Wow, I Did It...I Really Did it.

Ola!

Well, by the title of this first post, you'd think I was so excited about where I am and what I'm doing here. But no, not that at all. Being relatively Computer Stupid, I'm actually amazed I was able to get this blog up and going. I know, I know, most of you would say it's so easy. And now that I'm here typing, I can agree--yes it was...but it's held me back for almost a month. The fear of not knowing how to do it when I really wanted to...

Which kind of leads me to the reason for the blog. I'm here in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. (Yes, it's with an S, not a Z--for you broadway lovers, I can hear you humming "it's Liza with Z, not Liza with an S...", and I know I spelled it with a Z in the title--I compromised--but enough of spelling and broadway). And while I've thought of coming to live back here for some time, it took some pretty dramatic life events to finally give me the willpower and courage to do it. I'll get more into that later, but suffice it to say now, I'm here. And I'm glad you are too...with me. (I'm pretending someone cares enough to read it...it's nice pretending you have an audience.)

I saw the move Julie & Julia...so I kind of have an idea of how blogging goes. And my take on what she did was to set out some objectives from the very beginng. I liked that, so I'm gonna do the same.

1. I'm dedicated to writing on here on a pretty regular basis. Julie did it daily, and while I like that idea, I won't promise it. However, that will be my goal...and a goal not written is only a wish, so there, it's written.

2. I've had some pretty important and dramatic life events happen to me over the past couple of years...all motivators for me to be here in Brasil. They will weave themselves into my daily blogs, but suffice it to say now that I've lived in Brasil before, and I'm back here as a very different person in many ways--my second try, so to speak, at many things.

3. I'd like to have a career one day as a writer. I've kind of had that dream for a while. While I don't expect to make my career from blogging, I do want anyone that's reading this to know I can write, I have written, and I continue to do so. In fact, after several screenplays and teleplays sitting in a COLD CASE file on my computer in NYC, and knowing that some of you may have never read anything "real" I've written, I'm gonna do that here too. You see, in some ways I did prepare for my trip down here. I brought with me my favorite screenplay and each day I'm gonna add a page from that screenplay at the bottom. (So I'll be writing for at least 100 days.). Hopefully family and friends will enjoy it enough to try and piece it all together. Ideally, some big Hollywood producer will read it and think--here's my next OSCAR. Either way, It'll be "published" somewhere. HA HA. And before you go and think you can steal it, um, no, it's copywrited...Momma didn't raise no fool.

3. I am going to try and be honest with my thoughts and feelings about life, surroundings, actions, and thoughts. To be honest, that TERRIFIES me. Which leads me to #4.

4. I come from a STRICT Mormon upbringing. More on that later too, but because of that, I'm very sensitive to the moral/age appropriate concerns of family and friends that might be reading this blog. What do I mean by that? Well, as my sweet, funny Grandma Stevens entered here last fews years of a life shattered by dementia and undiagnosed alzheimers, we saw a side of her mind that none of us knew existed. Words, phrases, thoughts spewed from her mouth that at first made our innocent ears curl. I didn't know how Grandma could talk and think those kind of words. But I guess, somewhere within a part of Grandma none of us knew, those words were tucked away, waiting to spring out when her moral concience wasn't guarding her mouth. So while I don't know how to do it, I'm gonna figure out how to share more of the total me in another way. Kind of like this movie I went to as a young boy growing up near Roosevelt, Utah called Red Light, Green Light. When some act of violence or horror was about to show up on the screen, a RED light would flash, warning us to close our eyes and ears. A GREEN light told us it was OK to look again. Of course we watched it all, but just knowing something bad was coming up kept us watching and wanting more. So in my spirit of being open, I'm gonna try and figure out how to do that.

5. I can't take full responsibility for misspelled words...c'mon, I'm writing a blog, not the Constitution.

So that's kind of it. I've begun. And while I did this first blog page, I'm not gonna write the first page of my screenplay until tomorrow (there, I've already broke one promise).

It's too much already.

I'm sure I've lost anyone that might have started with me.

Come back! GREEN LIGHT. GREEN LIGHT.