renewed committment

So I went to see Julie & Julia last night in Times Square after work (haven't been to the movies in ages, so glad my movie companion came up with the idea and chose the movie, had a great time), and without going into a review of it that would invariably respond to the review I read in the Times by A.O. Scott, I found it inspiring. This is not why I'm blogging about nothing this evening. It might be why I'm blogging this evening, but only in the sense that I have been thinking about blogging (that is, contributing to my own blog) lately and haven't because of various excuses.

Briefly responding to the movie and my experience of watching it:

1. I was starving by the end. I also hadn't eaten dinner yet. I was starving by the end, but I also knew that anything I ate at that point would be completely unsatisfying. I wanted a real meal. (It was almost 2 am.) But more than that, I wanted a real meal that I had cooked. I wanted my own kitchen, fully stocked with utensils and cookery and fresh produce.

2. I wanted to write. No, I wanted a big project, and the only thing that it makes sense for me to take on as a big project simply must involve writing. Sort of. I have other big project ideas, but the writing and the big project are overlapping desires. So then I started thinking maybe I wanted to document a big project of my own, but that would require starting another blog, about a topic which I have sort of already mentioned in the past. I was not thinking of documenting a project and then writing a memoir about the documentation process and then letting it be turned into a movie chronicling, not so much anything I had done, but the struggle for recognition of the person who had inspired me. (I have not been personally inspired is, I suppose, what I'm emphasizing here. Sorry, Julia and Julie.)

3. I wanted to go to the movies more often. The movie was very well done, we thought, and Meryl Streep was completely amazing. There was romance, there was laughter, there was at least one (but maybe only one) moment of real heartbreak. It was what going to the movies should be.

4. I wanted to go to Paris. And everywhere.

5. I wanted to keep doing research on the cold war. (I also happen to be reading The Magic Lantern by Timothy Garton Ash, which is wonderful.)

So. It's a start. :)