"Dedicated to You (everyone). Love, Annie"

I have become one of those boring movies.

You know what I mean. (silent groan and "do we have to watch that?" type of movie) I am the Tibby who works at Walmart. Her life changes because of meeting that monochromatic girl with cancer (don't remember her name but her pale lips haunt me.) You watch and sometimes find it nice and maybe cry; but, your true self prays for the cut of Lena in Greece or Bridget on the beach. I gradually become one of those novels that you read for pages in anticipation of the dashing prince, the tragic murder, or even the discovery that "I am a wizard/queen/dragon/future president/moviestar!" Lonely grandmas and weird Shakespeare professors in Missouri would find something interesting in my monotonous novel of the moment. However, I guarantee I kindly decline as the reader to spend my time with the book. As a potential audience-member, I set it down near my bed...with all my other some-day-when-I-have-spare-time dusty covers.

Well, it does not matter: I am the main character AND the author. I have no obligation to read the book and feign entertainment. I live the book. Right now the page discusses my mind's consolidation of a variety of questions and answers and possibilities and impossibilities. Since life consists of school and work and church and family and (occassionally) friends all lined up in a row, in perfect Times New Roman, I sometimes fall into a sense of blah sentence structures. I forget the blessing and excitement of each letter's linear perfection. When my better self emerges, I wonder, "what is my life 'calling'?" or "how do I make my dreams into reality?" Occasionally I ask the best question of all: "how can I change? and become better?"

Looking back on this past year, I found my soul's stacks of books. Bright bindings with titles of romance, a few travel guides to wonderful destinations, a tattered cover of 'how to....', a couple of boring titles Art in Ecuador or The Minoan Mother Goddess, and a satire on the humor of family life all line the catalogue of my inner essence. Open the first page to any of these books and find the same dedication: it says (in some variation) "Dedicated to Me. Love, Annie." Yes, all of them. Sad and true and selfish. Selfish. Selfish. I've known of my self-centered existence as a student and hoped to tip-toe around the trap of pure evil in the slippery slope of SELF, but I tripped on my un-tied shoelaces.

In tying my shoelaces and escaping the trap, I have become a boring movie. Not because I truly have to or not because I truly want to, just because the best question:"how can I change?" requires me to. Like a schizophrenic, I respond, "You can change by changing your dedication from 'me' to 'you'" You can change by taking the shelves of novels into account in revising the unwritten pages; write something different. What use is learning to love--to expand yourself, lose yourself, and find yourself in another--if you tuck the lesson away (like a bookmark) for the next one who captures your heart? What use is adversity and the refining fire if you blow it out after you feel "done"? So, yesterday I had breakfast and dinner with B-Money (the Provo icon who soemtimes needs a true friend.) My first self-aware attempt in my venture to actually apply life's lessons--God's lessons--from the books.

Totally Tibby (minus the bad taste.) Honestly, I do not care how much you enjoy the upcoming words. In fact, unless you like those weird stories of facing reality in the fields of Idaho or you teach college in Missouri you will not enjoy yourself. And I myself would not to read it.

But, I need to write it.