Keep Moving.

My co-workers were watching Sarah Jessica Parker's second edition of "Inside the Actor's Studio" this morning. Naturally, I tuned it out since I blame her defining role as Carrie Bradshaw in "Sex and the City" for being a huge part in the increasingly entitled mindsets of my generation's females, but she turned out to be an interesting woman nonetheless.

Something that I surprisingly agreed with her on was our shared philosophy of not becoming complacent in life, especially with our art. That's something I've always held on to, as a tenant, for a very long time. It's a big reason why my montage series rarely go past about fifteen or twenty entries, if that, because after a while: If you're not challenging yourself, you're wasting your talents. There's no incentive to doing something without getting anything back from it. I feel that, as a writer first and every other title in my life second, art imitates life - and sometimes, vice-versa - but the same concept can be applied to any character of any story; If the characters, especially the protagonist, doesn't learn anything by the end of the story then the journey was a waste of time and hence there was no reason to have the story take place to begin with.

I believe that, much like characters of fiction, we're presented with constant obstacles in life for a reason. And the primary reason for those obstacles are to learn a lesson from them, which is why it's of vital importance not to become stuck - whether through comfort or not - in any area of life, lest we stop learning and evolving. Life is for living, not surviving.