My Creatively Random Life

That's right, I have committed myself to the craziness of blogging everyday of April (except Sundays) for a second year in a row.  Only this year I have a plan already in place, I already have a theme and most of my topics picked out.  (yay for the thinking ahead)  So, I figure with all the time between now and April I can get it written up and schedule and I can spend all my time checking out everyone else blogs!  Which of course is the truly fun part.  What's my topic you ask?  Well I thought it would be fun to do an A to Z of my favorite fictional characters.  They come from all forms of media; books, movies, television, comics.  I even have crafts for some of them.  I am super excited about this. If you would like to participate in the A to Z Challenge (which you really should) you can find the sign up here or through the A to Z Challenge 2013 Badge on my sidebar. 

This is (at least in my humble opinion) brilliantly written.  It's set at the end of the 19th century and it follows the journey of Edna Pontellier as her views towards her life, and what makes her happy change dramatically.  She rejects the expectations that others have around her to play her role in society as wife and mother to follow her own path.  Chopin really brings her characters to life and it makes for a very interesting read.  I will admit I didn't like the end though, even though I am one who always advocates for more true to life endings in stories this one got to me because I got very caught up in her story and I was rooting for a happy ending.  

This book took me a lot longer to finish than I anticipated, months in fact.  I just couldn't get into it at first, Tolstoy's constant changing of how he was referring to his characters really threw me for a loop and made it hard for me to follow along.  I was determined to finish though and I am glad I did, once I got past the politics I found several story lines that are very easy to relate to for just about anybody.   There is a spiritual journey, several love stories, and at the end of the book, at least for me an ah ha moment. Not just the feeling that I had finished it and achieved something but also that I had learned something about myself along the way.  Which is not always something you can say about books these days. 

Despite a wonderful New Year's Eve spent ringing in 2013 with my closest friends I still managed to get my year off to a rocky start.  What can I say, I just have that kind of talent.  Like the bottle of champagne someone forgot in my freezer (seriously, what a mess) I just freeze up inside until I explode leaving a horrible mass of shards all over the place where people are bound to get hurt. Except the person who gets hurt the most is me.  I am starting to see that I am like the master at self sabotage.  Anyhow, enough with the happy.  I have decide screw resolutions I am going to have goals this year...and they shall be awesome.  I have big goals and little goals and I am also working through a goal setting system to learn to make smarter goals that are more orientated to where I want to be in the long run.  So there is a good chance that some of this list may change within the next thirty days.  Right now though these are my goals for 2013...