Please don't disappoint me, Kurt Sutter...

*****contains spoilers*****

It's the final ever episode of Sons of Anarchy tonight, and while many people are hoping for specific things to happen - and some are simply hoping for Kurt Sutter to change his mind and keep the show going - I hope for only one thing: that it isn't disappointing. We invest a lot of time into television shows (perhaps more than we should) and get attached to the characters, and while we can't always get the happy ever after ending that we might want, we at least expect that the ending will respect us as viewers and give us some kind of satisfying closure. Unlike...

Dexter - Really? There is an interview with the writers in which they talk about how pleased they are with the ending of Dexter, and the only question I have is: what drugs are you on??? Don't get me wrong - I do get it. Throughout the series Dexter Morgan struggled with the fact that he had attachments, people who relied on him. In the final episode he was presented with a set of circumstances that finally allowed him to be free of them all. His sister, Debra, was dead. His wife, Rita, was long dead. Stepchildren Cody and Astor were living with their grandparents, and he had found Hannah - a woman who knew everything about him and who had always wanted, above everything else, to have a child of her own - who he could entrust his son, Harrison, to. Leaving him free to go off and be the person that he truly was without being tied to anyone. Perfect. Except that it was the perfect ending for the Dexter Morgan of Season 1, Episode 1. The viewers, on the other hand, had spent eight seasons watching Dexter grow as a person and experience real feelings for the people in his life; to start to question who he really was. And then we're expected to buy that at the end of all of that he hasn't grown at all but simply came to realise that he is exactly who he always thought he was. And I could have, except for one thing: that cliché of him having run off to the wilderness to do manual labour. Is that who Dexter Morgan really was? If that very final scene had have been of him stalking a victim, or with someone strapped to his table, THEN I might have accepted that that final scene existed at all. 

True Blood - Actually I found the whole final season of this one disappointing. It never really built to anything, but just plodded along with a thin thread of storyline, leaving me a little bit apathetic about the whole thing. There was much made of Bill's death but I didn't really care about Bill by then. It was nice that Hoyt and Jessica got back together, but Hoyt had already left the show so I wasn't really invested in that either. I WAS glad that Hoyt's mother was killed. There may have even been a fist pump for that one. Honestly though, by the time Sookie ended up with the faceless man at the end of the final episode, I didn't really care that we never found out who he was. He was some human man she met that she could live a normal life with, and good for her. I guess.

Lost - Of course. For six seasons this show gave us mystery upon mystery and led us to believe that there would be some big revelation at the end about what it all meant. And then it didn't. What it did was drip feed us the answers throughout the series in a way that was completely unsatisfying. At least I assume that's what it did. I didn't really notice at the time and I don't feel any inclination to go back and watch it again to find out. I'm pretty sure that they weren't dead the WHOLE time. But they could have been. It doesn't really matter either way. They were all dead in the end, and I was left feeling that a show that I really enjoyed and thought was truly original television turned out to be stupid.

And then there are these two, that I didn't find disappointing, though I do understand why many did...

How I Met Your Mother - I get it. I know why people hated the ending and how it could be unsatisfying, but to me it made perfect sense. For nine seasons Ted Mosby told a story that was supposedly about how he had met the mother of his children. Except OF COURSE it was about Robin. The whole show started with him meeting Robin and continued to focus on his changing relationship with her and the fact that he was in love with her. Right up until the final season he was still in love with Robin! And the only thing that was stopping them from being together was the fact that he wanted kids and she didn't. And we already knew that problem was solved.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - I'll admit I was initially disappointed with this one. The final scene of the final episode felt very anticlimactic. But it made sense, and really it was the perfect ending. Buffy saved the world, as usual, with a little (lot) of help from her friends, as usual. All the potentials in the world became slayers, which meant the entire burden was no longer on Buffy and she could actually live a somewhat normal life. Which is all she had ever really wanted. And Sunnydale fell into a big hole. Where it belonged.

And then there's the perfect ending....

Offspring - I have mixed feelings about Offspring ending - on the one hand I'm disappointed that there's no more Offspring, on the other hand it ended perfectly. After losing Patrick, Nina found the potential for love again in Leo. We don't really need to see anymore. We've already seen it. 

Obviously I don't expect Sons of Anarchy to end like Offspring. It's an entirely different type of show, and even if Jax doesn't end up dying in tonight's ending, there's still very little chance of any kind of happy ever after for him. I just hope that when the final credits roll, I can sit back and think, 'yeah, that ended how it should'.

I don't think this would happy to a real adult...

Three years ago I was doing a little play called A Midsummer Night's Dream - it's possible you may have heard of it, apparently it's quite famous. I don't want to mislead you though. It was amateur theatre, and although a lot of people came to see it I'm reasonably sure that's only because it has a large cast, and most of the people in the cast have family and friends. Also, a lot of the cast were pretty inexperienced so their family and friends were actually still keen to see them in a show. But I digress...

The director of the show had big ideas for the costumes and it happened that one of the cast members makes jewellery out of the ring pulls from cans - "Perfect!" said the director (probably - it was three years ago, how good do you think my memory is?) and then asked all of us to collect as many ring pulls as we could. Because I'm an awesome and enthusiastic team member I dutifully implored all of my friends and family to keep all of their ring pulls and give them to me. Which they did. And then the director changed his mind and we didn't end up using them.

I am still finding ring pulls everywhere.

The real moral of this story though, is that I don't think this would happen to a real adult. You know, the kind of adult that actually keeps their house tidy instead of only cleaning up when the mess is starting to get out of control. The kind of adult that drives to a Christmas party knowing that they have to work the next day and does not get talked into drinking roughly thirty seconds after they arrive. The kind of adult that sees something that needs to be done and actually does it then and there instead of thinking, "I should probably do that tomorrow" (note there is no actual commitment to do it tomorrow). I don't actually know any of these people. But I'm sure they exist. I've seen them on TV.

I haven't posted anything here in three years, and to be honest, I thought I was done with it. I thought that blogging was yet another thing I got super excited about, and then just gave up. Then I received an email to say that someone had commented on one of my posts, and I thought "wow, people are still reading my stuff - maybe I should get back to it". So thank you Indigo Byrd - you have inspired me to come back.

To be fair, I've made a lot of changes in the last three years and my head has been spinning quite a bit, and most of the time I'm simply too exhausted to write. But writing is what I really love and, in all honesty, I'm finding that although I've made a lot of changes, nothing has really changed that much at all.

And another reason I decided to come back - I'm still finding those damn ring pulls everywhere.

WRITER'S GUILT IS A REAL THING

I haven't written anything on here for awhile, and it's actually mostly due to the fact that I haven't had anything to write about and not because I'm lazy (though it is a little because I'm lazy, since I have about six partially written blog posts that I could have finished if I'd really wanted to). Which shouldn't be a problem since no one's forcing me to write anything, and frankly it would be a little weird if they were, considering the type of babble I usually post. Although, if someone was holding a gun to my head and making me write about plots to kill dolphins and being ganged up on spiders, then that would absolutely be something to write about.

But it is a problem. Because I suffer from a scientifically proven condition known as Writer's Guilt*. I could blame it on Catholic Guilt, based on the fact that I went to Catholic schools, but to be honest, my lack of guilty feelings were the biggest obstacle I faced when I went to confession so that I just ended up inventing things that I probably did but couldn't remember and definitely didn't feel guilty for. I also didn't feel guilty about lying to the priest, though if I'd thought about it I probably could have used that for my next confession to save me from making more stuff up. So even if I wasn't an atheist I was probably never cut out to be Catholic.

Whatever the cause, my Writer's Guilt is very real - I've even written about the profoundly terrifying effect it can have - and it extends to every writing project I undertake. I go through phases where I'm inspired to write and everything comes so incredibly easily that I can't actually not write to the point where it distracts me from anything else I attempt to do. Then it passes and I am left with unfinished projects that taunt me with all their lack of posts or dangling plotlines and I feel like I should be working on them even when trying to work on them just leads to me staring at a computer screen and checking Facebook and email every thirty seconds so that I'm at least doing something. And fiction is the worst. Because then there are characters who are stuck in limbo, waiting for me to send them on their way and for some unknown reason that is definitely no reflection on my own personality, many of my characters tend towards the violent and if I ever found myself in a situation where one of them came to life then I really don't think they'd be all that happy with me, especially since I seem to abandon them in the middle of unresolved and often stressful situations that can't be good to be stuck in for long periods of time. Really, it has to bad for their mental health and I am COMPLETELY RESPONSIBLE because I'm not writing them out of it.

So anyway, I wrote this to alleviate my guilt because it's easier than rescuing a fictional character from a bad situation.

*There's a 99.99% chance that it is not really scientifically proven and I did, in fact, just make it up, capitalising the first letters so that it looks legitimate. The .01% is to allow for the possibility that I accidentally named a real condition without knowing it was a real condition. I could do a quick Google search but really, that seems like a lot of effort to go to just to write this post.

I SHOULD PROBABLY GET OUT OF THE HOUSE SO I HAVE MORE TO WRITE ABOUT BUT, ON THE OTHER HAND, IT MIGHT NOT BE SAFE

I have a friend who keeps hurting her back through no fault of her own. She'll be going along fine and then she'll just move ever so slightly and bam! she's thrown her back out. Then it'll start to get better and she'll have a good couple of days and then bam! out again. What's worse is that every time it happens she can't work and she's currently trying to save for both a wedding and a house and doesn't get sick pay because she's only employed on a casual basis. It's almost enough to make me believe that there really is a god and he really fucking hates her.

Basically my point is that every time she hurts her back she has legitimate cause to ask 'why?' and there doesn't seem to be an answer. I, on the other hand, tend to cause injury to myself through my own stupidity.

A couple of weeks ago I tried to pry an e-tag holder from my windscreen with my fingers. A plastic holder. That's been exposed to the sun through the windscreen for about five years and could therefore be reasonably expected to perhaps be a bit brittle. So probably to no-one's surprise, rather than managing to remove the holder from the windscreen, I instead broke the plastic and took a chunk out of my finger that still hasn't completely healed three weeks later and that didn't stop bleeding for about twelve hours. Also, I didn't actually find the missing chunk of finger so it's possibly still somewhere on the floor of my car. I wonder if I should warn passengers before they get in?

Then on Monday I over-reached for a medicine ball and even though my shoulder was already protesting from my forcing it to turn into a go-go gadget arm without first saying, 'go-go gadget arm', I nevertheless used it to pick up the medicine ball. Because I apparently felt that if I was going to injure myself I may as well do a decent job of it. And then, perhaps because it was getting better, I decided the best thing for it was most likely to continue to do push-ups and a prone bridge and other exercises that would put extra pressure on the injury. You know, for fun.

I would probably stop injuring myself if I just gave my actions a bit of thought before blithely undertaking them. But if there really is a god and he really does hate my friend, then I've a feeling that I wouldn't be his favourite person either, so really, why bother?

I DON'T WANT TO BE KILLED BY MACHETE-WIELDING DOLPHINS, SO HERE

So I knew when I decided to start a blog that there was no way in hell I'd be able to post daily so I didn't even try. I did, however, think that a weekly post was achievable but - turns out - that's a bit out of my reach also. It's all right though - I'm used to having unrealistic expectations of myself so whenever my tendency to procrastinate stops me from achieving my goals I just put it down to that. I'm so good at convincing myself that I was aiming too high to start with that I don't even bother stopping to consider whether it's actually true. I'm pretty much the perfect procrastinator and, frankly, I think I deserve some recognition for that.

A big part of the problem is that I've been pretty focused on some other stuff for the past couple of weeks so I haven't had a lot to write about. I actually had a dream last night that I was back at school (a common dream of mine that I have yet to categorise as fantasy or nightmare as it usually seems to be a combination of both) and was assigned the task of writing something about myself. That's easy, thought I, I already write a blog. I've got heaps to say. But then I went to start writing and I had nothing. At all. Which basically means that I am now having nightmares about blogging.

Oh sure, it's not so bad now. Not exactly the type of nightmare that has me waking up in a cold sweat afraid to go back to sleep in case I find myself right back in the jaws of whatever death I woke myself to escape from. Yet. But just wait. It won't be long before I have the same dream again. Only at the same time I realise that I have nothing to write about, I'll also realise that I'm not wearing any clothes. And I'm on the toilet. And there are spiders. And then suddenly I'll be running down the street from an army of dolphins that have learned how to walk on land and are all carrying machetes and yelling at me in their dolphin language that this wouldn't be happening if I could just find something to write about only I won't understand what they're saying because I don't speak dolphin and even if I did it wouldn't help me anyway since having to run away from machete-wielding dolphins is probably the worst source of inspiration ever as well as being the worst time to try to compose anything that isn't "oh god, somebody help me, I'm going to die!"

But it's Christmas in a couple of days, and then New Year's Eve, so there'll surely be something to keep the dolphins away. I hope.

I'M NOT AN ALCOHOLIC. BUT MY NEIGHBOURS MIGHT THINK I AM.

I once went for a job where they wanted to know how many drinks I would have in a week and I answered three to four, which is a lie because three to four is just the number of drinks that I have on a Sunday when I go to my mum's for dinner.

Now I'm not embarrassed by how much I drink and I certainly don't consider myself to be a problem drinker, but saying that I have eight to fifteen drinks a week, or more if I have a "big night", kind of makes me sound like I'm an alcoholic. Which I'm not. Even though there was that one time that I tried to give up drinking for six weeks and only lasted two.

Actually I probably should have known that I was going to fail because it was only about a week after I'd spent the last few Saturday nights drunkenly informing everyone within earshot that I loved drinking so much that I considered it a hobby. This may also be why I drew a blank when I went for an interview for the aforementioned job and they asked me what my hobbies were.

Anyway, I'm thinking of putting the empty bottles into the rubbish because I think there's more in there to cushion them than there is in the recycling and at the moment every time I empty the indoor recycling bin into the outdoor recycling bin it sounds like we've had a party. Which would be fine if we ever had people over to the house. But we don't.

Actually, there have been a few times this year when I've had people over, but that resulted in even more bottles and having to make more than one trip out to the recycling bin so probably now they just think that all my friends are family are alcoholics as well.

So I guess what I'm saying is that the judgmental attitudes people hold towards alcohol are turning me into a liar. And they're also bad for the environment.

Or it could be that I'm worried I might drink too much.

But I'm pretty sure it's the first one.