Thursday, October 30, 2008

Become a Fan.

At first, it was just a trite, fun little feature of Facebook. I'd be reading along, checking up on the activity of my Facebook page, and I'd come across an entry that would say something like, "Billy Bob became a fan of Pop-Tarts (or some other object)." That's funny, I'd think, so I would click on the "Become a Fan" option, which would then display on other people's Facebook pages that Travis Ammon Green had become a fan of Pop-Tarts.

Eventually, I noticed that people were now becoming fans of causes. In fact, just today I "became a fan" of "No Smoking." But now I'm seeing people become fans of other people, like David Bowie (Honestly?) and Kermit the Frog (Sign me up for that one!). Those are just fine (although I'm a little surprised sometimes to see who people are fans of), but I'm also seeing people becomes fans of religious leaders (a fan of LDS President Thomas S. Monson? Really?). And today I saw that someone had become a fan of "Jesus Christ the Savior." Now that's just taking it too far.

I understand that most people are just trying to find a way to publicly express their support for a certain person or cause (maybe Facebook should make an application that says "I support [insert cause or person]"), but saying that you're a "fan" of someone that many consider to be a prophet (LDS President Thomas S. Monson) is pushing it. And to say that you're a fan of the Son of God? Sounds too flippant and irreverent to me.

I realize that there are probably a few (or a lot) of you rolling your eyes at this ("Holy cow, Travis. Stop being so up-tight. Chill out. It's just Facebook."), but to see the Savior's name listed as something people are a fan of alongside things like "sour candy" and "High School Musical 3" is too much for me. So I'm sending out a plea to all of you in Facebookland. Let's try to keep certain things sacred and respected instead of relegated to the same level as "swing dancing" and the "New York Yankees."

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Mr. Mom.

As I was cleaning one of our bathrooms this morning while waiting for a load of laundry to finish drying, I found myself thinking of the movie Mr. Mom starring Michael Keaton. In the movie, Keaton's character loses his job and his wife is able to find a job before he does, so she goes off to work while he stays home and fills the role of homemaker and primary childcare provider. The comedy comes in as we see both his wife's struggles to adjust to corporate life and his blunderings as he learns to raise his children and take care of the home (he's hilariously clueless).

Although his wife makes the transition pretty quickly, Michael Keaton's character does alright for a while but then sinks into depression, wearing the same flannel shirt everyday, never shaving, and watching soap operas while his kids run rabidly through the house, destroying everything. By the end of the movie, he snaps out of his funk and becomes a great stay-at-home-dad teaching us all a lesson in learing to excel and find joy in whatever role we play (Believe me, I'm not doing the movie justice. If you haven't seen it, rent it. It's great).

Even though I haven't lost my job (sorry if I scared anyone) and we have no children, I found myself relating to the movie's character. I wake up for a few moments when my wife says goodbye to me in the early morning on her way to work and then I go back to sleep for an hour or two. Then I get up and spend a couple hours doing maintenance cleaning around the apartment (bathrooms, vacuuming, dishes) as well as project cleaning (wading through mountains of papers and junk that we have unnecessarily acquired throughout the years). I run some errands to the bank, library, and store, then head home to change into my work clothes and then head off to work. Some days I get to see my wife for five minutes when she gets home before I have to leave for work, and some days I don't see her until I get home at midnight, and by then she's already asleep, so I typically see her for about five minutes a day. Not exaggerating.

For a while after my wife changed jobs and her work schedule became the opposite of mine, I went a bit into the doldrums that I described Keaton's character being in. Although I never watched soap operas and I don't play coupon poker with the neighborhood housewives and I did change my clothes on a regular basis, I mostly sat around and watched television or DVDs until it was time to shower and go to work in the afternoon. No vacuuming was done, no dishes were washed or put away and I almost never even opened the blinds to let light in (it's harder to see the filth when there's no light).

In the last few days, however, I've been making an effort to be more up and doing. And what a difference it makes! No, life isn't perfect and that mountain of papers and junk still awaits me (horrors!), but our apartment has a better atmosphere and I feel like I'm accomplishing something on a daily basis (unfortunately, that's a feeling I don't experience at work).

As I mentioned before, I've only just started this making this change, so we'll see if it takes, but I'm hopeful. Maybe someday the junk will be gone and I'll only have to do the periodic maintenance cleaning and we'll have our second bedroom back as an office/computer room instead of a garbage dump.

Maybe then I'll have time to get back to my soap operas.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Mercury.

I was on the CNN.com website just now and found this interesting article about the highest-resolution photos ever taken of the planet Mercury. If you'd like to see two of the photos, go to http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/10/07/mercury.mission/index.html.

Why am I putting this on my blog? I don't really know. Something about the photos blew me away. I had always thought that, being the closest planet to our star, Mercury would be rusty red like Mars (red = hot). But it's not! It's gray and looks a lot like our moon with a scarred, pock-marked surface.

Anyway, the images were haunting in a way. I'm reminded of the grandeur and immensity of God's creation anytime I see clear, hi-res images of planets, asteroids, comets, stars, etc. How small we are in the universe. And yet God is aware of every sparrow that falls.

Amazing.

Monday, October 6, 2008

What I Should Be When I Grow Up.

I've always envied the people that have always known what they wanted to be when they grew up. Actually, I've always envied the people who knew what they realistically wanted to be.

Throughout different stages of my life, I've almost always had a career aspiration. As a kid, I wanted to be a clown (interesting and frightening peek into my psyche, hmm?). Why? I dunno. I've only been to the circus once in my life and I'm pretty sure that it was after my clown stage had ended. Perhaps it had to do with my love of playing dress-up as a child. We had a drawer in one of our bedrooms that was full of miscellaneous vests, gloves, hats, shirts, pants and props. The possibilities seemed endless and greatly enhanced any voyage into Imagination Land, whether it was as a cowboy, spaceman, rock star, or knight (both Jedi and medieval). Maybe the clown's flamboyant costumes and makeup intrigued my still developing imagination.

It seems only natural, then, that my next career aspiration was actor. Movies have always interested me and the older I've gotten and the more I've been able to understand the wizardry of making all aspects of movies, the more they have piqued my interest. I've always been amazed at the power of an actor to portray emotion and pass it along to the viewer. Everytime I see a film or a play with a particularly moving performance, I feel a burning desire to take part in it.

What's the problem, then? I know what you're probably thinking because I've heard it so often throughout my life: If you love it so much, do it! Easy for someone to say who wants to be an engineer or an accountant. Those are real jobs with real, stable paychecks. Being an actor means living your life in feast or famine because, realistically, there are only two kinds of actors: filthy rich ones, and dirt-poor ones. And believe me, there are way more of the dirt-poor ones. Once I came to that realization in my mid-teen years, I reluctantly accepted a career in acting as nothing more than a dream. Maybe someday I can live my dream as a small-time, local hobby (but I still secretly hope to be "discovered" by a talent agent while eating pizza somewhere).

Next, I wanted to be a high school history teacher. This aspiration was influenced exclusively by an AP (Advanced Placement) American History teacher I had in eleventh grade named Mr. Westerman. He was fantastic. Although his class was one of the hardest classes I've ever taken, I loved it. And history and teaching always interested me, so I thought that maybe I could do something like him for a living: teach people with at least a bit of maturity and who actually wanted to learn. But, once again, reality set in. High school teachers make squat and I'm not too keen on that idea. But the clincher was this: I don't really like teenagers. So teaching high school was out unless I could teach AP. And how many teaches can make a living teaching only AP classes. I do, however get to satisfy my urge to teach through my calling as a Sunday School teacher in my church.

Throughout my work on my associate degree in college, my major changed from pre-teacher (still hoping to teach history), to social work (I found out well into the major that I disagreed with too many of the soapboxes from which my future colleagues hypocritically preached [but that's another entry]), to political science (only some political arenas are of interest to me and what would I do with the degree once I had it?) and finally to general studies (after four years, I simply had to get the degree and get out of the community college).

So that leaves me in the uncertain position of trying to get back into school after an almost two-year break (to get married and then to procrastinate). Where am I going to get the funding? Apparently my wife and I make too much money to qualify for federal aid (how in the world....?!) and because I would be entering school in the spring semester instead of fall, I can't apply for scholarships. So I'm left with school aid and/or student loans (groan). And I'm not even sure which school to go to now that I've earned my associate degree.

But the major question still stands: what should I go into? I feel like I should know what career I want before I decide on a major (makes sense and avoids a lot of wasted time and money). I've thought about art (graphic design and photography in particular), but many jobs within those fields lack the pay and financial stability that my personality need. So maybe I could do something like wedding and portrait photography on the side. But that still leaves me clueless as to what I should do with the rest of my life.

I've always wanted financial security, as well as job security, which has ruled out many fields. I also have found out (through long and agonizing experience) that I don't like customer service (more like customer slavery [again, another entry]) or retail. Math and science don't come naturally to me and and business is only mildly interesting. Sometimes. I've always wanted a career that would allow me to make a difference in people's lives and give me a sense of purpose and meaning. I love to create and perform, but with that often comes a shaky, uncertain paycheck.

So here I stand, confused and more than a bit despairing. What'll it be? Stay in my current job for the rest of my life? No way! I gotta get out, but I'll probably stay with this job until I've gotten through school as much as possible. So what should I major in? Ideas? Anyone?