Not a Review :: Just an attempt at recollecting the so many thoughts revolving in my head post the movie.
For the past couple of years, I have been watching content without a break. It is nothing but continuous consumption, day in and day out. If I am not watching something, I’m either sleeping or eating or doing chores at home. That’s how much content I have been consuming and my screen time scores are through the roof. It is a lot of input for my brain without any outlet of any sort. No wonder I feel that my brain has been rotting away. There’s very little of processing that I’ve been doing. I just move on from one movie to another, from one series to another, season after season, I just consume content. And I do not have any language bias as well, thanks to subtitles. With the variety of content and streaming sites available these days, I’ve come a long way from the days of torrents, overnight downloads and gigabytes of content stored on hard disks. At least in those days, I used to be selective and choosy about the type of content I used to watch. But these days, it is merely a choice from the algorithm recommended items.
As I went mute (by choice unless mandatory) on my personal / real life, I wonder if I still have the capability to voice out my opinions on stuff that I so religiously watch. And to be able to do that, I need to put a halt on the consumption, take a break, and then process whatever I watch, assess my feeling and then attempt to get them out. And this is one such an attempt and I hope to get through this. I’ve watched 2 movies today and one of them was a repeat that I watch whenever life seems bleak, restless and meaningless.
The other one is Larry Crowne that I fished among a tonne of choices and what attracted me to Larry Crowne is that he is a middle aged man who is recently unemployed and is going back to college for a degree. Like a moth to a fire, I was just hooked. Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are such actors that one forgets that it is all an act and we just see the life of these people unfolding before us. And what an amazing supporting cast, even if it is just or a scene or two, they are all just so memorable and eye catching that we only see their act, not the charismatic people they are in real life. It was always a pleasure when one gets to watch such stories on screen.
Larry Crowne loses his job in the first few minutes of the movie and it is all about how he managed after that. I’m neither middle aged, nor have ever experienced job loss. And yet, the idea about a seemingly lone man trying to put his life back together and attempting to go to college, intrigued me, a single woman in her early thirties, on a career break through one of the worst economic times of my life. I’ve been living on my savings for the past couple of years and have been slowly dipping into my investments as well but have never experienced financial hardships. And with all the money that I earned over the decade I worked, I was always an active investor and I thought financial literacy is something I am well versed with. Turns out, I know how to invest the money I earn but never actually understood the concepts of finance or economics in their true sense. Econ 101 is one of the three classes that Larry Crowne takes up at the community college and it made me wonder why I never bothered to actually learn about economics when that is a very huge part of my life in terms of my interests. Managing money came naturally to me when people actually struggle with it despite all the efforts they put it. Why not learn do it properly then? Maybe, my interest may pan out into something useful. I need to explore this option a bit further and see where it leads me.
One other course that Larry Crowne takes is Speech. The movie covers a few tactics of the class and it made me wonder if I still retain my speaking abilities. I used to excel at speech despite how much it tensed me out. I used to over prepare like crazy to overcome my fears and it usually worked. Talking / Speaking / Handling meetings at work, was always easy as it required knowledge of the subject and hardworking & relentless training and prep helped me through. What has and still is a difficult thing is to talk to people, to make small talk, to make people smile and to show my sincerity in my words. Being good with English has always helped me overcome or coverup a lot of my shortcomings, and yet, I’m never confident about English as it isn’t my first language and I do not have enough practice in the language. The only modes of contact were movies, tv shows, content I write or read, and some rare conversations with friends abroad. I need to take the English exam sometime soon and I hope to build up some confidence to ace the test once again. I need to find a way again, to get back on track.
Oh and oh, the many thoughts that ripple through my brain as I watched the movie, and they stayed with me long after the movie ended. The kind of life I led, the kind of life I lead now, and the kind I want, each are so different and have nothing in common whatsoever. I somehow took a huge leap of faith and got from then to now, and how do I get from now to there?.. I keep wondering. The past is interesting as it always has a foot in the current and the future. We just have to make some sense out of the countless moments and memories that we have lived through. And sometimes, it is just about living in the moment and navigating life as it goes. I’m kinda doing a mix of both and this is just a means to vent.
Looking back at the film, not only did it make me rethink about many of my life choices but also reminded me of certain times in life when I was fairly successful but directionless, of the times when I had a plan but sometimes did not follow up on, of the times when I had dreams and then of the times when I had no will or desire to be or do anything. The not being happy in the career that she had no choice but to take up, the lack of motivation that resulted from a dry spell of students, the stagnation and repulsiveness generated from an unhappy personal life, a moment to ponder about addictions, and how I was almost in the same situation as Larry, a pale, no strings attached person in America. My only real burdens are my lack of motivation and will to do/be better. Life is exhausting, but that’s the beauty of life. To find some meaning in the boredom of living. Maybe, I’ll get there someday and look back on this and say, well, that movie is some food for thought.
And on a lighter note, if a bankrupt, jobless, degree less, middle aged man like Larry can get a partner like Mercedes, then there must be some hope for me too. 😛 🙂
I’m actually tired and have no further energy or brains to ponder further and hence ending it at this moment. Maybe, that’s all I can process at this moment. And this, is my attempt at getting back to writing and penning down some of my many random thoughts that might help me slow down a bit and have an outlet for my ever consuming brain.
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.. Sahasra
journeyofmythoughts 