I Hate The World - I Love The Internet

When your sister dies too soon, everything is harder all the time.

I'll just start with that to explain the first part of the title of my blog post.

I've been crying for a while now, tonight. Part of it is just release from a stressful, cold, busy week here in Belfast. The work is not hard. The weather is not that bad (and I was prepared for it). My schedule is not outrageous compared to some shoots I've been on. But all together + a touch of homesickness + time difference + grief = it's all exponentially harder. It's unexpected and surprising, this burst of tears and sobs. Maybe it's just my day off and I'm letting it all go, after working most of the day, to prepare, to gird my loins, for the week to come. Who knows. Maybe I just needed a great sobbing cry and it would have happened no matter where I was, no matter what was going on.

Here's a funny thing. I wouldn't have shared this much detail directly with Jen and yet I would have shared some of this with her and she would have been supportive and said helpful things, even if they were sort of just platitudes. Hard to explain how sisters are. Every sister relationship is so different, even within one multi-marriage family. 

You know what is hardest about being on location without husband or friends nearby? You miss hugs. But somehow, within a week or so, you find one or two people on set, on the crew, who you can hug every day and it's not weird. It's like emergency rations of affection. The video playback woman, Grace, is one of my hug-buddies. So are Paul and Amie on stunts. Great people all. Thank the the gods for them. Gemma too, when she's here, but she's always on a different set, preparing when we are shooting. I'm grateful for my hug-buddies. I don't know how I'd make it without them. And it's not even that long of a shoot.

Then there is the internet. 

I started this job with some blog posts about our location scouts and had to take them down because they were a bit too much information for the wonderfully passionate group of fans surrounding this project. Because of that, I started to read a few of their blogs and am having a lot of fun with it. There is one blog that has almost daily updates and I love reading about what I may or may not have been doing during my work day. It's great. And from that blog, I have gotten many new twitter followers. I have made it clear they will be disappointed by my tweets and blog posts from now on (in regard to the project), but still they are there and they interact with me and you know what? It's awesome. Two of them have even sent me HILARIOUS safety graphics and I posted them this week. I feel like, even though I have a very small part on this project (and those of you who KNOW me know exactly how I feel about this small part), these new fans/followers have kind of become friends. Paul and his 3 year old daughter in particular have been so kind and funny and supportive. When I tweeted that I hated the world and everyone in it today, he sent a supportive and funny tweet back in response. When I said how much I appreciated his and his daughter's support and even more so because we'd never even met, he sent me a picture of his daughter giving me two thumbs up. It made me burst into happy sad tears again. What a crazy wonderful thing this "social media" is. 

Then there is Dor who is now on Twitter and who sends me emails with LOLcats in them. My other dear sister Dorian. Thank all the gods for her too.

And I'm listening to Green Day. Billie Joe and Tre and Dirnt are sort of helping. If only I had drumsticks right now, I would be in great shape. 

My clothes are laid out for heavy weather tomorrow. It's 8:30 and I have to be up at 5. I'll be going to bed soon. I'm exhausted.