I love Netflix. I love Daredevil, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Gotham, The Flash, Jessica Jones, Sense8 and above all I LOVE being able to watch Gilmore Girls to my hearts delight.
But I also love books. Actually, I am obsessed with books. New book smell, old book smell, the feel of pages in my fingers, flipping a page, folding a page (I know scandalous: a librarian who FOLDS PAGES), using post-it notes and a fresh yellow highlighter and pen for annotating, I love classic and contemporary, I love reading outside and inside. I think one time I read for over eight hours straight. I have at least 300 books in my bedroom and I just had to install some extra bookshelves (which are more expensive than you might think).
I have all these amazing books, and yet…I spend so much time binge watching Netflix and it makes me feel guilty.
Guilty that I’m staring at a screen and not reading. Guilty that I’m ignoring my books. Guilty that I’m not writing or doing anything productive. I used to ask myself: “if I wasn’t a reader what would I do with all my time?” and my answer would be “oh just watching television and wasting my time.”
But the thing is, I enjoy watching Netflix. I get sucked into the plot, the characters, and if it’s really well done I end up analyzing every episode and movie I watch (fun fact: horror movies are one of the best genres to analyze because they usually always carry an underlying cultural message.)
But I shouldn’t feel guilty: while I may spend 2-3 (okay let’s be honest: 2-4) hours a day watching Netflix I am also reading about 100 to 200 pages a day.
So I am done. You hear me, world? I am done feeling guilty. So what if I am watching Netflix? I’m enjoying it. As long as I balance my Netflix time with my reading time, why should I feel guilty?
I don’t get the same sense of joy and ecstasy watching Netflix that I do when I am reading an amazing book. But I get inspired. And isn’t getting inspired the point of doing things? You take what passes across your eyes, take what sets your neurons a blazing, and run with it, hopefully coming up with your own analyses, thoughts and ideas.
I love the rustle of pages, I hate the concept of e-books (even though they are quite helpful in saving money when that syllabus with a million books comes out), I love writing, and I want to be DOING SOMETHING. But at the same time, I just love me a good binge watch. What’s in my queue right now?
The Fundamentals of Caring. Arrow. The 100. Firefly. How to Get Away With Murder. Cruel Intentions. Clockwork Orange. Sherlock.
What’s on my bookshelves? Over 300 books.
As a great teacher once said, if monks had Netflix when they were illuminating manuscripts all those hundreds of years ago, they would have indulged as well.
So let the binge watching begin. Followed by hours of sitting outside on the hammock reading and reading and reading.
