I'm coming off a high. I'm depressed and resentful to anything that wants anything from me (my children) and I long for another hit. The addiction to which I'm confessing today is the TV show Scandal. I've watched all 3 seasons in about 10 days. Being a devoted reader of Entertainment Weekly for years now, I'm well aware of the buzz. I just hadn't watched it yet. The perk of waiting for something to develop for a few seasons is that when you do take the time to watch it, you get to really binge watch. This concept of binge watching is well documented and very much on the rise in our culture.
What does it mean about us that we like to become temporarily obsessed with things? It's in our heads, the thing we rush through our other commitments to get back to, the thing we resent interruption of. We can't get enough. We need more and more. We race to the end. The crappy thing is, eventually we do reach the end. And though we rush to it, it always seems sudden, like getting off one of those moving sidewalks at the airport. We feel both satisfied (if we like the ending, which I did) and empty. We run through the details over and over in our minds to make sure all the story threads have been tied and we try to settle all the feelings and thoughts the show has riled up. In some senses, it feels like a loss of some sort. Perhaps this is our culture's acceptable way to form attachments and then allow ourselves to grieve? Maybe it's the opposite. I feel embarrassed to admit the emotional cycle I feel in this attachment to story, so maybe others do as well? Or maybe this is the evidence that we don't know how to grieve the real stuff, so we project onto the fantasy.
After about 24 hours, we regain our equilibrium, if we don't rebound immediately to another show. (I landed on Scandal after watching Mindy Project 2 times straight through). This is not specific to TV, as I also do this with books and Tim does this with video games. I particularly love a series of books or movies for this reason. There's more time to attach to the story and more importantly, the characters, so the high lasts longer and runs deeper. I love to be entertained. I love to put my mind in someone else's. But I gotta say, I hate coming down from the high. I feel disoriented and unhappy. So here I am, exposing my addiction and subsequent let down. I think I'm gonna sit in the tension of coming down this time, get outside today and feel fine by the end of the day.
What does it mean about us that we like to become temporarily obsessed with things? It's in our heads, the thing we rush through our other commitments to get back to, the thing we resent interruption of. We can't get enough. We need more and more. We race to the end. The crappy thing is, eventually we do reach the end. And though we rush to it, it always seems sudden, like getting off one of those moving sidewalks at the airport. We feel both satisfied (if we like the ending, which I did) and empty. We run through the details over and over in our minds to make sure all the story threads have been tied and we try to settle all the feelings and thoughts the show has riled up. In some senses, it feels like a loss of some sort. Perhaps this is our culture's acceptable way to form attachments and then allow ourselves to grieve? Maybe it's the opposite. I feel embarrassed to admit the emotional cycle I feel in this attachment to story, so maybe others do as well? Or maybe this is the evidence that we don't know how to grieve the real stuff, so we project onto the fantasy.
After about 24 hours, we regain our equilibrium, if we don't rebound immediately to another show. (I landed on Scandal after watching Mindy Project 2 times straight through). This is not specific to TV, as I also do this with books and Tim does this with video games. I particularly love a series of books or movies for this reason. There's more time to attach to the story and more importantly, the characters, so the high lasts longer and runs deeper. I love to be entertained. I love to put my mind in someone else's. But I gotta say, I hate coming down from the high. I feel disoriented and unhappy. So here I am, exposing my addiction and subsequent let down. I think I'm gonna sit in the tension of coming down this time, get outside today and feel fine by the end of the day.