New "favorites" series: What's Making Me Happy #1 (myspiffyrosegirl)

Okay, my belly is full now, meaning I can happily finish this post. This will hopefully be the first of a series called "What's Making Me Happy," which was inspired by a segment of the same name on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. It's basically a space for us to talk about favorites and recommendations. So, I'll just go right into some recent and some longstanding things that's been making me happy--

READS

What can be more perfect than to start off a "What's Making Me Happy" series with this book called Feeling Good by David D. Burns, MD? It's essentially cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in book-form for depression and anxiety. To put it simply, this book has been revolutionary for me. It's made me realize how much my depression/anxiety has affected me and how pervasive they are in my everyday life. But more importantly, the book and CBT itself depart from the Freudian philosophy and all the psychotherapy that was founded on it. What does that mean? In a nutshell, it means 3 basic things - (1) depression is not a mirror to human nature's true form, so it's not something that people have to suffer with, (2) a lot of your feelings including your strongest ones are based your thoughts - hence cognitive based therapy, and (3) so the way to fight your way out of your depression/anxiety is to first change your thoughts in order to change how you feel. Simple, but amazing.

Before Midnight: A finale in real love

I wrote this right after I watched the movie a year ago. I'm reposting it here, since it seems an appropriate post with all our other reviews for shows...As I skim it while re-formatting it, I notice it's more of a personal reaction, but that's okay. Just a more personal, less objective "review." I hope it sways someone out there to join the "Before" series cult. :)

Just a little introduction to those who have never heard of this series: Before Midnight came out in May 2013 and is the third in a series of movies featuring the relationship between an American named Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and a Frenchwoman named Celine (Julie Delpy). The actors themselves are of the same nationalities as their characters, not coincidentally I believe. (Although Delpy became a U.S. citizen in 2001, so technically she is now a French-American actress.) The first movie, Before Sunrise, came out in 1995, and is the story of how they first met on a train through Europe's countryside and their impromptu adventures through Vienna over 24 hours before Jesse boards a plane to leave for America at sunrise - hence the movie's name. Before Sunset came out in 2004 and picks up their story in real-time, so also 9 years later. Nine years after that is this movie, Before Midnight, with the actual story again in real-time. As far as public knowledge goes, the two sequels were never planned, and each time, the question of whether or not to do another sequel was left up in the air. Luckily for us fans, they have kept up with the sequels and at the regularly spaced 9 years. It's a very unique set-up since the movies are spaced out so far apart, and unlike other series, it's completely not known (or rather disclosed to the public) if the 3 (director Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy) are planning another sequel.