wake me up when 2016 go go

This past week saw the unexpected passings of George Michael, Carrie Fisher, and her mother Debbie Reynolds.  What a cruel year 2016 is/was.  It has already taken from us, among many others, David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Alan Rickman, Alan Thicke, Florence Henderson, Garry Shandling, Patty Duke, Muhammad Ali, Elie Wiesel, Garry Marshall, Gene Wilder, and Anton Yelchin.  We still have three more days to go...I cannot express how much I love La La Land.  I went into it with sky-high expectations (on paper, this movie ticks all my boxes), and I pretty much smiled through the entire thing.  Within those two hours, there were so many moments of pure cinematic joy and magic.  It really is a movie for dreamers.  And like my favorite movies, it's also tinted with melancholy and longing.  It seems most of my favorite movies or books have the same theme (the Before movies, Eternal Sunshine, Atonement, Norwegian Wood) - even all the love and hope in the world cannot conquer the realities of life and time.  Yet you always need to choose to love and hope.  Movies like this inspire me to get my creative gears going again.  This is exactly what I want my work to convey...Oh yes, please give Oscars to Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone...The past two weeks away from work have been just me doing little thing here and there around the house - filing, shredding, tossing/recycling.  I am not sure how productive I've really been.  Actually I know I really haven't been productive at all.  I have never been productive, ever.  It seems my entire life is a series of non-starters.  One day I am gonna be different.  I keep saying this to myself, but what really does it take for a person to change?  I don't know.  All I know is what Leonard Cohen tells me - Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in...