I have noticed since leaving my job that I can’t watch television. Not that I ever did watch it much, but I have no patience for commercials or the tidbits of the news that they offer to make you watch later. I never really did care much for either, but since leaving my job, I find them completely disgusting. I barely turn the tv on but once a week. When I see commercials, I think to myself: Do people really want these things? I try to figure out what about the items offered is so wonderful that people would care to have them, to spend money on them, to use them or enjoy them? It doesn’t matter what it is, cars, fast food, toys, department stores, etc. None of it interests me. Why do people like these things? What’s the allure? I’ve never had a real hankering for material possessions aside from books and a few other things that occasionally strike my fancy, a woebegone plant in a supermarket, occasional “pretty baubles” found for a steal at a yard sale. Beyond that, I just don’t care. I find it harder to care every day. Most of my possessions have been gifts or thrift store finds or things I’ve made myself.
Am I a freak? I don’t care about money. Quitting my job was the best thing I ever did, despite the fact that I will need money eventually. So far I haven’t been able to find a job to replace the one I left, but I can’t really bring myself to worry. I don’t want to think about it. Since quitting my job, my life has fallen into an easier rhythm. I’m not stressed all the time. I stay indoors, and I write or read with only occasional forays into the world with my mother. I’d go off tramping in the woods if the weather hadn’t been so fine lately that everyone and their brother is out there already. And they just restocked the canal with fish, so all the fisher people are out there too. Better to wait for a less beautiful day so I can be out there alone. I’ve become even more of a misanthrope since I became unemployed.
I wake in the morning and exercise. I never had time for it before, between working and then trying to do the work that doesn’t pay (ie writing) and the regular burdens of life (ie eating, hygiene, and sleep). So every morning I do some exercises; boy, I never knew how out of shape I was. Maybe it was just the stress that made me all flab-tastic though… I was certainly getting my exercise at Borders. Unlike some of my former coworkers, I was never one to stand around babbling. Depending upon the day, I either start writing or come online. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I come online first thing to update the webserial (only 4 more updates in Chapter 7). Every other day I start writing immediately. Tuesday seems to be my most productive day with anywhere from 5000 to 10000 words, and I average about 20000 words a week. I’ve started updating my word count over on the side bar if you’ve noticed.
I basically watch tv once a week, and who knows how often I’ll watch once Lost is over. heh I’ll miss Lost when it’s done. I don’t know how I feel about V. It’s an intriguing remake, but in the end, that’s all it is. It doesn’t seem to offer anything knew, just capitalizing on the previous series with better science and effects. Lost, despite being suspenseful and shocking, has a good message… I think. It’s a human story… it’s about people trying to live, struggling to find a way to stay good people in a bad situation, a situation which it is completely impossible to make heads or tails of, but which taken in bite sized increments, is not impossible to deal with. It is, in fact, a story about life. Though the setting is fantastical and confusing, the story remains centered on the people, not the affects, not the smoke monster or the time slips. V doesn’t have that. V has the fear and the effects, but I can’t invest myself in the characters and some of them aren’t even believable as real people. V is just watching tv. Lost is seat of your pants, OMG what’s going to happen to these poor people next? I think when Lost is over, I won’t stick around to watch V, as much as I loved the original series. The original series was about people, even if it was completely cheesy. The new series is more about the drama with zero reflection.
What I really hate about late night tv though are the commercials for the news. The news is always bad, and the worse it is, the happier the announcer seems to be. Is it that I’m not “invested in the story?” I don’t want to be, if it comes to that. I don’t want to watch the news and see horrible things done to people with no hope of things getting any better. I don’t want to hear about bombings and war, fires and murders. I don’t want to find out that everyone died, badly, at the end. I want the villains to be caught, the families to be saved, the wars to be over, the dictators to be overthrown, and the “bombing” to have been the result of an accidental gas leak. Even news of natural disasters make me sick any more… just another way for the Religious Right to capitalize on the suffering of people made weak with tragedy, a chance for them to convert by hook or by crook, to dangle food and water over someone’s head and say “jump for Jesus.”
In the end, I would much rather dissociate myself from this reality and simply write. My stories may be grim, but they are people stories. Bad things happen, but my characters rise above them, learn from them, continue to be good people despite the tragedy, try to be even better people to those they love. They continue to reach out to others in ways I can’t any more. I can’t even look at tragedies like the Haiti earthquake. It makes me so angry. I wish I had millions of dollars. I’d go over there and make sure the Pagan Haitians had food and water too. I’d do the same in the other places that have recently had earthquakes and any place else struck by natural disaster like India with the tsunami a couple years ago. It’s important to help people, to reach out to them, but I am poor and helpless, and for all my compassion, useless to do anything to alleviate the pain of victims of earthquakes, wars, terrorism, crime… beyond wishing them well.
I loathe the human race as an amorphous, nebulous thing, though I hate to see people of any creed or race suffer. In my writing, I fight this thing under many guises. I make my people strong and idealistic. They don’t buckle to peer pressure. They may be broken and scarred by the things they’ve seen and done, but they struggle on to overcome their social programming. This world is sick. I tilt at the windmills of our society’s flaws and overcome them in my stories for my peace of mind. If there is one message I think my writing and shows like Lost embody, it’s that we’re all the same. No matter who we are or where we’ve been, we suffer and bleed and strive to be better than we knew we were. We all fight against hate and selfishness, but it’s when we send that fight outside ourselves that we commit crimes against our own. People, look at yourselves and see yourselves for who and what you are. Better yourselves before you try to change the world. Help for the sake of helping, not to strong arm someone into your religion. Dogma never saved anyone. Compassion is the key.
Comments (7)
Compassion truly is the key!
I like this. You’re making an honest effort to distance yourself from the things that control most people’s lives; a good portion of the media, money and whether or not they own it…the small things that regulate so, so much. That, to me, is awesome.
@TheCheshireGrins - It really is. I just wish more people were aware enough to realize forcing your ideas on others “for their own good” isn’t compassion.
@ElusiveSoul - I only hope I won’t have to give it up to get a “real” job in a couple months. I’m almost at the 100,000 mark for my novel. Maybe another 25000 words to go. I think it’s really good, but it all depends upon what the agents/publishers and then the public thinks, eh?
V is okay. The only thing I really like about it are the sci-fi in-jokes. But I’ve had trouble getting into Lost for a while. It’s one of those shows that never makes sense–like a soap opera.
@heidenkind - I hate soaps, but I think it helped with Lost that someone loaned me the first few seasons to watch all together. I’m immersed enough in the show that I can watch the individual episodes now and know what’s going on, and as it gets closer to the finale, things are also making a bit more sense.
V’s not an entirely bad show, nor are some of the other shows popular right now, but Lost is the only one I’ve taken the time to get into or that’s intriguing enough to hold my interest. There’s no mystery in V or several of the other popular shows. You see all the perspectives up front, whereas Lost, you’re in the same boat as the characters. And that is the difference between something being character driven and something being plot driven. Which is not to say a plot driven story is bad, but that a character driven story makes you care more about the characters and their ultimate fate as if they were real people, than a plot driven story where you’re in it basically to get to the end of the story.
I don’t watch Soaps though. Even Charmed was too soap opera-ish to me.
It is difficult to live in an artificial culture such as this one has become. Stepping beyond it at present, you probably see things with a greater clarity and so that would make television appear absurd…which it is, basically.
Keep writing and go with the rhythm of things as they are right now. It seems that life keeps a rhythm of its own, and if we do likewise, it all balances out.
Blessings~
The whole thing you utter is sunny it is the things I think
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