These are photos from my trip in April 2015 to Anaheim, California for Star Wars Celebration Anaheim.  This was the seventh Star Wars Celebration in the United States (the next one will be in 2016 in London) and the second one I have been to.  I had an absolute blast!  This is not meant to be an album of photography, but more just sharing the photos from my experience.  I hit up Disneyland while I was there also, so I threw some of those photos in as well.  Enjoy!

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So I have a plan to start blogging on a more regular schedule.  I tried to do a poll on Facebook, but Facebook doesn’t allow for native polls anymore, and so only one person actually voted on it.  Oh well.  I think I am going to try to blog on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so hopefully this will help you know when to look for posts.  Although, according to someone else on Facebook, no one even reads my blog, in which case I’m just talking to the void.

Another regular feature I plan on starting is “Movie Mondays”, since I do watch a lot of movies and especially around Phoenix Film Festival time, I review a lot of movies as well.  If you aren’t interested in movie reviews, don’t worry, there will be plenty of other stuff happening around here also.  But make sure to let me know what you do want to see!

So that brings me to today’s post.  Over the next few days, prepare yourselves.  If you don’t like Star Wars, you might want to stay away for a few days.  I am a huge Star Wars fan, and this year I got the opportunity to attend the Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, CA as a member of the press.  I am SO excited!  Starting tomorrow through Sunday, I will be blogging, tweeting, posting, and hopefully even some live streaming from the convention.  It should be a blast, and I hope you’ll follow along.

Now what exactly is Star Wars Celebration, you might ask?  Well, in short, it’s a Star Wars convention.  But a lot of stuff happens there.  This is actually the tenth Star Wars Celebration that has happened.  And it is an exciting one, because something big is happening this year… Episode VII!  One of the things that a lot of people are looking forward to at this particular Star Wars Celebration is a new trailer for Episode VII, which is expected to be shown in the opening panel with J. J. Abrams, the director.  One cool thing that Star Wars Celebration is doing this year is live streaming parts of the convention online, so even if you can’t be there you have an opportunity to see some of the cool stuff that happens.

There are a LOT of future and past Star Wars actors showing up at Star Wars Celebration, including almost all of the main actors in the original trilogy (except for Harrison Ford… Boo!).  They will be signing autographs, participating in photo opportunities, and speaking at panels.  I’m really looking forward to this.  It will be very exciting to see the stars of the movies that I’ve seen over and over again for years.

I’ve got some really cool things planned for these next few days, and I can’t wait to share them with you.  I don’t want to spoil all of the surprises though, so you’ll just have to follow along to see what I’m up to.  May the force be with you!

So I’ve noticed something lately.  Actually, it’s something I’ve been aware of for a while, but I guess I’ve just never really thought about it before.  It’s become pretty normal, or more likely, been normal for quite a while, to dislike yourself.  I mean, I’m not saying that most people hate themselves (hopefully most don’t), but it’s normal to always have something you want to change about yourself or something you don’t like.  I mean, if you really think about it, doesn’t this strike you as kind of weird?  I mean, so we are all born into this world, a world filled with people of all sizes, shapes, skin colors, hair colors, eye colors, genders, sexual orientations, heights, weights, likes, dislikes, food preferences, and plenty of other differences.  The world is a VERY diverse place.  Which to me, is pretty awesome.  It makes it a very colorful and fascinating place to live.  But yet, we spend so much of our time wanting to be different than we are.  Wanting to be more like someone else is.  I’d dare to say that all of us have something we’d like to change about ourselves.  We want to be skinnier, “better” looking (based on whose definition of “better”?), stronger, smarter, or different in some tangible way.  Why is that?  In a world that could not be more diverse, why do we want to be anything other than what we are?  Why do we want to be like someone else?  If you look at it from an outsider’s perspective, doesn’t that seem kind of strange?

We’re all so unique.  I mean, it’s evident in what we do, what we wear, what we like, what we read, what we listen to, who we spend time with, what our jobs are, or in any other aspect of our lives.  But yet, still, we want to change ourselves.  More than that, most of us dislike ourselves.  Why?  Why do we feel the need to be something else?  In a world that obviously accepts diversity (in general… I get that not everywhere or everyone accepts it completely) or at the very least, allows its existence, why do we not celebrate our own uniqueness?

I’m guilty of it too.  My biggest dislike about myself is my weight.  I wish I was skinnier.  I wish I had a different body, one that was more “normal size”.  The truth is, there are people both fatter and skinnier than me.  Don’t get me wrong, part of it is that I wish I was healthier, and I guess there’s nothing wrong with that.  We should all want to be healthy and live long lives.  But in all honesty, even being healthy is kind of misleading.  Sure, you can make sure your body is healthy.  But can you protect it from all the things out there that could harm it?  Not really.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t want to be healthy, but don’t let being healthy deceive you… just living in this world causes all kinds of risks that your health cannot prevent.

But even healthy people don’t like themselves.  They wish they were better looking, smarter, or better at something.  It’s never ending.  Why can’t we just decide that we are awesome, no matter how or what we are?  Each of us is a unique person in a world full of unique people.  Makes it sound not so great, doesn’t it?  But I think it’s awesome… because it gives us permission to be different, and yet to celebrate what we do have in common… that we are all different.

There are so many things out there that make our differences a negative thing.  Fat people are looked down upon.  Racism is still an issue.  We make fun of people who do things differently than us.  Why can’t we just decide that it’s all okay?  We’re unique, we’re different, we’re a wide variety.  And that’s a good thing.  We don’t need to change.  There’s nothing wrong with improvement, but that doesn’t mean we can’t like ourselves exactly as we are… even celebrate how awesome we are, right now, before any improvements.  It goes against the grain, but I think if we choose to like ourselves exactly as we are, it is the first step in also accepting and even celebrating everyone else’s uniqueness as well.  I mean, think about it – everyone liking and accepting themselves and each other?  World peace?  What a concept, huh?

I’ll leave you with a video that I think expresses the idea I’ve got here a little bit, if not a lot.  SO many women chose average in this video… why is so hard for all of us (men AND women) to see ourselves as beautiful (and awesome just as we are)?