Tuesday, April 27, 2010

entitlement

(I’m sure I am not alone in feeling this way) My biggest pet peeve is when people feel entitled to do as they please without any regard for anyone else. Oh you think you’re more deserving of some particular reward or benefit — oh you think you are better than that guy over there?From cutting in lines to taking way more than their share to just straight up being rude. My sister has a theory that we are raising a society of children to be selfish. She and I argued about this a bit. I said selfishness is appropriate when you are in your young adulthood (16-28) as you are trying to find yourself. I don’t think we all need to be completely egotistic but we should be looking out for ourselves because if we choose to procreate then we need to be able to support not only ourselves but our progeny. She was less sympathetic. However she was offering problems without solutions. How do we teach children to not become Ass holes? When our society and culture focus on the importance of property, ownership, and pride, praising confidence and competition, how do you teach compassion, selflessness and consideration?

Jessica, my sister, will be the first to tell you that I was a bratty kid. Actually, I’m sure my two older brothers and her would all race to be the first to say that. Granted, somewhere down the line I lost that mentality or at least, I would like to think I did. Eventually it all caught up with me and looking back I’m not always happy with the memory of myself. I’m not going to beat myself up too much about it because there is no use stressing about the past that you can do nothing about. However, I try to use the past as a learning place. What happened to me? Do I still carry an overwhelming sense of entitlement that someone else is ranting about on their blog?

I’ve been producing a short film which has 15 child actors. Needless to say, there has been a lot of energy on set. I took one morning off and left the set to the other producer so that I could recoup. When I came to set later that day, the other producer had informed me that some of the kids have found our snack stash and proceeded to take all the fruit snacks. I was appalled. They ended up taking something like 80 fruit snacks. Granted the snacks were there for them to eat during the production. We want them to feel comfortable. However, those snacks were for the cast AND crew. I didn’t understand why any kid would go through a bunch of cabinets and drawers and finally find some hidden snacks and take them. We were trying to ration them for the entire week. AND they had just had lunch and there were already snacks out. I ended up giving a mother-of-a-speech about respect and courtesy and what it means to steal something. I doubt I made it through to any of 15. The guilty ones lied to my face about it and the guilty by association ones gave up the guilty ones like it was nothing. *SIgh* Now I’m probably going to have to tell their mothers that their sons are sociopaths.

I was driving downtown the other day and as I pulled up to the light I noticed something very strange: I was surrounded on all sides by Lexuses. They varied by regular Lexus Sedans to a convertible to a couple “luxury utility” vehicles (which don’t even get me going on that name, you know because here is the luxury in utility). I looked further and saw a Hummer. Before I go on I should back track. I don’t own a car. I’m not against them or anything, on the contrary, I like cars and see a purpose in them. I even use to be a pizza delivery girl for a major pizza company. Five years ago some jack ass hit me because he was changing cds while he was driving. He destroyed my car, some of the muscle/tissue in my shoulders and my booming career as a pizza delivery girl. Since, I have been car-less. I currently share a car with my mom who lives in San Antonio. It’s a modest 2006 Ford Escort with four cylinders, automatic locks, a tape player in a dirty grayish-brown color. I bike, ride the bus and get rides from my friends. I have a simple life but I’m happy. When I see all these people surrounding me with their flaunted ridiculous wealth, it can get disgusting. I want to think that Mr. Johnson in the car over works really hard and saved and saved for his Lexus SC10. But is that 60k+ car necessary?

It is known that Gandhi gave to his grandson Arun Gandhi some life lessons before he was assassinated. He wrote it on a piece of paper.

The 7 blunders of the world:

  • Wealth without work
  • Pleasure without conscience
  • Knowledge without character
  • Commerce without morality
  • Science without humanity
  • Worship without sacrifice
  • Politics without principle

I fully believe in this. It all comes down to everyone’s shit sinks. No one is any better than anyone else. I don’t care if you have a PhD in Omniscience, you are going to die just like that junkie in the ally behind the liquor store. Historically, mostly all cultures on earth have created different kinds of cast systems to categorize people, most of the time valuing some higher than others. Why do humans have this tendency? I can’t wrap my mind around it.


Tuesday, April 20, 2010

if it pleases and sparkles

Lately I’ve been busy. That’s an understatement. I’m not going to sit here and tell you all the things that I’ve been busy with, you’ll just have to take my word for it. I’ve been so busy that the idea of making a list to help myself get organized is overwhelming. Everyone always suggests to me that making a list is the best way to stay on top of things but it has never worked for me. I hate making time for lists; I hate keeping track of my list. I have a tendency to lose things like lists. There’s a great South Park episode, The List,that comes to mind where all the girls in the class decide to make a list and rank the boys in the class from cutest to ugliest because obviously girls like to make lists. Kyle gets ranked last and Stan goes to Wendy to investigate. Wendy brings Stan to the Girls’ List Making meeting. This is the charm to the episode because we get to see the girls in this bizarre, almost court-like meeting where they vote and make lists on arbitrary things. When they take votes, they ask “Does this sparkle with everyone?” A yes vote is “sunshine”. Great episode but really I don’t relate to it as a girl. I’m not that girl that likes list or shoes really. I digress.

I’ve been so busy that my dreamworld and reality are indistinguishable because I’m working in both. It feels like I’m not even sleeping. It’s the worst. Have you ever made a spreadsheet in your sleep only to wake up and go to your computer and realize all the work you just did on it was in your dream? I love sleep but I haven’t been getting too much of it lately.

I’ve been so busy that I’ve had a mini panic attack the other day. I stopped it before it got bad. I have only had four panic attacks in my life and all within a period of time when I was working three jobs and taking 18 hours (6 classes) in school. My roommate at the time and now best friend coached me through the whole ordeal and showed me how to manage the episodes. She was surprisingly good at this which I chalk up to the fact that she’s been doing yoga since she was a toddler. Panic Attacks are probably the scariest thing that I’ve ever encountered. I begin to think of life and death. One day I am going to die and I won’t be able to do anything about it. It could be tomorrow when I’m on my bike or in a hundred years in my bed. There would be no way to get this data but I bet more people than we would like to believe regret their choices right before they die.

I’ve always thought that I work well under stress. Queen of Procrastination for the purpose of grandeur. But what if I’m a masochist who just loves the torture of stress? According to theAmerican Institute of Stress “Stress is difficult for scientists to define because it is a subjective sensation associated with varied symptoms that differ for each of us. In addition, stress is not always a synonym for distress…Increased stress increases productivity – up to a point, after which things rapidly deteriorate, and that level also differs for each of us. It’s much like the stress or tension on a violin string. Not enough produces a dull raspy sound and too much an irritating screech or snaps the string – but just the correct degree of stress creates a beautiful tone.” So some stress is good but too much is bad. Maybe I’m more distressed and less stressed.

The funny thing about all this is, I shouldn’t even be sitting here writing all this. Doing this, is preventing me from getting real work done. But I needed a distraction if only for a moment which you can barely call this since I’m only thinking about everything I should be doing. I have a constant problem where I’m joggling so many things that every moment of my day is valuable. If I’m doing one thing, I’m disappointing a bunch of other people by not doing their thing. Sometimes when I’m alone in the car I scream as loud as I can. It feels good.

Thankfully I have people that love and care about me enough to make me laugh and make me dinner when I’m too preoccupied to cook or eat. Mostly that’s what gets me through hard times, the thought that it won’t be like this forever and that I have a small army support system. Also the thought that in a couple weeks I will be significantly less busy due to one of my jobs not being able to keep me around in the summer, keeps me going.

I’m sure you’ve seen this video but I thought I would drop it in. It’s really frickin’ cool and I love the song. It’s a great thing to end on when I don’t have a good ending.


Friday, April 16, 2010

Back in Action

I’ve come back to world of blogs after ignoring their existence and importance for some time. Recently I’ve made myself a website (www.gonzography.com) and have been trying to market myself as a professional. Apparently you (creative, artistic, craft-type people) are suppose to have a strong online presence if you want to be taken seriously. I was told by a real film producer that when people apply to work on her sets she get an abundance of qualified people. She ends up Googling everyone’s name and usually hires the people who come up in her search. I think that can be flawed because some people have very common names. I know a Kevin Smith, John Moore, Jim Henson, and Julia Bond and if you Google any of their names you won’t be able to find them. Just for fun, try Googling Sarah Gonzalez. You will get Sarah Gonzalez’s lyrics to “Why did you Leave me”, some Latin American soccer star, a New York City Council Member Sara M. Gonzalez and some random other people’s blogs, myspaces, facebooks and twitter (actually mine). I’m trying best I can to come up on my Google search but I won’t be surprised if I’m never number one on my search. I’m trying to come up for Gonzography which I think is more reasonable.

I often get overwhelmed with the whole idea of adulthood and professionalism. Owning things, paying bills, being responsible is fine and all but it’s not something I feel attached to in any way. Who made all these rules? Granted, it’s kind of fun in a narcissistic way but why would anyone outside my family care what I have to say about anything. I do have a lot of information about things that some people might find useful but I’m sure someone else online has that same information. I feel like we’re all putting these ideas out in the digital abyss but I wonder if anyone actual does anything productive with these thoughts. Are we all just doing and making things just so someone online can validate that we did it? Is someone’s value really measured by their online presence? Just thinking about this makes me want to delete my whole online existence but then I wouldn’t be a “professional”.

I have a theory about age: It seems to me one of the most distinguishable characteristics of children is their ability to be open minded and eager to learn. Even if a child is certain of one thing, you can easily correct him/her and they take it and move on. “what’s this?”, “why is it like that?”, “what does this do?” If you’ve ever spent any amount of time with a kid you’ll probably be bombarded with questions. It’s pretty refreshing actually. Age is based not actually on years alive on earth but of the ability to open one’s self to knowledge. As kids get older, they want to seem older so they begin to fake knowing more than they actually know because of the assumption that adults “know everything”. This is the problem. Listen up kiddos, here’s a secret your parents may not want you to know: Adults don’t know everything. There is no way that any one person can have all the answers. Even if you can collect all the information in the world it wouldn’t last more than a second because every pasting moment, new things develop and history grows. However, there are many people that I’ve come across that are unteachable because they refuse to learn. I know a 50 something year old that falls in this category. She comes off as very old, even crotchety. She won’t accept any new information that me or anyone really, offers. On the flip side, I knew an 80 something year old that was very vivacious. He was thirsty for knowledge and experiences. He was eager to find answers, travel and explore new cultures. He had the spirit of child. The one thing to keep in mind is that the older someone is, does mean that that person has experienced more that someone younger, but it doesn’t mean it is better or worse that younger.

I’m 25 and not really sure what I’m suppose to do. I’m not special in this way. Everyone I know that’s my age seems to be somewhat lost. Jobs, relationships, insurance, houses, cars, babies, travel, service: not really sure which one should be a priority or which direction I should point. I’m open to everything and ready for anything but somehow that’s still not settling.