Julie & Julia is on lifetime again. And I am watching it again.
In order to avoid the Snuggle bear ad spot, who let’s face it is a demon teddy from Hades, I am blogging my thoughts during commercial breaks. Plus I figure since watching this move was the reason I decided to write a blog about inspiration I should take the time to reflect on on how it inspired me.
The first time I viewed this movie was a couple of years ago. Occasionally Mom and I have girls only movie nights in order to escape my Dad’s non-stop stream of car chases, big guns and man crush on Jason Statham; on this particular movie night we ordered Julie & Julia from On Demand. Truthfully after my first viewing I could not wrap my mind around why the did not just make the movie about Julia Child. The woman was incredibly charming and, let’s face it, I can’t get enough Meryl Streep. Julie Powell, however, was bitter and whiny. I found myself never wanting the story to switch Julia to Julie.
The second time I watched it I found myself warming up to Julie a bit. I am not sure if it was because I knew what to expect of her character the second round or because I had experienced another year of life and understood a little bit of her bitterness over a life that had not gone the direction she had planned or maybe because I too have laid on the kitchen floor and “cried like a small, emotionally disturbed child” over spilled food. For whatever the reason I found myself typing “Julie Powell Blog” in Google. I wish I could say I read the whole thing but I did read bits and pieces and slowly gained a better understanding of who this woman was. The fact of the matter is Julie Powell was raw; she said what was on her mind and did not apologize for it.
By the umpteenth time I watched Julie & Julia I could see her in a completely new light. She was as an average woman, on the verge of 30, in a depressing bureaucratic job at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (for those who need a refresher the LMDC was the corporation formed to help rebuild and distribute funds after 9/11) who was absolutely miserable. So she did something about it! She took on the task to cook every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. While her feat, in my completely honest opinion, was not nearly as extraordinary as what Julia Child did it does speak volumes on a level of ordinary people. A lot of us deal with a disappointment slump; that period(s) in your life where you just feel beyond down and out. Nothing necessarily horrible happened, maybe you got laid off, had a bad semester in school, broke up with a significant other or maybe you just got a little fat. Whatever the reason we all feel blue and need to not only find the light at the end of the dark tunnel but shine that light for ourselves. And even though there were still many bumps in the road for Julie long after the success of her blog she still did a great thing. At 11 pm on a Tuesday, six weeks into my unemployment it is something I can really relate to.
And that is why Julie Powell’s Julie & Julia Project inspires me. So I shall continue to blog my fantastic & nomtastic adventures for the sake of my own sanity on my second blog http://fantasticnomtastic.wordpress.com/.
