Brief movie review: Boy Meets Girl, 1998

It's a Canadian film, set in Little Italy in Toronto.   I should have known when I read the synopsis and it said it was a "stylized 60s-ish romantic comedy" that I'd not be crazy about it.  Still, it's fun enough.  And the life partner loved it.  (Note: He loves everything on a screen, just about.)

Now I know I've passed into some new era; a new period in my life.   You remember that feeling you used to get in late August? You'd start dreaming about how new pencils smell, and anticipating the empty notebooks that you'd fill.   You'd start thinking about how much more you'd know a year from now.  At least, that's what you'd go through if you like new beginnings.  (And if you liked school, I suppose.)

Well, I'm still in school, lo these many years later.  And I still love new pencils and new notebooks.  But they don't have the thrill they once did.  I thought the thrill of new beginnings was behind me.  But today, I realized, it was still here.  It had just changed.

A few days ago, my life partner and I went software shopping.   (An advantage of being a student is that software is unbelievably cheap.)  We bought Office 2000, Front Page 2000, and Lotus Smart Suite Millenium.   At least, that's what we bought for me.  As professionals who offer web services, we feel compelled to keep up-to-date on software.  More honestly, being in the business gives us the tax incentive, the excuse and the rationale to buy the newest, latest, hottest software.  And all today, I'd been planning to load it up, and take it for a spin.  

But I didn't.  I procrastinated. I kept thinking that I'd do it in a little while.  And I couldn't figure out why I wasn't just 'doing it'.  Then it came to me.  It's the new version of a beginning.  A new change. A hope that this time things will be better, different, truly amazing, just what they've always promised.  New software just might be what will turn my life around!

Now, it doesn't matter that I don't want to turn my life around.   It doesn't matter that I don't want to begin anything anew.  Or that things are way better than I'd ever dreamed they could be. It's the seduction of the new beginning that gets me every time.

I know that Microsoft and Lotus aren't likely to have done more than get rid of glitches I didn't notice and add bells and whistles I neither need nor want.   I know that it's likely the new versions will provide at least as many annoyances as they do fixes.  But they'll look new; they'll be like shiny pencils, not yet sharpened.  And crisp new lined notebooks, waiting to be filled with things I didn't even know yet.  And that, today, was enough to keep me from wanting that moment of hope to pass.  The software will be loaded another day.   This dream, this hope gets one more reprieve before it, too, is dashed by reality.

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