Crawling Out Of The Comfort Zone

I avoid certain movies like the plague.

War movies because they're always emotionally crushing and visually jarring.

Certain romantic comedies because they always feel so false and oversimplified.

Horror movies of a certain calibre because my brain doesn't need any more help imagining strange things lurking the in shadows thank you so very much.

And that was all well and good and I felt fairly OK with that.

But then I started avoiding a lot of other movies and when I tried to work out why, I was embarrassed to find that the explanation that popped up in my head was that they were 'too much work'.

"How much work can it be to sit on your ass and watch a movie?" a person would be justified in asking.

I didn't mean 'work' work but emotional and mental work.

I'd been rewatching old movies in a half-arsed way that allowed the familiar scenes and dialogue to wash over and past me whilst I tried to do other things (eg. write, draw, email).

The problem was I was doing those things half-arsed as well.

Instead of devoting two hours to really paying attention to a movie or really paying attention to a piece of writing or drawing, I was spending two hours not really paying attention to either and coming away feeling irritated and not at all like I had accomplished anything.

Instead of multi-tasking I was multi-tanking.

So as recorded in my New Year's Resolutions I have banned myself from watching movies I have already seen and am only watching new movies.
This has led to a sharp decrease in amount of movies actually watched but the associated sharp decrease in hours staring goggle-eyed and useless at a square of moving colours has been a welcome side effect.

And the movies I have watched so far have already made the experience worth it.

Not all have them have been quality but they've been fresh, they've got my brain moving again and I'm being less of a movie and cinema wuss about the 'hard work' movies.

My brain needs more hard work, it has been slacking off for years.