Day: October 23, 2012

I missed my Monday blog.

This was in no way intentional. I actually wrote out the header and prepared to write before   I was distracted by other responsibilities. It is my fault that I never remembered to go back to it. This ends a streak of 899 days of successive writing. I’m considering resetting the numbering as symbol of the failure, but I am still unsure. The fact is, I’ve been slipping a lot lately. That is a sure sign that something is wrong.

I cannot point to anything specific. I know that I’ve spent a foolish amount of many as of late. I am eating more junk food than a human should consume, and I missed the football game this weekend. This means my health is not tip top. Nor do I feel like working on that at the moment.

The fact is, something is not right in Denmark. There is something very off with me as of late and I have no idea what or why it is. Apparently I have a mystery on my hands. I’m trying to solve a disappearance, and the person who is missing is me.

I’ve begun to appreciate BSG and Babylon 5 more over the past few months. I can’t fathom how hard it must be to pull together a series over the course of several years and maintain the continuity, progress the storyline, and keep it good. As I watch shows like Dexter, et al, I wonder if it can be done all that well.

What all of these successful shows have is this sense of continuity. Despite the fact that writers may change (a problem that plagues shows and video games of this manner), the key plot remains strong. BSG and B5 both had clear endings that were hinted at from the first episode and developed throughout. This often was not apparent until the last season. Now shows like Lost, which had a clear ending but no sense of how long the show would last. Those factors contributed to a show that slowed along the way and, on occasion, became desperately confusing and strayed far off the storyline. The same could be said of Buffy or Fringe, the latter of which is ending this season without pursuing huge parts of the plot.

In short, it is tough to tell a story. It is even tougher to tell a story in pieces that stretch across the years. I tip my hat to those who pull it off.