How Harry Potter has shaped my life

When I woke up this morning, I had a mission— I was going to add a wand holder on the inside of my Hogwarts robes. As much as I still did not understand why, I had one minor problem with this plan, which was I did not own a wand.
I know, why? After all these years, how did I still not own some form of magic wand. So, as part of my mission, I sought out a wand. It did not have to be a terribly sophisticated one, especially as such an extravagant wand from Olivander’s or Alivan's would cost more than a little-paid library clerk who has recently been laid off from his second job can afford—probably more than I could afford with the second job.
Anyway, I went off on my journey for a new wand. Since the owl with my Hogwarts acceptance letter is still lost somewhere and 17 years late, I got into the car and drove around with my list for the day. Between many different shops seeking my prize, I procured other such commodities as Bertie Bott’s Every Flavored Beans (safe jelly beans from Mr. Bulky’s in which I picked out all the flavors myself), felt in which to make the pocket from, and a Gremlin.

(The Gremlin was an added perk of the day, not related to anything I had planned. It’s just adorable)

It’s hard to imagine that only just 10 years ago I became entranced by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone after I asked my sister to come see the movie with me. Patsy had already seen the movie with her school, already a huge fan of the books. I on the other hand, knew nothing of it other than what I had been told.
Yes, you can all judge me now, as I have judged so many people. I got into the series after watching the movies. After seeing the first movie in the theater, I quickly snatched Patsy’s copy of the first book and became hooked.
It took a while to get into the books, finally jumping into the 5th book as Patsy finished it (I recall I probably sat with puppy dog eyes as I put Goblet down when I realized I had a while to wait before the next book was available).
I, like millions and millions of others in the world, had found a love of the book and movie series. Hogwarts was a far off place where anything was possible and we could go to escape the real-life muggle problems going on.
As it is now, my extreme Harry Potter love is greater than I’d ever imagine 10 years ago. For instance:
As years went on, wizard rock began to happen. I would say it formed, but it really didn’t seem that way. It felt like out of nowhere, wizard rock was abundant without knowing where it truly came from.
During a trip to MacBack’s bookstore in Cleveland Heights, my sister and I noticed a random CD featuring a lightning bolt and the words “Harry and the Potters” laid out in the display case. “Harry and the Potters”? Really? We were cracking up laughing the entire trip home.
Then the trip back to Cleveland Heights in which our group’s car got a flat tire in one of the richer areas of town. Nothing will beat the reaction of the person who’s driveway we pulled into when they saw us, all in full Hogwarts regalia, trying to change a flat tire.
(My friend Angie and I dressed up with other attendees of Remus Lupins concert, Summer 2007)

Wizard Rock is probably what kept my love alive for this series. Most people still look at my iPod playlist and ask me if I have any music that is NOT about Harry Potter. You know, because there is music like that. Even my sister, the one who got me into the series, told me I needed to stop with the Wizard rock because it was just too much. I didn’t care though. I was happy.
These types of events, gatherings of music, crafts, fun, all at the library, helped me decide what I wanted to do in life. After getting an English major, I went for my Masters in Library Science. I’d be a reference librarian. But even then, I felt there was more. Coming to these events, even helping organize one for the final book release, made me realize how much I enjoyed doing these kinds of large and small programs for Young Adults. It made the library an awesome place to go. It was a place to pick up a good book, and maybe a new friend.


After J.K. Rowling made her initial Pottermore announcement, I was ecstatic. As I posted on Facebook:

THERE'S GOING TO BE MORE HARRY POTTER!!!!! THERE'S GOING TO BE MORE HARRY POTTER!! Okay, so we don't know what exactly this is going to be yet- pottermore.com- but THERE'S...gasp....GOING...TO BE... MORE..gasp...HARRY...(can't breathe)... POTTER!!!!!!!

As a response to this, I had one childhood respond with:

wow happy for u but i would not go that crazy over harry potter now if randy orton or the rock showed up at my house yes i go that crazy

Well this is why I was so happy. Harry Potter has shaped my life so much that it even led me to my career studies.

Every song and album I downloaded, every concert I went to, I made friends. Now making friends isn’t the easiest thing for me to do. Even as an adult, I am extremely shy no matter where I am. And yet, while it could often be difficult at times to simply hang out and talk to some musicians or fans, the Internet has allowed Wizard Rock fans to keep in touch both in person and from across the world.
I’ve met so many wonderful people, including Alex Carpenter (The Remus Lupins), Matt Magiaccamo (The Whomping Willows), Nefret Salzberg, who I worked so fruitlessly with on wizardrock.org, my great friend from across the sea in Ireland, Amy Snow (Romilda Vane and the Chocolate Cauldrons, WZRD: Your Wizard Rock Station), Jamie Walker (WZRD). Plus, most recently I came to start talking to the awesome Mike Lombardo, who I never would have even heard of had I never gotten late to an ALL CAPS show where I was playing.
These and so many, so many more people, I have met as a result of Harry Potter, and I hope the current immense number grows.
Next Friday the last movie in the series comes out. That Friday I will be at the theater, tie pulled up, robes assembled, wand and sonic screwdriver in their holsters (I ended up buying a pen wand until I can afford a really good one), and I will most certainly be crying my eyes out the entire time.
I’d like to thank all my friends, close are far away, all the rockers and makers of music, all the book publishers and makers of HP merchandise, and most of all, J.K. Rowling, who if not for her, I’d probably be sitting in a corner right now reading John Green—which would still be freaking awesome, but not as much as he is right now.

A good book is an even better place to live

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about books. Not necessarily just the stories, or the paper consumed to make them, the essence of an actual book when you hold one in your hands and smell the glorious odor of that moldy book that’s been sitting on the shelf for the last ten years without somehow being withdrawn from the library’s catalog because “it’s a classic and everybody loves it”—and yet it’s the only copy in the system which, as suggested or previously, has been on Death’s to-do list for ages.
What I’ve been thinking most about books are their worlds. I’ve been reading for a long time, and as a result, have read about a multitude of different worlds, some real, some even more real than those. And as I think of these mighty worlds, I thnk of my own journeys there.
I am currently about halfway through Jasper Fforde’s mystery, Lost in a Good Book—the sequel to The Eyre Affair, in which the book’s main character, Thursday Next, must go inside the story Jane Eyre, in order to catch a serial killer (I think he was serial at least. It’s been a couple months since I read it. Read it for yourself to be sure). How easy it is for Next to enter these magnificent worlds of Bronte and Crusoe, to be transmitted into a better, or worse world than we are in now. That would be the power of reading, as every way-too-into-their-job librarian would say (I am ashamed to say I fit into this category), but to do so as literally as in this book, would be such a dream.
The reason such an idea is on my mind, much more than just my own immersion into Next’s life (wow, grammar check is loving this), it the world I live in currently. The world in which I live in an apartment that is freezing cold, with neighbors who are too loud for their own good and know it, work 2 part-time jobs in order to pay for said apartment and bills for necessities, and have to come home to the news at 10:00, telling me about how not only is the temperature going to drop another 10 degrees tomorrow, but another group of people were gunned down, or held hostage, possibly a war crime happened, etc.
As long as it was after Deathly Hallows, when the government wasn’t trying to hunt people down and butcher their bodies, I would love to just hop into the wizarding world and enjoy life. But then again, I guess such things would find me again there.
I recently spent the last month inquiring about new residences, and have only this weekend given up, and my landlord has promised to be here tomorrow with new heaters for my place, and a possibly promise of ridding the building of the pesky noisemakers. This is definitely a plus, as the thought of moving furniture and boxes currently does not sound like a heaven. Especially since everywhere I look I find higher rent prices than I am paying.
That dream world of a pleasant life, with a full-time job, where I wake up with plenty of time before work to accomplish an entire list’s worth of chores, then come home from work to work on my next writing project, all the while having the time and resources to travel, rock out at wizard rock concerts and conferences, hanging out with friends, finding who I am…A dream world it is. And as much as I try like Amy Pond to choose, the dream world will always be just that. If I don’t like the dream world, I can’t just wake up to find a better reality, and vise versa. The Dream Lord can’t control reality, but he can sure make a dream world terrifying enough to realize you can make the great reality you have even better.
And so, as I have found myself digging across an endless tangent, no sensible point in sight, I stop.
As summer nears, I am in the process of saving up to go to Universal Studios to reach of my dream, being at Hogwarts. Yeah, it’s not the real Hogwarts, but to walk the crudely manufactured halls of the American reproduction, it works for my eyes. So hopefully as I work towards that goal, as people continue to tell me how insane I am for wanting to go to Florida in the summer, I will elaborate.