There’s a quote I came across while mindlessly browsing Twitter the other day that resonated with me a lot more than most things I see on Twitter do:
“Writing a novel— actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs— is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV’s so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it’s damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing better to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit. -Steve Hely”
Once upon a time, I used to be an extremely productive member of society. I read lots of books, had a good bedtime, and got straight A’s in school.
Then, I turned 12 and got a computer. It was all downhill from there. My life snowballed from reading (and writing) Twilight fanfiction (she says with shame), to watching every episode of the new Doctor Who series in one summer, to the hellhole that was Glee every Tuesday night throughout high school, and the associated fandom…
You can fairly say that some form of media owned my soul throughout my teenage years. I flew eagerly from one thing to the next. And when I say ‘owned my soul’, I mean that pretty literally. If you don’t believe me, take my iPod circa 2011 as proof: I had countless photos and fanart of the Glee cast saved, every other album in iTunes was Glee, and when marching band practices were scheduled for Tuesday nights so that I’d miss it when it aired, I just about cried.
Funny enough, marching band provided a turn for me. I could no longer spend long afternoons and evenings soaking happily in fandom. I had to get up and, you know, put on my coat and do stuff. I had to go outside.
At first this came as quite the shock to my system. I no longer had the time to curate my tumblr as I had been doing before. My queue dried up and I was missing out on lots of notifications. People were reading and writing and drawing and making videos and I wasn’t. I was playing an instrument on a football field, and when I wasn’t doing that, I was doing my homework. It felt like the world was passing me by.
Don’t cry for me, dear reader, because when I was out in the bright world of Friday night football and Tuesday night practices, I made lots of friends and even got myself a gasp boyfriend. It turns out, the real world is kind of cool too.
A lot of us turn to obsession and fandom when our lives get rough. We want solace and escape. If we bury our head in the sand, maybe the problem will go away on its own.
Unfortunately for us, it doesn’t work that way. Spending my days on tumblr, YouTube, fanfiction.net, whatever it was, for me worked as a coping mechanism. I made friends, I broadened my worldview, I figured out my sexuality, all thanks to fandom. Fandom is awesome.
But allowing fandom to consume you, allowing something to become an obsession, can be dangerous for your mental health as well as your general success in life. You can’t spend all your time watching a TV show and sinking deep into the tumblr Discourse about it and still expect to get good grades.
There’s a happy medium. And I like to think I’ve found it, after years of letting my “real life” fall by the wayside in favor of a fictional reality that was way, way better than the one I was living in.
You can still enjoy stuff. You don’t have to delete your tumblr or swear off Netflix. Sometimes, you just need to set up rules for yourself.
Recognizing when something has the potential of taking over your life is the important first step. At that point – before diving headfirst in – is the best time to control yourself. For example, between October 2015 and March 2016 I watched ten seasons of Supernatural. I’m not proud. But I lay my sins out before thee not to be judged, but instead, so that we can all learn from my mistakes.
This fall, I promised myself that I wouldn’t fall into a hole of watching three episodes of TV a day like I did last fall. But I really, really, really wanted to start a new show. So I gave myself a hard and fast rule: I could only watch TV on the weekends, and when I was at the gym. This has actually turned out great for me, because not only have I started watching Buffy, but I get to the gym more than I normally would!
I’m not saying you have to make this kind of rule. There are lots of different ways to make sure you balance your life out. You could promise yourself not to go on tumblr, or whatever your downfall is, until you’ve finished your homework. You could even use apps like Freedom, SelfControl, and StayFocusd to hold yourself accountable by restricting certain sites at certain times.
Another way to make sure that you don’t accidentally find your life taken over by a TV show, or singer, or whatever, is to join clubs and activities. The more “real life” friends you have, the more things you’re involved in that you actually want to do, the more you’ll find you want to strike a balance between your “obsession” and your outside life. This can also result in finding people who love the same thing(s) you love, and then you can have a little in-person fandom community, which is just fun.
Finally, because we allow ourselves to be swallowed in obsession/fandom when we’re unhappy, it can be helpful to examine what it is that’s making you want to spend all your time on this one thing. Are you unhappy or stressed out at school? Are you bored with your friend circle? Whatever the cause, using an obsession as a coping mechanism can be dangerous and will just divert the pain you’re feeling.
To be clear, I love things. I love loving things intensely. I also love my life. I’m not condemning loving things intensely; actually, it’s totally the contrary. You can love things and your life at the same time, and you can do both intensely.
Now excuse me while I go to the gym to watch the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 2 finale.
