The Villain in All of Us .

“The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings.”

—	fyodor dostovevsky

“Those who are heartless, once cared too much.”

—	Frank Ocean

     Anyone who knows me personally knows that I have a fascination with villains in stories. I often find that they have much more interesting back stories and motives than the hero. This blog post is going to be a response to my last blog post about being the hero of your own story, ( can you respond to your own post?... ). Something I have realized is that it is just as easy to become the villain of your own story... if not easier. 

     Think about your favorite movie/book/T.V show for a second. Now think about the villain or antagonist of the story. Why are they the villain? Were they driven mad? Are they trying to gain power? Are they overly jealous of the protagonist? Chances are, (if the villain is well written) that they have a back story that explains the reasoning behind their diabolical deeds. Well.... aren't we all trying to gain power? Aren't we all overly jealous of something? Whose to say we can't become the villain ourselves?

     My favorite villain in the entire world has to be Loki from Thor and the Avengers, (hear that? it's the sound of everyone who knows me rolling their eyes). I'm fascinated with Loki because he starts off the story of Thor as a child. The picture of innocence. He is told that "one day you could become king!" and he believes it. Sound familiar? Here maybe this will help, "you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up!". This promise of becoming a king *SPOILER ALERT* of course; is a lie. 

Try and tell me this adorable little cutie would hurt a fly.

       Then our little Norse God grows up and things start to head south. This is when he realizes everything he has ever been told is a lie. 

      "You can be king!"

      "You're special!"

      "You are one of the Gods! That's fantastic!"

This is something I feel we have all experienced in one way or another. The realization that you are not as special as you once thought and that it is a lot harder to be "king" than you had originally thought. This absolutely tears our villain apart and becomes the breaking point, the point where he has had enough and decides to take matters into his own hands. 

Loki focuses so much on becoming Odin's favorite that he fails to realize that he's Thor's.  (cue crying)

If you explain Loki's story as, "a young man who was promised a lie and decides to go after his dream in an unconventional way but ultimately fails while at the same time losing the trust of his family and friends" it sounds down right tragic right? You wanna root for the guy! It's only until you add context that this becomes the story of a terrible villain who will stop at nothing to achieve power. This begs the question, aren't we all a little bit like Loki? Aren't we all hoping to achieve great things? Weren't we all disappointed when we realized that we aren't as special as we originally thought? So then why don't we also have the potential to become the villain? If we aren't careful enough, this might just be the case, always remember that the villain is the hero in his own world.

You Don't Have to Change the World to be Important

“…we all matter - maybe less than a lot, but always more than some.”

—

John Green, An Abundance of Katherines Once Upon a Time,  I'm going to tell you a story about a girl who thought that in order to matter to the world she needed to be an epic hero of some epic tale. She believed that in order to matter she had to defeat the dark Lord Voldemort or take down the great dragon Smaug. In short; she thought that unless she did something to change the world, she would never be important.  This is where she was terribly wrong.  What she had failed to realize is that everyone is the hero of their own story, even if the world might not know it. What she didn't realize is that teachers and accountants and mailmen are hero's too. What she didn't realize is that everyday of every single persons life is a new chapter in their epic tale.             Everybody matters and is important to somebody. Even if you don't think so, I guarantee you that you are important. Not every hero in every story goes on some epic journey to Mordor or joins the rebel forces to take down the evil empire, some hero's simply live their every day lives and this is the most epic journey of all time. People often times forget that their story is as exciting as they choose to make it, and that you do not need to change the world to be important.       This is the story of a girl who realized that her life is the story. That every day is an epic journey. She realized that everyone's life is the most epic story of all time, whether they realize it or not.     The End.  -Ellen

An Inconvenient Truth.

“Stop taking pride in your ability to destroy yourself.”

—	Michelle K.

 I am about to make a statement, a statement that many of you are most likely not going to agree with. I believe that people enjoy being busy, stressed and sleep deprived. "But Ellen, what would possibly possess you to think such a thing?". Well today is your lucky day because you're about to find out!

 "Ugh, I wish I had time to see that new movie"

  "You got a full 8 hours last night? Lucky! I only got 3 hours of sleep last night!"

  "Don't even talk to me about being busy, have you SEEN my schedule lately??"

  " Here, let me walk you through my super busy schedule so that you can feel less accomplished than me"

Chances are, you have come across people who are OBSESSED with statements like the ones above, although they may not be as blunt about it. It's the; "look how much more I'm doing than you! I'm accomplishing so much more than you!" attitude. However if we were being completely honest with ourselves, it's more of the; "look at how sleep deprived I am! I'm going to die from a stress induced heart attack at a much younger age than you!" attitude. So why do people feel the need to let everyone know just how busy they are? Why are people so proud of the fact that they working themselves to death? I personally blame a very evident shift in our societies views on what's more important; sleep and relaxation, or doing something with every minute of our existence.
     To prove this point I'm going to go to a couple quotes, our first quote comes from William Shakespeare's Henry IV;

 "O sleep! O gentle sleep! 

Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down 
And steep my senses in forgetfulness? 
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfum’d chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state, 
And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody?".

Sounds like sleep is pretty great right? Then why did our ideals shift from the idea that sleep is great and something to love and enjoy to this quote from Thomas Edison, “Sleep is a criminal waste of time, inherited from our cave days". We have become a society of, "You can sleep when you're dead" thinkers, and with this attitude, that might be sooner than you think. 

Because of our societies praise of hard work, never ceasing, you must go, GO, GO. People feel the need to prove to others that they are really busy all the time. It's a sick game of "yeah you're really busy I guess.. but look at ME!". 

     And here is where we come to the inconvenient truth mentioned in the title. No one really cares how busy you are. If anything; you're only making others feel bad about not overloading their own schedules, thus furthering the cycle. No one cares to take a look at your schedule or to hear about how little sleep you got last night because you were reading a text book you aren't going to retain for the next day anyway. Trust me; everyone is just as busy as you are and don't need to hear your schedule as well. 

     I guess the real question I'm asking is; since when was sacrificing physical and mental health something to brag about?

-Ellen 

     

Aren't we all Just Playing Pretend?

"One day, you’re 17 and you’re planning for someday. And then quietly, without you ever really noticing, someday is today. And then someday is yesterday. And this is your life."      

Do you ever think about when you really decided what you really want to do with your life? Did you have it all figured out at the age of 12? Did you take a test in high school that told you which job you would be most suited for? Maybe it was the day your mother came home from her job as a nurse and told you another remarkable story about how she has saved yet another young child's life. I however, never really figured it all out. I made the decision to attend college because that's what people do, and I decided to get a degree in education because it was safe and produced a steady income.

     Before I continue I guess I should tell you a little bit about myself to put things into perspective. My name is Ellen and I am 18 years old, however I turn 19 in a little over a month. I attend a very Christian Conservative College and am currently a History Secondary Education major. I grew up in a town about 45 minutes outside of  D.C and attended a very good public high school filled with high standards and high students. I was an only child until the second grade but then everything changed when the fire nation attacked. And by the fire nation attacked I mean my little brother, Lon, was born. I love him more than anything in the entire world and will end anyone who lays a finger on him, besides me of course. At the fresh young age of 9 I was simultaneously diagnosed ADHD and anxiety, I guess that's what you get for having a hyper active imagination and crying all the time. As previously stated I go to an extremely conservative college (although I'm not what you would call extremely conservative) with a great many strict rules to follow ( although I'm not too found of the whole "other people telling me how to live my life" thing) and extraordinarily high academic standards (although I tend to have some issues with focusing in class rather than doodling in a notebook). Don't get me wrong, the school is great and I love my friends here, I just seem to be realizing more and more everyday that this is not what I intended my life to become. The only problem is... what did I ever intend my life to become?

     The way I see it the education system works like this; You go to elementary school where they encourage you to be creative and learn numbers and letters and how to spell and everyone's encouraged to be an individual and we're all told the most epic lie of all time, "you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up!". From here you go to hell/ I mean Middle School. Here is where things start to go sour. This is the first time you are seriously asked the big questions and told some rotten truths, "What do you want to go to school for" and "You should really think about getting that GPA up to prepare for High School, you don't wanna end up like that crazy bum that lives in the trash can down the street!". However in Middle School they do still allow some dreamers, for example when asked what I wanted to do with my life in the 8th grade I wrote, "I want to be a Broadway performer!" Silly past Ellen, that's not profitable! From here we go to the big times. The final inning. The last hoorah of public education. Your first semester of High School you meet with a guidance counselor who's office smells like peppermint and tears and who has a voice that sounds just a little too sweet. They ask you to fill out your 4 year plan.. leading of course to the greater end goal that is your life. "Don't worry!" they tell you, "This is nothing permanent! you can change it later if you want!". What they don't realize is that they have just put the weight of the world on a poor 15 year old girl who has severe anxiety's shoulders. You start to think about things in a more reasonable way, "why would I ever say I wanted to be a Broadway performer? That's so stupid... I need to find myself a nice reasonable job". And that's the end of that. That is how you end up having a mental breakdown at the end of Junior year because everyone else seems to have their lives figured out while you still have no idea how to keep your sims alive without cheats. 

     I'm hoping this first post gives you a little insight into where I'm coming from. No, every post is not going to be a big middle finger to the system and no, I do not hate the school system or the idea of going to college. I'm just a bit lost on where I'm supposed to be right now. I'm going to use this blog simply as a place to put down my thoughts on things (I have lots of thoughts on things as you might imagine) and give a little insight into the mind of a mentally unstable fangirl. 

-Ellen