Bryce Moore's Blog, page 26

Movie Review: Doctor Sleep

It’s October, so we’re officially in spooky season. I decided to start things off with Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining. I really wasn’t sure what to expect from the film. I haven’t read the King book, but I’ve read the original and watched the film multiple times. They’re different from each other, but a great example of adaptation theory at work. (Both are fantastic, leaning into the strengths of their media.) How do you make a sequel to something as iconic as that movie and that book?

By doing a fantastic job of it, of course.

The premise is straightforward: Danny Torrance has grown up. Forty years or so have gone by since the events of the original. He still shines, but he’s reached a sort of equilibrium where he’s comfortable. But we’re introduced to another sort of creature: a group of traveling shine vampires, of sort. They prey on anyone with psychic powers, and they have psychic powers of their own. They focus their hunt on children, and they’re very good at what they do.

As soon as they come on Danny’s radar, you know where this is heading. This world isn’t big enough for the both of them. There are instances where some predictability isn’t a bad thing, however. We’re not sure how it’s going to end, and we’re not sure how it all will affect the characters we’ve been introduced to.

It’s quite a ride.

One of the best aspects of the film was the way it tied in the original. The Overlook Hotel, the ghosts, Danny’s parents, Halloran. All of it’s there, though the film makes the conscious decision not to digitally recreate Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall. (A good call, in my opinion. They picked actors who resembled them, and they acted and dressed the same way, but there was no “that’s not really them” sort of thoughts that kicked me out of the movie. That said, would I have loved to have somehow had the original actors time travel so they could be in the movie at their original ages? Of course. But time doesn’t work like that, and computers can’t make up the difference. (And if they could, would I want them to?))

It all builds on the world established in the original, expanding on it in new and exciting ways. (It also has a riff on some of the same things I dealt with in The Memory Thief, though it only plays a side role in the movie. Our minds as libraries.)

Is it perfect? No. The ending struggles to be as epic as I was hoping, even though it does a fine job of tying it all up. (I’d just wanted more, based on how great it had been to that point.) But the fact that it holds up at all to its much more famous predecessor is impressive just by itself. I think they’d make for a very fun double feature.

How scary is it? Not nearly as intense as the Kubrik movie, so that might disappoint some. But at the same time, that might make it more accessible to others. (Though it still has some very disturbing scenes, so . . . maybe not.)

I loved it. 9/10, and a great way to start October.

Off to the Gym

I am not a gym person. Let’s get that out of the way right off. (What’s a gym person? A person who goes to the gym regularly, obviously.) That doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t become a gym person, but the last time I went to the gym was probably around . . . 14 years ago? Yeah. Not a gym person. I don’t like having to take the time to go someplace special to work out. I don’t like changing clothes. I don’t like locker rooms. Blech.

However, I’m also a person who’s been having more and more issues with my body breaking down. Shoulder pain. Hip pain. Back pain. I mean, I’ve practically lived at my Physical Therapist’s office for months at a time. And the last time I was talking to them, I asked if there was something I should be doing to make it so I could stop breaking down so much.

“Go to the gym. Exercise. Strength train.”

These were not the answers I was looking for. (Ideally it would have been “you’re not eating enough brownies.” Life is full of disappointment.) However, when you have enough things go wrong, you begin to wonder if maybe taking the time to go to the gym would end up saving you time in the long run. (Much like when you don’t have a cavity, you don’t want to go to the dentist, but when your tooth begins to hurt enough, your assessment of that dental visit changes.)

Daniela, on the other hand, is very much a gym person. She goes to the gym after school to work out. Like, she makes a special trip there and everything. (I don’t know where she gets it.) I know myself well, and I knew that if I just thought to myself, “I should go to the gym sometime,” I’d never go. But if I told Daniela I wanted to go to the gym . . .

She dragged me there yesterday.

We didn’t stay a super long time. Just 40 minutes or so. But she showed me the ropes and acted as my personal trainer for the day, and I actually (I don’t believe I’m writing this) had a good time. It helped that I didn’t do so much that now I’m hating life today. I ache, but in a good way. And it really wasn’t that bad. It helped that I changed ahead of time and went right after work, so it didn’t have too big of an impact on my schedule. It also really helped that I was doing it with someone else, so it didn’t feel so . . . solitary and boring.

Will I go to the gym again? Well, my track record says no. However, I’ve made significant changes before in my life, and I’d have to say that for the moment, at least, I’m leaning toward “yes.” Maybe start out with something simple. Twice a week, after work? Something I can do consistently. I’m a creature of habit, after all. If I can somehow convince myself I really am a gym person, then there might be hope for me after all.

We shall see.

The Perils of Surface Acting

I’ve been reading a book for a discussion group here on campus. (The Spark of Learning, by Sarah Rose Cavanagh) Today, it introduced a topic I hadn’t seen verbalized before: Surface Acting. This is when you suppress everything you might be feeling (stresses, worries, physical condition, etc.) to present an “everything is wonderful” front to the world. As the book says, it happens during teaching quite regularly, but I think it’s something most people do on a daily basis. Certainly if you’re interacting with acquaintances or strangers, you’re more likely to try and come off as “everything’s great.” (Or is that just me?)

The thing is, I surface act. A lot. Sometimes, I’d go so far as to say I surface act more often than not. (Though as I think about it, I tend to think that’s more of a confirmation bias than anything else.) If you were to ask Denisa about this, she’d likely not tell you anything, because she’s a considerate person. But she’s pretty much the only person I don’t surface act around, and she’s often very surprised by how I’m actually feeling when we come home from an event. I’ll talk about how my head is killing, or how I was really upset about something, or any other thing that went wrong over the last bit. Almost always, she had no idea about any of that.

I suppose there are two potential reasons for this. Either she’s very bad at detecting surface acting, or I’m a really good surface actor. I tend to think it’s my surface acting skills at work, judging from how people interact with me. I’ve got a lot of practice doing this, and I know that’s really not a good thing, emotionally or mentally speaking.

Because as the book says, surface acting is super draining. It’s probably one of the reasons that I end up coming home feeling much worse than I’ve been portraying: all that surface acting has left me exhausted. I don’t know, however, if I can kick the habit.

I don’t like people knowing how I’m really doing. I would rather they all think everything’s peachy keen. My gut says I’m far from alone on this. Judging from social media, most people like to put a positive spin on their forward facing lives. We generally talk about what’s going well and ignore or brush to the side things that aren’t. People ask us how we’re doing, and we say we’re doing fine or great. (On the other hand, in cultures that don’t use “how are you?” as a form of greeting, asking that question can get you very detailed, honest answers. I learned very quickly on my mission not to ask people “how are you?” after one grandmother told me all about her diarrhea for fifteen minutes. Yikes.)

Some level of surface acting feels appropriate to me. There’s no need to go around telling everyone everything all the time. But it would be better for me to surface act less with close friends and family. In other words, it shouldn’t just be my wife who gets to know exactly how I’m doing. I end up shouldering too much on my own, even though I realize many friends would gladly help me if I were to have a bit less of a poker face.

I’m good at coming off as happy and positive most of the time. (Whenever I get to the point where you can see I’m not doing so great, you can know that I’m really not doing so great, as a rule of thumb.) I’m not sure how I might go about changing my approach to this, but I know the first step is recognizing there’s a problem. Until I could put a name on what I did, it was harder for me to see it. Now I can. Maybe that will help.

Time will tell, I suppose. Do you have experience with this? How have you handled it?

TV Review: Picard Season 2

“Don’t watch season 2 of Picard,” everyone told me. “It’s terrible.” But if everyone told me to jump off a cliff, would I?

If it saved me from having to watch season 2 of Picard again, I’d seriously consider it.

That was hot garbage. A complete, and utter disaster. So bad, and yet earnestly portrayed that you can’t help wondering if the actors were looking at a different script. The whole season brought shame on the Star Trek name. So many plot holes. So many non-sensical points. So many contrived circumstances. It’s like they looked up “willing suspension of disbelief” and thought it was a mandatory thing.

Yuck.

To be fair, the first episode wasn’t terrible. You’ve got some strange Borg thing showing up, asking for Picard by name. It feels like it’s going to be the start of a cool new season. Like it had potential.

Nope.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Instead, it had everything but. Time travel? Check. Random back story of Picard that I never really cared about? Check. Funky dream sequences? Roger. Annoying villains? Double check. Caricatures of characters? You betcha. Lame ending? Of course.

I’m trying to look on the bright side. I still felt like some of the actors were decent. Even if their characters were doing and saying idiotic things. The special effects were much better than OG Star Trek’s effects. There. That’s a bright spot?

I’m going to try season three, because I’ve been told it’s better. But if there’s no real connection to season two, then the world would be a better place if someone were to “accidentally” delete season two from history entirely.

Avoid. 3/10, and that’s being generous. Could it have been worse? Yes. With cheesier effects and worse acting. But . . . ugh.

The Origin of Personality through a Religious Lens

As I’ve been taking this Psychology of Personality class, something that’s come up multiple times is what the origins of some of these different personality traits are. In other words, why is it that some people are extroverts and others are empathetic and others are neurotic? We’ve discussed a number of different causes, from the effects of upbringing, to the environment you were raised in, to genetic factors. Another item that’s come up multiple times is to trace the roots of those personality types back to evolution.

All of this has got me thinking (as usual). I can see the effects of all of these different factors at work, or at least understand the arguments behind them. At the same time, I’m not honestly sure what I think about all of it, and a big part of this is actually rooted in religion.

One of the basic tenets of Latter-day Saint belief is that each of us existed before we came to earth. We were individuals with our own strengths and weaknesses and opinions and personalities. So how does that line up with the different personality studies I’ve been learning about?

At first, I wasn’t so sure. If all of our personalities are based on our upbringing, environment, genetics, and the like, did that leave any room for a pre-existence? But then I realized that of course it did. I blogged last week about how personalities can change over time. We can and do become different based on any number of factors. So wouldn’t it also be possible to be born with a certain “spiritual personality,” which is then affected by environment, genetics, upbringing, and the like? Makes sense to me.

Another sticking point that’s come up for me again this semester is “so what?” At times it feels like any number of things can just be chalked up to factors outside our control. If we believe in free agency (that we’re here to act for ourselves, and not just to be acted upon), doesn’t attributing so many things to things outside of our control essentially negate that? Can’t I just blame anything that I do that I don’t like on something that wasn’t up to me? “I would be a nicer person, but I wasn’t raised that way.” It felt like a baked in excuse for anything.

But again, as I thought on it some more, it actually ended up making sense once again. We’d like to think that everything that we do that is good is due to something special we did. That we’re smart because we study, or gifted at writing because we practice. That we’re empathetic because we’re just really nice people. On the other hand, anything that’s not-so-good is something we’d rather attribute to something outside of our control. I like to eat brownies by the metric ton because my hunter-gatherer ancestors were all about the calories. It’s not my fault. I’m just wired that way.

In reality, I think it’s somewhere in the middle (as it always seems to be). Some of what I do, both good and bad, is due to any number of external factors. How and where I was raised. My genes. The places I’ve lived and experiences I’ve had. But if you put someone else in the same exact situation as me, I still think they’d end up making different choices. Yes, some of that thought is rooted in my religious beliefs, but some is also rooted in just what I’ve seen in the world around me.

Personally, I think it’s important to keep both angles in mind at all times. Maybe be more forgiving about the shortfalls of people around you. You don’t know what sort of issues and backgrounds they’re dealing with. And be forgiving of yourself, as well. At the same time, don’t try to absolve yourself of the need to change by passing everything off as out of your control, and don’t let other people off the hook in the same way. As I write that, those two concepts seem at odds with each other. Like, you can’t do both at the same time. I think you actually can, but there’s a balance to it that’s tricky to find.

COVID Booster Take I’ve Lost Count

Once they recommended we all get boosted again this year, I’ve been keeping an eye out for an appointment for Denisa and me to get our shots. This basically consisted of going to the Walmart pharmacy site every day and seeing if they had openings. On Wednesday, they suddenly had a bunch of openings for yesterday (the first time I’d seen our local Walmart with them), so Denisa and I signed up.

In case you’re wondering: yes, getting the booster still made me feel sick the next day. It’s not nearly as bad as the first COVID shot I got. That was one full on awful. This one made my arm hurt, made me really tired, and just gave me a general icky feeling. So nothing to really write home about (or to justify writing a blog post about, really), but enough to make me call in sick and take the day off.

At the same time, going back into COVID mode (even just a little) made me think back on how things were then and how they are now. Quite a big difference. I got this shot mainly for the same reason I get the flu shot every year. I don’t like feeling terrible, and I’d like to do what I can to help other people not feel terrible too. (This is shocking, I know.) But back when we all first went into lockdown, it felt like many people were reassessing how they approached work and life in general. “Being sick” was a very good reason to stay home or skip a meeting. Even an important one.

Now? It feels like that’s changed back to how it was before. If you’re sick and stay home, there’s the feeling people might think less of you for it. (At least, I assume this. I’m basing it on how many people I see out about coughing or sneezing or just generally looking less than well. Personally, I’m still trying to stay home when I feel sick. I’ve got the sick time, and it makes sense to me to use it. I also want to model how I’d like other people to behave when they’re sick. But even then, I’ve found myself feeling like I was slacking off if I stayed home. I really don’t like that feeling, but perhaps it’s unique to me.)

In any case, the good news is that I’m already beginning to feel better (I think). Tylenol still goes a long way to helping you get over the reactions to the shot. If you’re looking to get the shot, I hope you can find it easily, and I hope you have a mild reaction.

Can People Change Their Personality?

Not a ton of time to write today, but I did want to briefly discuss something I’m reading about in my Psychology of Personality class. I’ve long believed that people generally don’t change who they are. They might tweak a thing or two here or there for a while, but they almost always return back to their norm. Not that I thought that was a hard and fast rule, but I thought that for people to actually change, it took a whole ton of work.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I read today an article that provided studies showing that actually, most people do change who they are over time. They become more assertive, more agreeable, more conscientious, more emotionally stable, and slightly less social. These aren’t exceptions to the rule. These are the rule. As people get more experience, they can and do improve their personality and character.

As I thought it over, a few things occurred to me. First, this might to naturally weigh itself toward people who live longer. In other words, in order to complete the study as a 70 year old, you have to actually live to be 70. It could be that people who are more disagreeable and emotionally unstable tend to die earlier. (Sorry to put it so bluntly.) So by the time people reach retirement age or more, there’s just a markedly different group of people who are around for us to observe.

But anecdotally, as I thought over some of the people I’ve known for a long period of time, I had to revise my assumption. Because when I look at them as a whole, they really do seem to change decade by decade. The changes are too slight to really notice year to year (usually), but over time? Sure. I think that really can make a difference.

Which gives me a whole lot more hope for humanity in general, compared to my earlier view. Yay for optimism!

But what do you think about this? Can and do people change who they are? Their basic personality? What’s your experience with it?

Tomas Update: Week 17 in Trenčín, Letter

I (Bryce) spoke too soon yesterday. Tomas sent out his letter yesterday afternoon, detailing more on what’s going on right now. Sorry about jumping the gun. Here it is now:

Привіт!

I don’t know if you could tell by the title but I have some big news… Mid transfers have come and gone and I am yet again here in Trenčín (let’s gooo!!) but of course Prez won’t be making it easy. I am training (!!!) which means I have a missionary straight from the MTC who literally just got here. His name is Elder Theodosis and he speaks about 10 words of Slovak. That’s not his fault, though – he speaks Ukrainian instead. So I’m out here training him to speak Slovak, be a missionary in general, and helping him in Ukrainian (which I have also been asked to learn, so expect some updates from my hurting brain as I try my best to pick ip language #3). I kinda brought this on myself I guess by learning how to read Cyrillic a few transfers ago. Anyways Ukrainian is pretty difficult so far, but we get an extra hour to study each other’s languages so I will be trying to make some headway. 

Besides that big news, some updates from the last week or so:

-visited trenčiansky hrad for the probably 7th or 8th time?

-took the bad train (Banská Bystrica -> Bratislava) to pick up Theodosis (took 3h 40min)

-hype baptism in Banská Bystrica

-found some pictures of my grandfather that I’ve never seen before, they are very cool

– great lessons with our boy Kevin

-and overall just loving being in Trenčín. 

I’m so happy I get to stay here for at least the next while! I really, truly love this city and at least some of the people here. What a crazy experience to live out here for real, speaking Slovak every day and just actually living. Wouldn’t give it up for the world. 

Anyways, time to get back on the language grind (currently learning how to pray, it is kicking my butt) so here is photos!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GHgGUxN4X6y5nvio8

з любов’ю,

Старійшина Кандик (starší Cundick)

Tomas Update: Week 17 in Trenčín

This is Bryce here, not Tomas. While he didn’t say outright that he wouldn’t be sending an email this week, I’ll be very surprised if he does. He found out last week that he’d be training a new missionary, and that started on Saturday, so he’s got his hands more than a little full right now. Training a new missionary is already an added load, but this particular instance makes it even more challenging.

His new companion was called to the Czech-Slovak Slovak area, just like Tomas. However, he was assigned to teach the Gospel in Ukrainian. This means that he went to the MTC and got his 8 weeks of language lessons, but all of it was in a language almost no one speaks in his mission. (Why did this happen? Well, while many people don’t speak Ukrainian, the Ukrainian refugees who have fled the war do, so it’s definitely needed. But it’s a strange case, to be sure.)

Tomas’s mission president has asked all the new missionaries to learn Slovak in addition to Ukrainian (which makes sense). He’s also asked all their trainers to learn Ukrainian. So now Tomas is teaching a missionary how to speak Slovak, and doing his best to learn how to tackle a new language at the same time. (For reference, Ukrainian is related to Slovak about the same way French is related to Spanish. There’s definite overlap, but . . . they’re also definitely different languages. Ukrainian also has the fun of the Cyrillic alphabet. весело!

How is he doing all of this? Well, they get an extra two hours of time each morning that’s set aside just for language study. In addition, the mission is running some Zoom classes a few times a week, taught by native speakers. And then there’s the bonus of actually living where these languages are being taught. I think one reason Tomas was specifically chosen for is that his Slovak skills are some of the strongest in the mission.

Any which way you slice it, his day to day life took an unexpected turn in the space of about a day. That’s the way things can go on a mission. It was great to talk to him yesterday and hear how upbeat he is about the challenge in front of him. WIsh him luck!

Book Review: The Glass Castle

This was such a stunningly good book. I usually read more squarely in the area of genre fiction. Fantasy, thriller, science fiction. I read books for escapism, so the fact that I loved this one speaks to just how great it is. Because it’s anything but escapism.

Wells writes a memoir of her childhood, growing up in conditions that bring new meaning to the word squalor. She pulls no punches, portraying her family and the people she knew back then for both good and ill. Her father was both a raging alcoholic and someone who really wanted to be a good parent. Her mother was ill-equipped to be a parent, but we also see the way she sacrificed for her children.

My childhood couldn’t have been more different, but I still related so well to what she described, seeing it all vividly in my mind. It’s written in the same way a child would view the world. Simple and straightforward. There are no long asides where the author decides she needs to tell us all what everything means. She doesn’t spend time telling us what she thought of her parents, analyzing how they could have been better, or what she actually liked about them. Instead, the book is one of the best examples of “show don’t tell” that I’ve read in a long time. We don’t need to be told what to think of the people. We’re shown who they are.

When tragedy strikes, it doesn’t receive any particular attention. As a child, the way things are for you is the way things are for everyone. The book is often a tough read, with Wells going through some very rough experiences. (And so naturally, it’s also been one of the most challenged books in high schools. It’s true that there is sexual content in the book, but it’s not gratuitous, and it serves to illustrate just how dire some of these situations can be.)

I don’t think I would have picked the book up if not for being assigned it for the Psychology of Personality class I’m sitting in on this semester. So glad that I did. Highly, highly recommended, even if I’m late to the party. 10/10.