A Sad Day. (A tribute to Lady Sybil)

Today has been a very sad day. I feel as though my world has been turned upside down. Nothing will be the same ever again.

Why you ask?

Because last night on Downton Abbey, the lovely and amazing Lady Sybil died. 

R.I.P Lady Sybil (I love you.)

 I know, I know, she's not a real person, but bear with me. For this post we are going to the magical world of Masterpiece Classic and Downton Abbey. (This relates to my gap year because I have had the free time to find new shows to watch and enjoy.) (I feel I had to make that connection to justify the presence of this post. So there :p )

For those of you that do not watch or have not seen Downton Abbey, do yourself a favor and go watch it. It's worth it. But here is a quick description of Lady Sybil anyway just so you get an idea of why her death is the greatest tragedy ever. 

Lady Sybil Crawley, The Youngest Daughter
The family rebel, Lady Sybil Crawley is fiercely political and generally angered by injustice everywhere. Sybil exasperates both parents. She will go through the motions when it comes to the responsibilities of high society, but her true goals in life are well beyond what her parents consider the proper field. (from PBS.com)

Damn. Is she cool or what? So that basically outlines why I love her and she is my favorite character.

Now thanks to the Internet, I knew that this was going to happen, but I had hoped against all odds that maybe just maybe the internet was wrong. Maybe that wasn't hope. It was denial. Either way, an attempt to simply google "lady Sybil actress", turned into being given the option search "lady Sybil dies". Why Internet, why?

Obviously, it did indeed happen, but I was still shocked when it did. Oh, Denial. I knew it was coming, but with each passing minute during the episode, I kept thinking "this can't happen. She's my favorite."

And when it did come, it came with vengeance. Her death scene was both intense and emotional. Sybil died of eclampsia, a condition of unknown cause that used to be called “toxemia of pregnancy.” (For those of you that don't know, she was married to Thomas Branson, the former chauffeur for the Crawley's and an Irish revolutionary. Way to break down those class barriers.)

Anyway, the family's doctor, Dr.Clarkson, noticed the signs of eclampsia, and was urging the family to take her to the hospital to have her baby. But, her father (The Earl of Grantham) took the advice of another doctor because Dr.Clarkson had misdiagnosed a Crawley family member once before, and kept her at the house. Then as the episode progressed,  family and staff of Downton all anxiously awaited the birth, wondering how things would turn out. When she did give birth to a girl, everyone was like "oh, well that's wonderful! See? Nothing is wrong with her, she is fine. Pshh, Dr.Clarkson you had no idea what you were talking about." Yay! What a relief. WRONG. 

Everyone goes off to bed, feeling relived and excited. Then in the middle of the night Mary (Sybil's older, not nearly as cool sister) comes into her parents room and shakes them awake saying "Come quickly. It's Sybil." Well crap. At this point, I was like "NO DEAR GOD NO." I was STILL in denial.

Then the whole family rushes to her bedside, where her epic death scene transpires. Basically, due to the eclampsia, she suffers from several seizures that cause her not to breathe, and she suffocates to death. This fact is made known by the cries of "She's not breathing, she's not breathing" from everyone in the room. Wonderful. It was intense and stressful and awful.

During the whole scene I was practically yelling at the TV demanding the doctors do something. Hmm... maybe I'm a little to attached to this fictional character.
Either way the acting was supreme on Jessica Brown Filday's part (Sybil). Well done.

 If you are a big show of the fan and would like to read a more comprehensive overview of the tragic death, check this out. It goes into the science behind the condition, so it's pretty interesting. 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/lady-sybils-shocking-death/2013/01/28/c0f41e14-697a-11e2-ada3-d86a4806d5ee_story.html

Anyway, this post is my tribute to Lady Sybil Crawley, the best member of the Crawley family and my favorite gal on the show. So here's to you. May you rest in peace. And may Downton Abbey still be watchable without you. 

Thanks for reading this very long post even though it doesn't have much to do with gap year. I guess it just goes to show how I have been spending some of my time... Speaking of which, my plans to go WWOOFing are coming together, I am just working on the logistics. Thanks again for reading, and be sure to go and check out my new YouTube channel!
http://www.youtube.com/user/annieteev 

AnnieTeeV

Well, it's official. I have created a YouTube channel that will be pretty much dedicated to gap year happenings. As I said in a previous post, it was something that I have wanted to do for a very long time and was one of my new years resolutions. So I am very pleased to say that I followed through and just posted my first video! 

There will be many more (I already have two completely done and one other idea), but this first one is just a introductory video. They are going to range from vlogs, to skits, to travel videos. I have plenty of fun ideas... :)

This post is my formal request that everyone please go check that out, and subscribe to the channel if you would like to see what happens next. 

http://www.youtube.com/user/AnnieTeeV?feature=mhee 

Thank you in advance for going and checking that out. Because I know you all will (wink, wink). 

I am very excited because one thing that I have really had the chance to explore this year, is my passion for video making. It's always been something I have enjoyed, and this YouTube channel gives me the motivation to further that talent and passion. 

Thanks again, and I will see you in the next post! 

Stuck In Neutral

For the past few weeks, I have felt like I have been stuck in neutral (as my very cleverly thought up title says). Mostly because all my friends are still home from school, and instead of planning the rest of my year or being productive in some sense, I have been hanging out with them. Which is fine by me. It nice to have them around after so many months of being on my own. (Which I also don't really mind either.)

But I still can't help but feel like I am just stuck in neutral. Not moving backwards, and not moving forwards. Just staying put. Not progressing or moving towards anything. Just going about my days without anything to show for it. I guess you could say I felt very unproductive. I just felt like I hadn't done anything spectacular and I wasn't making progress towards something like that.

Then this past Tuesday I read a very thought provoking quote on the inside label of a bottle of Honest Tea. Love that stuff. Anyway, that quote was:

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."
                            -Robert Louis Stevenson
 

For me, that was just the quote that I needed to see. It's almost as if I was destined to get the specific Honest Tea bottle... Some mystical power of the bottled tea gods put that quote in my hand. 

 

Or maybe I just picked one...

 

Either way, it really got me thinking. Maybe I hadn't planned day by day my WWOOFing plans, or booked any flights, or began to outline my specific plans. But I had been thinking about it. I had been working on videos (for my soon to be new YouTube channel. More on that later), I had been coming up with new projects, or broadening my interests in some capacity. (For those of you that are interested in details, I had been planning videos, and working on a proposal for a company.) Whether or not I had realized it at the time, I do now. This quote helped bring some sense into my head. My being "stuck in neutral" was really more of a perspective thing; something that was more of a mental thing than anything else. 

 

So today, I leave with that quote. Even though it seemed as though I had not been doing much, in actually I had been planting valuable seeds. And as we know, seeds always grow into something larger.