I love the times of day when you just need to talk to someone, but no one’s around. Your Gmail chat box is a solid mass of grayed-out names, chronicling all the people who aren’t around to comfort you. The one person online is sleeping - as they groggily inform you after your first message. They sign off before you get a chance to respond.

You switch to AIM - a few people still dwindle in your buddy list. You message one friend. No response. You message a second. Same. After a few minutes of waiting, the first signs off. So does the second. And you’re left with an empty list of names - all ready to talk; none ready to listen.

Monday morning. 1:06 AM. No one around; no one awake… Left all alone in a dark room, staring at an LCD screen that brings only false promises and delayed rejections - waiting for the week to begin.

I’ve spent the past few weeks listening to dozens of people complain about the decline in privacy online. From Facebook and MySpace letting the government snoop on people’s profiles, to the idea of a National ID Card, people stir up a storm every time they discover some minute way the government can peek at their private lives. Facebook groups pop up, calling for petitions (haha, online petitions…) to stop the snooping. Most recently, this issue has come up in the media with MoveOn.org criticizing Facebook for targeting ads based on information in individual users profiles.

My question: why are we making such a big deal over this?

The same questions were raised when Gmail targeted their AdSense ads from keywords in a users’ inbox. Oh no. The same thing happens when a company targets certain magazines, and thus certain audiences, to advertise in. The real issue lies in people putting the supposidely super-private information (like what bands they like…) on the internet in the first place. Giving advertisors [in effect, anonymous] information on Facebook users isn’t making anyone’s life any less secure than it already was.

I’ve written about this before - how new forms of sponsorship and advertising are at the backbone of the current technology revolution. Without targeted advertising and exclusive sponsorships, ad revenue would plummet and organizations like Facebook would be unable to provide their services free of charge. If we don’t want the internet to come to a standstill, we have to be open to new forms of advertising. Sure, no one may particularly enjoy the main character of a television show pointing the logo side of a product towards the camera, but we got used to it. We’ll get used to this, too.

I was driving through Pantops on Thursday, when I realized how utterly dead the world was that day. I don’t think I’d ever been out driving on Thanksgiving before, but as I had to go into NBC this week for my internship, I found myself cruising through town while most people were sitting down to diner with their families. It was very creepy - there were maybe ten cars that I was able to see on Pantops. And then once I got downtown, it was even worse. Five people, along the whole stretch of the mall. No stores open. Wind blowing hundreds of leaves across the uneven bricks, with a slight echo on everything that made a noise. Not even at 1:30 in the morning is it that dead (don’t ask me why I’ve been downtown at 1:30 in the morning).

My family did the whole Thanksgiving thing on Friday - for the second year in a row, actually. We must be rebels…

I finally got my dailies for the American Cinema Editor’s Student Editing Competition today. Every year, ACE holds a competition where they let video editing students cut together a scene from a television pilot. Out of the fifty entrants, the top three get to attend the ACE Eddie Awards in California in February. I entered last year, and had a simply marvelous time editing Scene 34 of the unreleased pilot from NBC Universal, “Haskett’s Chance.”

So imagine my surprise when I got my dailies today, and discovered a daily DVD containing… Scene 34 of Haskett’s Chance. They sent out the same scene as they did last year! I’d been so excited to get my hands on something new, wondering what the scene would be about… I never even considered they’d reuse the one from last year… Ah well, I suppose I can try to work things from a different perspective this time or something… *sigh*

Busy, Busy, Busy.

I woke up around 4AM on Saturday - our bus was leaving CHS at 5:45. The cast of How To Eat Like A Child was traveling up to Broad Run High School to compete in the Region II VHSL Theatre Competition. Six schools were there, with a surprising variety in the types of shows they presented (there was actually a 25-minute one-[wo]man show that astounded me).

We won.

I don’t mean to sound cocky, but I figured we would either get first or last: judges tend to love or hate musicals, and it could have gone either way. I even got a nomination for the best actor award! But, we got first place, so we’ll be going to the State-level competition on December 4th. It’s a long drive, though… They’re holding it at *gasp*, Charlottesville High School. Fun.

Also, I recorded and mixed together the cast recording of the show over the weekend, and I uploaded one of the songs for you guys (yes, that’s me singing at the end…): We Refuse To Fall Asleep.mp3

Additionally, the cast list for Anything Goes was posted this morning - I am Sir Evelyn Oakleigh. I’m British (also fun). He’s actually one of the leads, but honestly I wouldn’t care about how big the role is, as long as I get to talk in a British accent for an hour and a half.

I felt like gloating.

Yesterday, a friend of mine pulled me away from my oh-so-urgent reading of Pride and Prejudice (*cough* *cough*) for AP English. He’d been having some relationship issues, and needed someone to talk to (who’d have thought anyone would ever come to me for advice on girls?!?!). Listening to him talk was a little hard for me, given my recent romantic situation, but it really got me wondering about the relative importance of various things in our lives. I proceeded to stare blankly into the distance for about twenty minutes in the Black Box, just contemplating. Things we think about, care about, obsess over… I hate to sound melodramatic (no wait, that’s a lie…), but just wondering about the microcosms and macrocosms of our lives crossing over one another. What might really be a trivial event in our lifetime can become the object of our obsession and contemplation for months. You might realize this and tell yourself not to worry, not to care so much — but you can’t. A breakup, an awkward moment, a first kiss can consume your imagination and make you forget the existence of the rest of the world.

Let’s use auditions as an example. This week, I’ve had auditions for my Senior Year Musical (a big deal among us Theatre CHS dorks). With all of the dance combinations to worry about and vocal auditions to practice, it’s been easy to forget about the other important things in my life. This one event - getting a good role in the musical - becomes what is most important to you. Your dream, your soul food, your life. And it shouldn’t. Because, in the end, the musical (even high school theatre as a whole) is such a small part of your existence. No one will care twenty years from now what part you got in your high school musical. Few will even care what college you get into.

I’ve been a big proponent lately of living in the moment - forgetting all the planning and worrying about the future, and simply living for what makes you happy: right here, right now. And since I’ve started using this philosophy, I’ve been a much happier person. But I think somewhere in that transition from worrying too much about the future to playing your entire hand up front, I’ve become far too worried about the past and present instead. This is no better.

I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep last night. I’d had a wonderful time at my vocal audition (actually rocked it, if I may be so bold), seen a great movie with an amazing friend, and drove home feeling more happy than I have in a very long time. But one thing troubled me - a halfhearted smile, or a laugh that didn’t seem genuine… I don’t know what it was. Just a feeling. And that made me worried. Worried that something was wrong, that I’d done something bad - and I became obsessed with it. I tried not to - tried to get on with my night and fall asleep. But I just couldn’t. There was nothing I could do about it that night, and it could end up being nothing - but I couldn’t stop worrying about it.

We all have our obsessions - you get too focused on college, work, your appearance, an audition. We become so obsessed that we forget about what’s really important to us. It’s hopeless for me to expect an absence of obsession - it’s part of who we are as human beings, what makes us excited, interested. But maybe, some day, we all can learn to become obsessed with something less trivial: learn to be obsessed with life.