I love television. I have no shame in that statement. I really, unabashedly, just really like TV. Blame it on being a latchkey kid and an only child or whatever, but I grew up watching possibly more TV than I should and I love it. I will re-re-re watch my favorite shows over and over. Thank you DVD! In the prehistoric days of VHS, I would tape so much weirdness, and watch it again and again. I'm surprised if some of my old "X-Files" tapes even still work. I've lived on less money for most of my adult life so I can have cable or satellite in my apartments, and It's made me happy to do that. Normally, my morning routine involved at least a good hour of CNN while I was getting ready. I loved knowing what was going on in the world as I got ready to face it myself.
Now, the problem is I have little access to TV. I have a TV set here in the cave with me, but it's not hooked up to cable. As someone who was a at least one show a night watcher, I've dropped to just two shows a week I keep up on. I just don't care anymore. I don't follow shows I've invested several years worth of watching anymore. It just seems like too much anymore. I think part of it is that several of those shows were ones that Husband and I would watch together. Something we would laugh at or be emotionally involved in, and something we would discuss with our friends. Now that it's just me, I can't make myself be involved anymore. There are times it takes all of my motivation to leave the basement, and go upstairs to watch a show with my parents. Movies are worse. Luckily, I've been working on a throw with some very complicated intarsia on it that I can work on while I watch shows with my parents, and it helps me not have to focus all the way on a show. Somehow, that distance makes it easier on me. It's like a cushion between me and everything else.
Problem number two is that I will see something on TV, something stupid and it makes me hurt. An insurance commercial: I think I will never be able to get the truth about our car insurance out of Husband and now that I'm unemployed and broke I will never have a chance to get a new car. A show set in the future makes me think I could have a child that would be about that age as a main character, but I will never have a child and in the year this show is set I will be old and alone. Anything with any sort of love story makes me angry. I will never find someone who would be attracted to me, so I hate to see anyone else, even fictional people, find someone. A show set in a workplace makes me question why I'm such a screw-up who can't seem to find a decent job. A reality show? I see people who are paid more money than I will ever see in my entire life to be an idiot onscreen.
I get that this is envy. I understand I'm projecting my anger and hurt onto things that are not applicable to how I feel. I know I sound like a stupid emo teenager. I get all this. It just sucks that something that used to make me so happy on such a simple level makes me hurt so bad anymore.
Thank heavens for Netflix. Depressing British dramas? Yes, please. Everyone on those shows seem to be miserable, messed up, and nothing ever ends happily That is exactly what I need, and how I feel.
