, so I loved it.”

The Star Wars Franchise, to me, is like loving the bible. It’s a wildly scientifically inaccurate, internally inconsistent, mediocre story with some interesting characters that live in a very black and white world. But like the bible, Star Wars has enraptured untold throngs of fans who just eat it up and are willing to resort to violence to protect their fandom. I don’t get it.

Fuck it, I’m going to go and watch the LotR trilogy (extended cut, because duh) for like the 5th time.

Monday, January 5, 2015

2014 in review / 2015 resolutions

It will be hard to be non-bias on this one, because 2014 ended in a shit storm. So to try to remove bias, let’s look at my resolutions for this year.

The big resolution was to re-examine my life and where I want to go.  I did lots of questioning at the beginning of the year. I tried to apply to film jobs outside of the state.  To get anything in that field I had to show I had current experience, aka recent film jobs, which I had already been trying for for years, or I need to go back to college. And so came the question...did I want to try going to college while working full time? Unfortunately, nothing interested me enough to stress myself out to go to college, work full time, just to acquire more debt to get into jobs that wouldn’t pay much more and have no guarantee of being any less stressful. Film, writing, video… all jobs I would prefer, but I’ve gone down that road before, there is no promise it will work out, and experience has taught me that additional college experience isn’t really going to help. Programming or medical professions don’t really interest me. They might pay a bit more, but it’s not going to have an over-all positive net value in my life.

There are promising job opportunities opening within my job, and in Portland, in the future. I have, for better or worse, resigned myself to holding my breath until those come to fruition. It is hopeful that I start seeing that type of movement early in 2015.

My other major resolutions was to make a great, permanent change in my life. As discussed above, I still have my same job. I am still single. I am still petless. I am still not a serial killer (not that I’d admit that either). On the 31st, I was sitting in the same apartment. As of the 3rd of January, I did change residence and got new roommates, so it could be counted as a delayed success. But even that is minor, as I will be living only about 5 minutes away from my current location. Not really a scenery change. So my 2 major goals, figure out where to go in life and create a change in my life are both counted as fails in my books.

The rest of the goals were various forms of fails. Fitness was a big fail, but understandably so. And I didn’t even really do much more yoga outside of a month or two. My writing was focussed on D&D or my comic book, so enjoyable, but not career pursuing. I read more than the year before… which is saying like 3 books. Due to scheduling, I only went on a few other hashes. I did join a pay for dating website, so I got that experience under my belt… and it was regrettable. Definitely a loss of money. I apparently spent close to $1500 on alcohol last year (I didn’t count New Orleans, but I didn’t do much drinking then), most of it during the summer. I have no positive nor negative feelings towards that amount, I just wanted to know. While the fitness part is disappointing, the rest are all kind of “eh.”

Really, the only thing I did well was my goal #5, be more active for Halloween. While technically Halloween itself I did minimal, I did do the Great Horror Campout, and also had my New Orleans Halloween trip. I saw a ton of haunted houses, got lots of great scares, and a few mementos that will last. I passed this one with flying colors.

From the perspective of how many goals did I accomplish...this year was a disgrace. I really only accomplished one of my goals, two more that were gimmes, and neither had positive effects on my life. So much for trying the unbiased approach to 2014.

I don’t feel it was totally bad though. Again, goal #5 was very important to me. In fact, from the month of August through the majority of November, I was doing really well.  Great Horror Campout, New Orleans trip, I had an awesome partner in crime, and I felt in those months I really knew who my friends were and I was spending lots of time with them. I felt truly loved and happy during that time. It definitely helped that work was only minorly stressful during that period as well. I think the memories I made during August through November will outlast the negative memories of the year.

Another great thing is I changed my comic books formatting, and so far am getting very positive feedback. The followers of the page have grown immensely, and I feel like I’m getting good work done. I am looking forward to seeing it grow over the next year.

But since the middle of November until the end of year, life got really bad. Had to search for a new apartment which turned into a nightmare, work got extremely busy and filled with screamers and hate while while the hunt for new jobs became depressing, my health deteriorated, my partner and I split, and of course the normally expected stress caused by the Holidays. Due to all the stress, I became (and still am) very reclusive and introverted, so I’ve been seeing my friends a lot less. Christmas Eve 2014 has been put in the annals of time as one of the top 5 worst days of my life (I believe its #4, possibly #5), largely impart to work stress.

This year I am going to try to limit my resolutions and focus more on what did work. Of my resolutions, I only really cared about less than half of them. I’m going to focus my resolutions on things that will make me happier with life. I’m not depressed, but I’m not happy either. The past few years I haven’t had a “Happy” year. I’ve had happy moments throughout the past few years, but I wouldn’t say any of the recent ones have been over-all happy.

Resolution #1: Make another vacation that’s about me. One of my best times of 2014 was the New Orleans trip. While I have a few “vacations” planned for 2015, they are marriages, or large group gatherings. They will be fun, I will enjoy them, but they are about other people. They aren’t for me. The New Orleans trip was on a whole different level. With the extra vacation time I have now, I will want to make sure I do this again. While probably not New Orleans, we’ll look at other places I have never visited.

Resolution #2: A separate resolution dedicated just to Halloween. Maybe it can be mixed with Resolution #1, maybe not. Either way, focussing a lot on Halloween or other scares / haunts made me super happy. It is definitely a reason for my happiness from August through part of November. If I can salvage those months, than I’ll at least be able to smile on that period of time.

Resolution #3: This one might be a bit harder, but I’d like to move somewhere that will allow me to own a dog. I have always had a dog in my life, and not having one now just feels wrong. I would focus on my health running the dog, I’d have a buddy around me to keep me happy, and overall I think it would be a wise investment in my life. Unfortunately, this resolution may be partially out of my hands. It depends on my living situation, it depends on what opens up, and life may change for me financially as well.

Resolution #4: Find a way to be happy with my job. Switch jobs, change companies, go to therapy. Something. I have had this resolution multiple times. It’s important. I’ve been working on it for years, and so far nothing has really changed. I’m really hoping if I can accomplish the above three, then while this one won’t pass...I’ll at least feel better over-all. And that’s the goal. To feel happier about the year.

Fitness, reading, writing,art, and tattoos are all things important to me. But they are things that don’t need resolutions. When I suffer illness, or bad asthma, or whatever else that takes me away from doing them, having a resolution to do it just makes me feel like I’m further failing, and it doesn’t make me feel any better when I succeed. It’s a lose-whatever situation, and I don’t need to put myself into that.

So despite the stressful start, I’m hoping if I focus on these resolutions, I can make 2015 better.