Writelife

Living in a motel is, for me, disruptive. Disorienting. My usual rituals, habits, processes and so on all start then hit roadblocks. That’s an awkward way of saying my usual distractions are absent and I’m therefore tossed into disarray as I try to figure out what to do to pass the time.

There’s writing, of course. But that would make sense, wouldn’t it? I tend to write best when I’m facing a deadline and there is no deadline here. Just stretches of tedium that need filling.

I’m really quite dependent on the Internet. I expect it to be always there. It’s fascinating to see how often I use it, and the things I use it for, now that it’s not available to me. Last night I went to do some work on one of my blogs – this one, Writelife. I wanted to make some design changes.

Nope. No Internet connection. I couldn’t access it. And, yes, I do have it offline and could have worked on it that way but it’s on my other computer, the PC desktop, and that is in a box in a truck somewhere between Edmonton and Fredericton.

Another of my usual distractions is movies on DVD. All my DVDs are also in boxes, in trucks, on the road between Alberta and New Brunswick. So I am left only with television signals – quite a few, actually. So in the last week or so, though I haven’t watched a lot of TV, I’ve seen more than I normally would.

Basically, when I watch TV it’s usually news and some sports and very little else. It’s movies on DVD most of the time for me.

But with this disruption to my routines I’ve been watching a number of other things. I’ve also been watching how people watch TV and that is a helluva lot more fascinating than the shows themselves.

From what I’ve seen, people don’t actually watch TV. They use it as white noise, background, to fill the empty spaces. They’ll look up every so often and watch a scene in a drama, or a skit in a comedy, but soon turn away and get back to whatever else they are doing – laundry, dishes, talking on the phone, whatever.

And this may explain how TV shows are made. As interesting as how people watch TV is how TV shows are made and whether they are made because of the way people watch (half attentively at best) or whether people watch the way they do because of how TV shows are made, which is obsessively formulaic.

I’ve found my own interest in shows wanes after seeing a few episodes because, after a few, I see the formula and know what’s coming and when. Perhaps this is why people can watch TV in a “not-really-watching” way because it doesn’t matter what you might miss. It will generally be the same as the week before. So you can roughly figure it out.

Well, I didn’t really plan to ramble about TV here but it seems I have. The nice thing about blogs is you can do that. In fact, I sometimes think that’s what they were made more.
Tags: Internet, TV, Television, Writing

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