The 80s

So I’ve been watching a lot of 80s television lately. Mostly The first 2 seasons of The A-Team and 21 Jump Street (Thanks Netflix :) . I was pretty young during the 80s so I’ve learned a lot about the time I grew up in this way. I thought I would share what I’ve learned with everyone.

1) In the 80s anything with 4 wheels could be turned into a tank. Anything.

2) Cops often left their squad cars not only unlocked but with the keys in the ignition. Cause I mean who’s going to steal a cop car? Answer: Everyone

3) Every bad guy has to have a helicopter. I mean what kind of bad guy runs a Moonshine operation and doesn’t have a helicopter?

4) All teenagers were involved in either drugs, robbery, loan sharking, arson or gangs.

5) Don’t ever own a small business because someone will eventually come and charge you for “insurance” but really it’s so they don’t destroy everything you own. (this was a genuine fear I had as a child)

6) My perfect man is a Murdock with a little Face thrown in. Which in the end is still Rick from The Facts of Life.

7) Drugs aren’t about what kind of parents you have, they’re about who’s cool.

8) It’s ok to act inappropriately with teenagers when you are an adult as long as you look like a teenager.

9) Undercover cops can’t wait to tell you they are undercover cops.

10) Johnny Depp has not aged at all despite the fact that he smokes like a chimney. My Dare officer lied to me.

11) The best place to lock up someone you want to kill is in a barn or garage with lots of tools and mechanical things and sometimes dynamite.

12) You can only have 1 girl on a team. Any more than that and it gets complicated.

13) People can be really important to you one week and then completely disappear the next week and you won’t even care.

14) You could be a convicted felon, on the run from the Military police and still be able to work with children at center.

15) If you put the same outfit and a wig on Person A that is remotely near the same hair color as person B, no matter what their size or shape, Person A will look exactly like person B


That's it so far. Really the 80s seem like they were pretty rough. I'll keep you updated on anything else I learn.

My student are funny... or something else

Since I teach a CTE (Career Technical Education) class we have to go over job skills like résumés and interviewing. On our final exam they had to answer this question:

Describe how you would answer this question in an interview: Tell me about your strengths and weaknesses. Include three skills and abilities.

As I was grading their answers I came across several that were pretty funny so I thought I’d share them with you. These are all the real answers from high school students.

Strengths-

-Workful
-Intertainful
-I know my history and can answer many historical questions
-I have skills and abilities at everything
-Find out what to do on a phone
-Play soccer
-If things get quiet or uncomfortable I can tell a joke or two
-x-ray vision
-super speed (I can out run a jet)
-See into the future (like if the world was going to end I could warn everyone)
-Text 25 words per minute
-Riding motorcycles
-I can run fast and lift heavy things
-Paintballing
-I would answer this question by making it into a question
-I do what I am exposed to do
-Tommy + Suzy
-Making Drawings on the concrete
-I am awesome


Weaknesses -

-Lazy
-Praging others (If someone could figure out what this means I would be very grateful)
-Cutting the lawn
-Maybe my cursing is a weakness too
-Get mad easily (listed patient as strength)
-Moody
-I listen to orders too much
-Bossy
-Not the best dressed
-Batting (I am not very good at eating the ball)
-Coming to school
-If being a team leader is a weakness than I am as weak as a noodle
-Alphabetizing
-Shallow
-I can’t think while people are talking to me
-I slack off
-Singing, jokes and acting
-Women, T.V. and food
-When I am on my period I work slower
-I like to stay home on the weekends
-Bears

A night in the head of Darlene

I mentioned in another post that I want to write more. Specifically I want to write every day. Here is some insight into that process for me.

Last Night:

6:45pm I found myself dying of boredom (one of the disadvantages of going to a morning church). I had just finished watching “Kathy Griffin: She’ll Cut a Bitch” on my Netflix (which was amazing) and I was staring down at an empty Sunday night and wondering if 6:45pm was too early to go to bed. It was then that I realized I could spend some time working on a screenplay I’ve been writing. I’m always saying I don’t have enough time and here I was with time. This was especially great because I’ve been feeling a wall with the story and I recently had a plot breakthrough.

One of my major struggles with writing is I keep everything in my head and never get it out so this was great. I have a hard time working at home so I started doing research on places nearby with free wifi. Coffee houses or restaurants. I didn’t really want to go to a coffee house because then if you need a refill you have to take your laptop and everything with you. The problem with restaurants is that you can’t plug your laptop in and mine has the battery life of about an hour right now so that was no good either.

7:00pm I realize I probably don’t want a place with free wifi because it will just distract me and I wouldn’t get anything done. So this opened up my options.

7:10pm As I think about it more I realize I don’t even need my laptop I can actually just write it down in a notebook analog style. The problem with this is that I don’t have any of the pens I like to write with so I decide to go to target. I also decide I need an idea book I can carry around with me. I have about 5 or 6 unused journals right now but I need a new one to start this new creativity wave. I decide to go to target and then start writing.

7:25pm I arrive at target and head straight to the stationary section. Well, straight through the women’s clothes section to the stationary section. I look around at their journals and I don’t see anything the right size or anything cute so I decide to go to Barnes & Noble and check there. I grab my pens and head toward the register.

7:35pm As I walk to the register I realize in order for an idea book to work I need to carry it around all the time which means using my purse more. My starting to look old and tore up purse. I obviously need a new purse so that I can carry around my idea book and begin writing more. So I head to the purse department and look around.

7:40pm As I peruse the purses I see the $1 sock section. I love $1 socks. And who doesn’t always need socks? So I grab 5 pairs and head back over to the purses where I see a purse for $30. That is more than I want to spend but its cute and it’s the only one I like. It’s really big though and it would have plenty of space for my idea book. Come to think of it I could probably fit my laptop in there too and I’ve been needing a new bag for that. So this will be a good investment. I buy the bag.

8:00pm I head over to Barnes & Noble and head straight to the journals. Well straight to the journals after I look around for a bit trying to find any calendars they have left. I really miss Paper calendars and I’ve wanted to buy one to put up at home. Then I can check things off and have a visual reminder of otherthings. It turns out they have no calendars left.

8:10pm God I love the journal section at Barnes & Noble. I love buying journals. I never fill them up but I do like owning them and looking at them. I start searching through the shelves trying to decide which journal represents my creativity and me. I’m drawn to a journal with owls on it and the pages are really cool and each one has this graphic-y drawing on it but it will be kind of hard to just write on and it won’t serve my purposes.

8:20pm I start to decide what exactly I want this journal to say about me.

Do I want a “green” recycled journal? They’re a little too big for me.

How about another cool graphic-y one? It’s too hard to write on the pages.

Do I want an ironic journal? (There are some great cheesy journals like the “I hope you Dance” Journal and one that says, “Eternity is forever and right now”) I really don’t want someone to think I really like the inspirational journal or the gaudy/ ugly “devotional journal” that is made out of rejected 70s wallpaper.

There are leather journals and journals with weird wood sticks and plain journals with nothing on them. There are too many options here and my journal must represent me completely.

8:45pm I decide to go with the first journal I found with the owls and hey it’s only $10.

8:50pm I decide I’m hungry so I need to get some food. I want Chinese food and the only place I like is Panda express so I head there. I hate going to mom and pop Chinese food places because whenever you go to bite into a piece of chicken you either bite into a huge chunk of fat or like a talon. I know major chains are more processed but that’s exactly what I like about them, the process of cutting off the fat and talons.

8:55pm I show up at Panda Express and get my food.

9:05pm Head home

9:20pm I show up at home and eat my dinner.

9:40pm Now that dinner is done I need to take all the contents from my old purse and transfer them to my new purse. I have a ton of crap and receipts in the old bag so I need to sort through what I need and what I don’t

9:50pm Now that that is done I realize I only have 10 minutes left before I need to be in bed so I head to the bathroom to get ready.

10:00pm 0 pages written


My Purse



My Pens



My Idea Book

WTB??!!

Can someone please explain to me what this add is supposed to mean?

Is that Jesus wanting mom's to go back to school?

Is that what your kids will look like if you don't go back to school?

Or is that a Mom who needs to go back to school?

I am so confused.

A first of many random musings

So I turned 30. Most of you already know this but I feel like I just figured it out. I realize I am 5 months late but I guess “better late than never”, right?

The weirdest thing for me about turning 30 is how un-30 I feel.

Maybe it’s because I’m not married or that I don’t have kids? Maybe it’s because I don’t have a mortgage and up until a month ago I had no real bills besides rent (I’ve added a car payment to that)? For a 30 year old I have a shocking lack of responsibility.

Or maybe it’s because I still get carded when I buy Dayquil, spray paint and R-rated movies?

Whatever the reason, I don’t feel like I thought I would. 30 always seemed so old and mature. Like really old. Really, really old.

I realize now that my 18-year-old eyes were limited and 30 really is the new 20. (Right? That’s what I keep hearing so it must be true)


What really got me thinking about this was a recent realization that my sister, Deanne – the married for 10+ years, has 4 children, sister; is only 3 years older than me.

Again, many of you already knew this. And I technically did know this too. But when you’re little, your older siblings seem so much older than you. Like decades older than you. It made sense for her to be married with 4 kids, have a mortgage and such because she was so much older than me.

But then I thought about it and was surprised to find out that 3 years is like nothing. 3 years is the difference between a Freshman and a Senior. It’s the difference between me and my best friend. It’s nothing. So as it turns out Deanne isn’t that much older than me.

This was a big realization.

I’m old.

I am not a young adult.

I am a regular adult.

This isn’t a post about how sad I am to not be married or how lonely I am, because I’m not.

It’s the realization that if someone 3 years older than me is old enough to be a real adult that I might be too.

I wish I could say I have no regrets from the last 30 years, but I do. A lot of them.

I can say proudly though, that given the chance I wouldn’t change them. They made me who I am and right now I’m pretty fond of that person.

I recently read a book by Donald Miller called “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years”. After reading it I’m still not entirely sure what the title means, but I really liked the book. It talks about story, and story structure and how we can use it to make our own lives into better stories. I really recommend it for everyone.

It made me realize I wasn’t living a very good story because there was no real conflict or risk involved in my life. (See beginning about lack of responsibility) A lot of this was because of fear.

Fear of Failure.

Fear of Rejection.

Fear of Vulnerability.

Fear of Being Loved.

So I decided to make a change and make my life more meaningful.

I stopped complaining about not meeting new people and started going to a new church in Hollywood and met new people.

I (temporarily) moved back in with my parents so I could start saving money.

I started counseling to find out why my life was so ruled by fear.

It has only been about 2 months but I can feel the complacency floating back in. Miller recommends writing down a list of goals. Goals that will make you live a better story. I haven’t done this. I’m not a fan of lists as inspirational tools but I am also not a fan of completing things so maybe its time for a change.

Here is my official list of life altering goals. I thought I’d share them with other people and maybe it would encourage you to do the same.



--- My next 30 years ---

1) I want to be healthy inside and out

2) I want to care more about other people

3) I want to write every day, whether it’s a blog, a script or whatever.

4) I want to create without fear

5) I want to make the short I should have made 4 years ago

6) I want to turn that short into a feature

7) I want to date a lot more

8) I want to get Married

9) I want to adopt abused kids and give them a real home

And finally I feel like this is my real calling in life, my ultimate goal.

10) I want to make successful movies so that I can use that money and influence to rescue children and adults from slavery.

Mostly I just want my life to have mattered.


It's time that I be the adult that I am.