Me, on the inside………I’ve really mastered the metaphor.
And lest some readers get excited and think I’m actually going to be commenting on the 21st episode of Season Four, sadly…no. The “she” is me. My backlog is somewhere between embarrassing and ridiculous. The Season Four finale will be airing on Thursday, one day from now, and I’ve only covered the first twelve episodes. Also, I’ve only seen the first twelve episodes, because I’ve been very faithful to the promise I made myself to not watch things ahead of time. So yeah, embarrassing and ridiculous covers it, and I feel it deserves some in-blog comment.
First of all, I will be finishing the season, I make that promise. I no longer have any idea how long it will take, not because I predict it taking forever but because the past indicates that I am unpredictable. It’s sad as a blogger, because actually covering the thing your blog centers on is kind of the raison d’etre, y’know? And it sucks as a fan, because…God, I just miss this show so much. Seasons One and Two I was on the edge of my seat, week to week, upset as heck when life circumstances made me miss an episode because back then the CW website didn’t post new episodes for like four whole days or something, and those four days were like tug-in-my-heart torture before I could finally get to see all of the episodes that currently existed in the world for me to see. Season Three was more difficult, just because I no longer had steady internet or tv access. A few different times I’d be late. On one memorable (to me alone, obviously) occasion I was four episodes behind. And it was so awesome because I actually got to have instant gratification for all the twists and turns and got so much new narrative in one shot. Which was especially great because Season Three was programmed so weird you’d have like two months randomly put between two episodes and would lose track of all kinds of things.
But I digress. I’m really enjoying Season Four. I’m not enjoying the way that I’m covering it. I’m really enjoying writing the Reactions. I’m not enjoying the impact it has on my viewing schedule. At all. And there are lessons here for me. 1) don’t fall behind. I waited like a month behind everyone else to start, and I’ve been behind ever since. I just about caught up in January, but then I was behind again. I have to think if I started every week fresh it would be easier to just do the work involved and see the episode, but when there are like five episodes in front of you, it’s so much easier to just not do the work when it feels like you’ve barely chiseled away at the backlog at all. 2) have easy access to the episodes. This one is comparatively out of my hands for money reasons. I don’t have internet in my home. I have network television, but you can really only watch an episode during first airing if you’ve seen the ones leading up to it, and so if there’s a backlog it doesn’t matter if you have access to first airing (man that was mumbly, sorry). So every episode so far has required getting to a coffee shop, and one unbusy enough that the internet doesn’t buffer like crazy and suck every last bit of enjoyment out of it. And have the right kind of mental/emotional energy during business hours (and I’m a night owl, so, not so much), and so forth. I mean, this is a whiney problem and not the sole impediment, but , since I’m talking about lessons learned, one is that I seem to need things to be as easy on myself as I can get them. 3) don’t write Reactions. Obviously the best way to write Reactions. Let me clarify. I like writing them. I think they read well. But obviously they take way too much fricking time, and way back when I got the idea for them part of the point was to make things extemporaneous and convenient. And that just hasn’t been the case. I’m going to finish the season with my current format, but for Season Five I definitely need to switch to something else.
Anyway, I think this has been a pretty nifty Season, but so much time has passed between episodes and I’ve had to self-consciously monitor my reactions so much that I have felt fairly disconnected from it. So that needs to change. So like I said, I’ll finish Season Four, hopefully quickly but who knows, in the Reactions format because asymmetry can drive me crazy, and the next season will be all different.
Lastly, let me apologize for this post, which I can’t help but feel is a bit whiney. Whining that it’s so hard to make the time to capture my (natch) brilliant thoughts on a popular television show puts me uncomfortably in the realm of an oblivious first-worlder, and I get that. But it just seemed more important to give some word of explanation than continue my perpetual AFK-ness. In “real life” I have anxiety issues, and part of them do stem from my being overly ambitious in what I want to do, making it much harder for myself than it needs to be, and then being stressed as heck when it inevitably falls through or falls lackluster. So…anyway, learning curve here. If I can turn being an online-fan into unfun, stress-inducing work, I’m doing myself no favors. So again, sorry if it’s whiney, and thank you so much those of you who are putting up with me. I really want to be back in touch soon.
Best,
mfeyeview
P.S. It kills me that this post follows the blogiversary one.