Listening to: “Too Well” by Reneé Rapp
Reading: Blackouts by Justin Torres
Watching: Lost (2004-2010)
This week’s Listener’s Digest: soft pop, acoustic vibes…still on a Maisie Peters kick
Posts from this week:
🌈 An essay on queerness manifesting in friendships (or, the aroace experience)
Playlists from this week:
🔵 A playlist for when you feel like emotionally lying on the floor
🟡 A playlist for when you need some hope
The timeloop has become unbearable.
It felt like a blessing at first. An opportunity for rest. A chance to recuperate, to sleep, to devour, to burrow. This is how all timeloops begin.
But eventually, the more aware you become, the tighter the loop feels around your throat. Everything starts to look the same, the shine begins dull, and every action you take is meaningless. Hopelessness seeps in. A little bit of fear. The anxiety that nothing will ever matter again. What is the point? What is there to be done? What can we do to make things move forward again?
Then the sun rises on a new day and you do it all once more, hoping beyond hope that tomorrow will be different.
This could be about the snow storm this week. It could be about the winter season in general. It could be about any number of things, honestly. It’s difficult to not feel trapped when you can’t leave your house. The restlessness in my bones grows with each passing day, and while I know I should be savoring this time, I just feel like I’m slowly melting into mush.
In all honesty, it feels reminiscent of lockdown four years ago. Sitting around, trying to maintain a routine, all the while feeling exhausted at the practice of isolation.
I’ve been a professional isolator for my entire life. When I was a kid, the only way I could survive was to shut the door to my bedroom and spend time by myself. I fought hard to be alone, always have. Not necessarily because I don’t enjoy the company of others, but because being alone is more comfortable for me. I’m an intellectual person, I need time to think by myself to make sense of the world and to make sense of myself. I feel freer when I’m alone. I enjoy it.
But forced isolation becomes tedious after a while, even for me. Without the free will of choosing alone time, it feels like a punishment. It feels exhausting. All I want is to go somewhere, anywhere. To move my body, to enter into community, to know that there are other people out there in the world. And though I hate to admit it, I do need people. (Yes, even us introverts like company.) I need connection. And even though I get a lot of that from the internet, from my books and shows, it’s not the same.
Obviously the only way to cope with many days off and lots of free time is to watch a bunch of TV. Though I’m trying to read more this year, I read about 13 books in the first two weeks of the month, and I needed to balance out my reading with some good-old-fashioned television time. And since I’m a professional isolator, it’s only fitting that my side job is professional media-binger.
For those who are curious, here’s a complete list of what I’ve devoured in the past week:
AMC’s The Terror (2018) [Season 1, the only one worth watching]
The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Two Towers (2002)
The Return of the King (2003)
The Making of The Two Towers (2003)
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Lost (2004-2010) [Just part of season 1, I’m not a maniac]
Thankfully, I didn’t watch the extended editions of any of the Middle Earth movies (maybe I should write a post on my experience with LOTR…) but if we do the math, that means I watched over 35 hours of entertainment…oops…
In truth, a lot of these shows go together quite well. I watched most of them by recommendation of one of my good friends (they’re some of her favorite media in the whole world), and so it compelled me to see them all back to back. I saw a lot of threads come together. There’s so many parallels between these stories. Doomed narratives, the differences between history and fiction, the inherent brotherhood of man… I felt like I came face to face with god, honestly. And even now, I’m still thinking about each of these in its own way. I’m stalking the Tumblr tags like it’s 2012. I keep wanting to find a way to write about what I’ve witnessed, to delve into narratives and parallels and all the juicy literary analysis that is waiting to be uncovered.
And I hope to do that soon in other posts. I have so many ideas rattling around in my brain, and I feel inspired in spirit…but as I’ve sat around trying to reflect and focus my words on these and other pieces of art, I just can’t seem to make any words appear on the screen.
It’s less about writer’s block and more about timing. I think certain things come to you at certain points in your life because you can’t handle them at any point before that. Case and point, I first watched The Lord of the Rings in high school, hoping to dive deep into Middle Earth like every other high-fantasy fanatic, and I just couldn’t connect back then. (I’m still trying to connect with it, even after enjoying this weekend watch.) And while this motto is true of consuming media, I think it’s also true when it comes to writing and reflecting. I need to let the thoughts marinate a little. I need to scroll through a few more gifsets of these shows. I need to sit with what I’ve seen. For as much as I want to rush myself, I think that I’ve undergone An Experience and I need to let the words come to me of their own accord.
We live in such a rushed world nowadays that we even struggle to appreciate weeks like this where we have the opportunity to really Do something. To be present. It’s so rare that you get the chance to just exist without expectations for an extended period of time. True, it’s not all fun and games, and inclement weather is a very serious thing, but it’s still a blessing. This whole week has felt transformative even as it’s been suffocating me. I still don’t really know what to do with all of it, but I know I’ve been changed.
Sometimes I think we have to reconnect with ourselves and with the human spirit in order to really appreciate our day to day lives. Our jobs. Our people. Our favorite things. Living in limbo makes you realize what things are important and where you should be spending your time. And consuming nonstop media for a week straight makes you realize that, my god…the world is such a huge place and we are so lucky to be apart of it.