I spent my 22nd birthday

With Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter, and their outrageously adorable children. Clearly the best birthday ever.

It was his first time riding The Haunted Mansion Holiday, based off his film The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Shoes

• Les Mis for Megs
• Phantom for Brittany
• Batman?
• Sweeney Todd
• Sleeping Beauty

Vans are so expensive, but they're by far the best canvas.

Merry Christmas! Love, The Universe

Not going to jinx the other one, but it's going to be a fantastic birthday gift. Thanks world, glad I'm back in good graces.

Edit: So I got pulled off the Pete Caroll tour, as usual, but met him & shook hands backstage!

Sylvia Ji

That's a lie.

Current pulse rate

I'm reading:

• Born Standing Up (Steve Martin's autobiography)
• The Poisonwood Bible
• On the Road
  

I'm listening to:

• Portugal. The Man
• Beirut
• Right Away, Great Captain!
  
• Band of Horses
• Bright Eyes (sidenote: Conor Oberst is all together too good to listen to, breaking it down into small chunks is completely necessary.) (2nd sidenote: I am so very thankful to whatever kept me from listening to Bright Eyes until now. I'm so glad I didn't mar it by listening to him in high school.)
  

I'm working on:

• Les Mis shoes for Megan.
• Getting the last things in order to study abroad.
• Moving out of my apartment.
• Organizing all the shit on my computer (sidenote: It's relatively pointless, but I think it's important. And relaxing. It's virtually the same thing as a desk, and it'll be easier to keep track of everything when I change over to the MacBook.)

Ideally I would:

• Be finding some resolution, rather than leaving frayed ends.
  
• Have a bullshit 6 week job in San Clemente vs. being anywhere near Disneyland.
• Eat better.

I'm so glad I:

• Got my sleep schedule back under control.
• Know Sean McKesson.
  
• Worked for Disney, but will not go to the park again for a long, long time. (After I leave.)
  
• Am going to buy the MacBook.
  
• Let it all happen.

I:

• Don't need definition, am not trying to make a relationship. But in trying to not make a relationship, we're seriously fucking each other over. Who's more unattached? I have no problem with unattachment. I have no problem with attachment. I just don't want to be cold.
• Realize the internet is a bad place for declarations. (And would love to pass that little gem on to Kim Katz.)
  
• Am ok with being in debt for a little while. I'm not currently.
  
• Want to get to know my brother's friends, because I know he has impeccable taste. I am worried about encroaching on his territory, but I don't think he'd mind.

I wish you'd say...

Life is so much better when I'm nowhere near Anaheim.
Whenever I'm coming back from being away I feel like I'm driving into a graveyard. This city is rotting, filled with shadows of people who dilute their dreams for the sake of remaining comfortably miserable. It's what they know, change is too unnerving, too big, too hopeful.

I can't wait to sever ties.

I'm eager to get away from stagnating here.
I hope that one day you'll get out too.

But darling, I am leavin'.

For as much as I bitch about it...

I've been able to do a lot of really ridiculously cool things in working for The Walt Disney Company.

• I met my best friend.
• I've been in the park when it's completely empty, all lit up and perfect. Similarly, I've seen the sun rise over an empty Main Street.
• I've walked through The Haunted Mansion.
• I've met, hugged, laughed and generally tried to keep from freaking out around my hero, John Lassester, and he is more fantastic than I ever could have imagined.
  
• I watched the Christmas Fantasy Parade next to Gwen Stefani, I saw Heath Ledger in person, Travis Barker knows me by name. I've narrowly escaped molestation by the train wreck that is John Stamos, I was a Candlelight Narrator host for Jane Seymour, John Frusciante and I have discussed the wonders of Arrested Development and the necessity of reading DaVinci's notebooks. In Italian. I did not lose K-Fed's kid, and Britney's are really pretty cute. Brad Garrett gives me and Lenice personal stand-up shows, and we're both honorary members of Team Lasseter.
• I was put on a Johnny Depp tour. (He didn't come in, but it meant a lot to be assigned.)
  
• I've been in Walt's Apartment. I've given people tours of Walt's Apartment. I've played the Regina music box, I own a Lamp pin.
• I worked Miley Cyrus's Sweet 16, hosted the opening of High School Musical 2, the Dream Job Winners, the Snow White film restoration event, and opened Toy Story Midway Mania with John.
• I watched Walt Disney's first feature animation, Snow White, sitting next to whom many consider to be the modern reincarnation of Walt.
• I watched the Pixar Play Parade with John, the first time he'd seen it. He told me to look past the Toy Story zoetrope and look at the people's faces, watching as it came to life, and that that is "why we do what we do." He gave me (me!) a personal tour of the artwork he had handpicked to display for the Snow White exhibit.
• I'm going straight to Pixar when I'm done with school.

Two things

One: I am intrigued by the different levels of honesty people hold with each other--how some people are let in on more things than others, and while those others are not being lied to or deceived, they simply aren't let in on all the facets of your life. Not that everyone needs to know everything, really, but the decision to allot some people with less information than others is very interesting. The reasons why are interesting. Better friendships, more trust, longer history?

Sean says, "I figure I'm generally as honest as I ever am with anybody but the better I know and trust you, the more I'll divulge about the why and the how and such." You only let your closest people in deeper, "because every new layer of intention and motivation and background you divulge gets closer to your absolute core. And sometimes you're holding back without realizing it. Either you're not sure how you really feel about something, or uncomfortable with what some of these deeper layers would indicate about yourself, not just to everybody else. Knowing yourself is a scary thing sometimes."

You're so much more eloquent than I am, darling.

Two: People try too hard to upgrade their situations; social situations especially, whether it be a significant other or the people you went out with for the evening.

Instead of relishing the small perfections of a significant other, people focus on faults and start making charts and graphs of the improvements the next one should posses, like an assembly line, a ladder to the top.

How can you commit your whole self to loving someone when you're so busy focusing on the flaws you'd like to be rid of? So much time that you could have spent reveling in your relationship with this person was wasted, the potential never fully realized.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be better at things, to get better things in or from life, but I cannot begin to express how achingly sad it would be to never have been fully immersed, wholly consumed by your perfect love for another, flawed though they may be.

People don't love completely. More accurately, people are afraid to love completely. You have to. Drowning is the only way you can do love justice. If you don't give in, if you don't jump in, if you're not in fifty feet over your head, you're doing it wrong.

Undoubtedly you'll be hurt this way. In giving full devotion, you do nothing but risk. But the risk is phenomenal and any resulting hurt is so much better than the pretense of being safe. It's so much better than not giving everything. To get deeply hurt is nearly as good as deeply loving. It's the only thing that matters, the only thing that's really, really, really meaningful.


Three things, then.

An exercise in practicality

I think if I write this all out, I'll be able to forget or clean the slate more thoroughly, which seems a necessity now. When things are better or clearer or just a little more white-washed with the passing of time, I'll check back and will be able to remember all of the good. It was truly very good for the majority of our time together, and it will be with this sweetness that I remember it:

• The Getty
• Knott's
• Comic Con
• Pixar
• San Fransisco
• Angel's game
• Elton John

Elaborations soon.