BPoT #196 [Tuesday]:Rewatching my original inspiration.
It was one of those times where you had a long first day of school and you wanted to relax in front of the TV but you didn't have the energy to select and insert a movie so you just felt like flipping around the channels to see what was good. For me, this selection was also affected by the fact that my TV remote is broken so I have to stand next to the TV and press the "up" channel button numerous times until I found something good. I found Julie & Julia.
I didn't remember liking it the first time as much as I liked it the second time, which was strange because what I did remember was that this movie was the (or at least one of the) forming influence(s) for starting this blog. In case you haven't seen it, Julie & Julia is about a woman who works an unnamed cubicle job by day, and cooks for her newly married husband in their apartment over a pizzeria by night. She decides to start "The Julie/Julia Project" in which she cooks her way through all 524 recipes of the 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child in 365 days and blogs about it. Through troublesome duck deboning, chicken trussing, and husband wrangling, Julie eventually amasses a readership and popularity that cumulates in a novel and, of course, this film.
I was so inspired by her story that I turned my nascent blog into something more structured, hence The Best Part of the Day. However, sometimes I don't post because I'm being lazy and don't exactly having people counting on me. But that lead me to today's BPoT:
BPoT #197:
It's not all about the fans.
If people did things only to get famous, there would most likely be a lot less art going around. It's important to like what you do, because that's often when your best work comes through and maybe becomes famous. Of course it's great to feel needed, and when you are you don't want to let anyone down, but it's important to do things for yourself too. Not that these two things are necessarily in conflict with one another, but it's important to always keep both balanced in mind. Whenever I get down on the fact that I'm not an internet star like Julie Powell or Zefrank or the Vlog brothers, I try to remind myself that this blog is just as much for me as it is for anyone who reads it.
All the writers I have ever talked to have told me the importance of writing every day. Not writing emails or doing homework, but just getting your thoughts out there and forming them into well-written sentences. In that sense I kind of treat this blog as an opposite-diary. I say opposite because I always felt bad for the purple Tweety Bird diary I had as a kid and only wrote in when I was angry or upset and couldn't talk to anyone about it (this was before the days of texting and im'ing.) Rather, I want to create a record of something positive, something that will lift people's spirits.
Keeping that in mind, I know that sometimes there are few more boring things than hearing someone talk about their day. That's why it's hard when I have really good days and I don't want to go on and on about every little thing, so most of the time I try to choose the one universal thing that I think would brighten everyone's day (or at least choose something resembling a theme that ties all the parts together). Remembering 90's cartoons, for example, or finding a dollar on the ground, or a stranger saying bless you when you sneeze. Things that, when read, bring a happy thought to your mind and a smile to your face. I know that not many people read this blog, but I'd like to say thanks to anyone who has.
I'd also like to again share one of my other big sources of inspiration (and my internet homepage), Neil Pasricha's 1000 Awesome Things, which does what I try to do, only better.
