I haven’t really kept up on television since the return, post-strike. I could say it is because it can be a pain to track everything down online, not having an active cable/television setup right now, or because I’ve been busy. But I think the reality is, I’ve only watched the shows that have storylines that don’t hit too close to home, things that I can watch and enjoy and even become emotionally invested in without feeling like it’s treading too close to still-raw pain. So perhaps it’s not a surprise that I’ve not watched Grey’s Anatomy or House, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, none of it since they’ve returned to television. In fact, much like my attitude towards the end of Gaiman’s Sandman, I haven’t even watched the finale of Torchwood – if I don’t watch it, it doesn’t happen. Even if I know about it.
And I do know about all the storylines – I am keeping up via Television Without Pity and other sites. I’m reading recaps, tracking fan responses, and I know what’s going on. But there’s something about reading it through a computer screen rather than watching that allows a bit of a gap, a bit of distance – an ability to not feel, or at least not feel as strongly as I might otherwise. It’s a good thing, I think – except when I think that it’s a bad thing. Which is most of the time.
It’s hard not to note the amount of my interaction with the world that is mediated by the computer. The screen as a protective device; I can think about what I want to say, be eloquent, be removed. Interaction on my own terms, delayed live, rather than immediate. A slight disengagement. I can say things over that IM window that might never be said, admitted, in any sort of real time actual space place. And it worries me – shouldn’t I be forming more attachments out in that real time actual space world, rather than sinking further into the digital virtual?
I am most aware of how much my world has shrunk down on itself after experiencing it expand, and I can’t find the healthy balance between the two, between being so small that the world stops at the edge of bed and cats, and so large I can’t contain it all within my heart and hands.