Tag: writing

Let’s try this again, shall we?

Lauren (thebestpossibletime.com)2 Comments

A few years ago my best friend and I decided to take the 101 Things in 1001 Days challenge. Fairly self-explanatory: you write a list of 101 things and then you have 1001 days to accomplish them. Needless to say, we did not manage to do all 101 and we were even worse about updating our blog with our progress (one of the 101 things, as it happens).

But I’m 23 today and maybe I’m under the spell of birthdays or still under the spell of New Year’s Resolutions, so I’ve decided I’m giving it another go.

My 101 Things list is pretty broad, with goals about fitness, food, travel, fashion, books, and so on. Some will be quite easy—host a dinner party, find a perfume I like—while others require a lot more effort, such as climbing a mountain or finishing writing a novel. A few are already in progress (namely, I took my first belly dance course last week, so much fun!), some need to be done immediately (write a letter on day 1 to be read on day 1001, to be written once I’m finished with this blog post), and some are for far in the future (I don’t plan on visiting 30 cities for the first time or writing my thesis in the next few weeks, anyway). But they’ll hopefully all be finished by October 16, 2016. Although I didn’t make it a goal to update a blog with my progress this time around, I probably will occasionally anyway, so wish me luck!

Here are a few of the goals I’m hoping to complete:

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Let’s Go to the Movies

Lauren (thebestpossibletime.com)4 Comments

Roger Ebert died this week. And I’m glad to see that in the countless articles and blog posts eulogizing him, he is never referred to “only” as a film critic. As someone whose dream job used to be entertainment critic, I’ve sometimes felt like my ambitions were less serious than my peers who dreamed of parachuting into a war zone armed only with a notebook and a tape recorder, even of dedicating their lives to small-town papers to report on their city council meetings.

But entertainment journalism, although it has the potential to be “soft” when reporting on the comings and goings of D-list celebrities, has its place. As the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, Ebert demonstrated not only the value of film itself in reflecting or subverting the values of society, but also in discussing and critiquing film and the way it reflects or subverts those values.

1365105444_roger-ebert-articleIn the thousands of reviews he wrote over four and a half decades at the Chicago Sun-Times and other media outlets, he was never afraid to digress into a commentary on social and political issues. Ebert was criticized over the summer for speaking out in favour of gun control in the wake of the movie theatre shooting in Aurora, Colorado, and many of his opponents said that he should stick to talking about movies. But as Ebert so often proved, there are so many times when you can’t talk about movies without talking about life.

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On reading

Lauren (thebestpossibletime.com)2 Comments
A look at my bookshelf
A look at my bookshelf

I like reading.

Okay, it’s a massive understatement to say I like reading. In 2012 I read 102 books, after amending my goal of 50 books twice to 75 and then 100. I lost a lot of sleep to reading, and I don’t regret it at all (plus it was a good way to pass the time on all the flights and train rides I took in the first half of the year).

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