New Year's resolutions are doomed to fail. But, like any bad decision, we make them anyway only to regret it later when our head is in the toilet/gutter/slammer. I regret letting this blog go to seed almost as much as I regret starting it. Put your name on something, "hype" it (to the extent that linking to it on a by-no-means-web-celeb-status facebook and twitter feed entails "hype") and all of sudden you have to follow up. People are depending on you. Or at least hoping to hear what you have to say about the latest episode of The Real World, or that maybe if you finally write a crappy blog post about the stupid fucking LOST finale you'll stop drunkenly ranting about/crying over/apologizing for the stupid fucking LOST finale out in the real, physical world. I got fewer comments on this blog than I have digits, but those few comments matter, dammit, and I still love TV even if writing about it on a consistent basis is actually impossible now that I live abroad where their idea of quality television is about equal to that of Mexican telenovela.
I think it's fair to say that I, like many Americans with regard to 9/11, never really "processed" the finale of LOST. I haven't read about it, revisited it, or thought about it too hard since it aired, partially out of fear that it wasn't as great as I had hoped and partially because eh, it was alright, why spend too much time thinking on it. But if I did go back to it, I can imagine that I would feel that familiar surge of potential intellectualism that used to burn within me. After that show went dark, so did my passion, for a time. I still consumed TV like a fiend, but it was somehow soulless--searching for a substitute to fill the smoke-monster shaped hole in my brain/heart/ever-lovin'-soul. I haven't found it. But that doesn't mean I'm not healing.
There were a few reasons my blog thrived for a short period of time. First, and most importantly was time. I had time to watch TV, and additionally had time to write about TV, which if you didn't know is surprisingly time consuming, what with all that mental effort spent on something rather silly if you think about it. But I soon succumbed to the darker side of the tube, the side that sucks you in, drains your life-force, and leaves you husked and searching for a fix. Consuming for the sake of consumption was the norm, and eventually you get to a point where you spend so much time watching TV you run out of time to think about what you're watching. And look at the name of this thing. You're here, conceivably, to hear me think about the crap we shove into our eyeballs and earholes. So not thinking is not an option. A second reason for said thriving is the aforementioned LOST/passion factor. Television was clipping along at a fever pitch, with (refer to my very first post here, over 2 years ago) countless masterpieces of the form airing all at the same time, live and uncut so to speak. It was enough to send me spiraling out of control, unable to tell which way was up in a tide of entertainment. For a time, the same tidal wave sustained me, but I've never been a great surfer.
So here I am, two years later, sober (metaphorically, anyway) and sorry--ready for another reboot. I'm all the way in Thailand, and there's a surprising amount of free time to be had over here. And in the spirit of the New Year, I've convinced myself of what a piece of shit I am, why don't you write more you lazy asshole, and do some push-ups while you're at it! I'm watching Carnivale again, slowly and with more careful steps than my past junkie-self, and with a little luck and determination and help from that 12-Step Higher Power I might be able to... think. But first, if you'll excuse me, I should go do some push-ups.
