Day: August 31, 2013

This American life can be summed up in a series of montages that mostly involve shopping and watching TV. There is other stuff that happens in between–writing, teaching, conversations with the people I love–but if you added up the time of everything I do it would be bookended by large swaths of my life spent doing those two things. If there is one thing in my life that makes me unhappy, it is that. Yet I somehow feel powerless against those dual forces.

TV in particular is one that vexes me. I include video games with the TV time. Games are an interactive form of television watching. Instead of merely observing the action unfold, you are participating and even directing the action as it unfolds. Now I’ve been gaming for near on 33 years, and it is only recently that I’ve felt the time spent gaming actually eroded my ability to be productive. The TV has always nipped and my productivity, yet as if it were a drug, I cannot see myself giving up these shows I watch.

I suppose what I’m getting at here is the lifestyle I live. It needs to get better in some sense. I’m a writer first, but I spend so much time doing the other things that the productivity I have is but a shade of the productivity I could and probably should have. Of course, recognizing problems is somewhat easy. Fixing them is the hard part.

This is going to be a short post, because there isn’t a whole hunk of energy left in the tank.

Half-exhausted, I sat down to write this post and my eyes closed. Look: there they go again. 10 minutes is a lot harder to concentrate for when your body wants to shut down. Before I nod off for good I want to write about the Wire. I decided to incorporate episodes from the series into my SOC curriculum. I’d never studied the film through the social structures and implications. I walked my students through episode one and afterwards reminded them that everything, even street drug sales, has a structure. We’ll be talking about that structure next week. Maybe I am more awake then.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I can’t say that I am surprised that a QB other than the two presumed Jet starters put up good numbers tonight. The battle between Sanchez and Smith overshadows the quality backups this team.