Popularity, connected, mother

Ahh ... where to start.

I think my router is scared and died in fright. I think it got wind that I planned to talk about a film I watched on Saturday. A quite scary film, it was called Mother! and it's an 18 rated psychological horror. There was very little actual blood and guts (although it is there and it's truly nightmares level shocking - no spoilers) but it really hit its mark in terms of getting you on edge and totally in sympathy with the main character.

That central character is played by Jennifer Lawrence and I don't think we ever heard her name. The film was completely from her point of view, either showing the actress and her reactions (and she is BRILLIANT in this movie) or showing what she's looking at. It is amazing in terms of visuals and especially in sound.

You hear the silence (happily not disrupted by rustling from the audience!) and, when it's quiet, you hear every creak and crack in the house.

Yep. It's set in a house in the middle of nowhere, in which live an author and his wife. The author is suffering from creative block, the wife is steadily putting the house into excellent order while being frustrated that she isn't getting any attention from her love. You can see the depression and anxiety building in Jennifer Lawrence's character and this brings me to :

This is an amazing movie ... but I would not recommend people see it.

It evokes a lot of feelings, it asks you questions about yourself, it will definitely shock you, it may well leave you with very disturbing after thoughts. (I know my friend who saw it with me is definitely still disturbed by it). And it tackles depression and anxiety head on.

However, one aspect that drew my attention was the attitude of the author in the film ... He feeds on adulation. He has an ego that requires stoking, requires feeding and that ego doesn't care where the acclaim comes from. It lives and breathes on the applause of random strangers and totally misses the thoughts of his love, his actual inspiration. And when his love realises that, it is utterly crushing for her.

I like to think I'm the opposite. A certain creative instinct has awoken definitely since I started this blog oh so many years ago. And it's blossomed more in the last few years since I've found a few very special people to write for.

While I have that need to be creative, I'm not very good at doing things for me, I'm far more motivated to do things for other people. People I care about. And sometimes that's driven me into a form of madness, where I need to know what those special think about what I've written for them. I've come to realise that I can't make people look at what I write or create, it has to be good enough to grab their interest and keep it such that they come back to see the next things I write or create.

So in a sense, I think I'm the opposite of the writer in the film. I'll look at the hit counter and get a little sad if the hits over the month go below 1000. But I know that a decent proportion of those hits come from random bots.

I don't care about bots. I care about the real people.

So when a hit comes in and I recognise the pattern of the fingerprint as being from someone familiar, that's when I smile and get the happy feels. Because those familiar fingerprints come from people who like what I write and who care enough to come back for more.

And I think those people are awesome. You are who I write for and I try not to forget that.

So in that sense, I am the opposite of the character in the film, who would be despised by those who see it. I'm quite comfortable in that realisation and I hope it's the best way to be.

So that's Popularity and Mother, how about Connected ?

My cable modem has died ! OH THE HUMANITY !

I've gotten far too used to having constant connectivity to the internet. Watching gaming videos has replaced reading books for me. Sad but true. That said, I might well be opening up Revenger again after finishing this post.

Yep. The main router has died but I've managed to get partial connectivity back via using a mobile hotspot. And the desktop sees internet again due to resurrecting the old USB wifi dongle that I used on my Macbook (before Apple killed it).

It's actually pretty good too, at 18MBits/s download and 15Mbits/s upload. That's 3x quicker than my cable internet upload. But there's a monthly download cap on that, so I'm not watching the videos I'd normally watch. I should be getting a replacement in a few days.

Soon hopefully !