Pampering Self

I watched four episodes of Ugly Betty in the last twenty-four hours. This is the first time I've gone to the ABC full episode streaming site to catch up on my fav prime time shows since before NaNo.

I gave up my ever growing list of TV series in the fall of 2006 to honor my own story writing. Of course, it was easier to do at the time having just acquired broadband and WIFI and discovered the availability of many of them to watch on demand online. So I told myself they would be rewards for getting certain things accomplished.

But sometimes I can be the harshest taskmaster! I seldom deemed myself worthy of the reward. And most of the times, including this time, that I slink on over to one of the streaming sites it is because I am too sick to do anything beside veg in front of the screen.

The four episodes I watched were the first four of the season and there are nine more available. New episodes will begin airing again in April. And at that time the fall season episode will possibly be removed.

Next on my agenda would be catching up with Lost.

As if that wasn't enough, trailers they show during the episodes of other available episodes have piqued my interest in Eli Stone and Samantha Who? The same thing happened to me last year when trailers got me interested in Brothers and Sisters but I never let myself start watching them and now the first season is no longer available.

One of the reasons I am such a harsh taskmaster once I do get control over certain aspects of my habits is that I know what happens when I loosen the reins. I have this tendency to hyper-focus compulsively on whatever I have directed my attention to. This was working in a positive way for me during the first round of the 70 Days challenge last summer and for NaNo and for the room do over this January.

But last spring shortly after our libraries closed taking away the thing that had obsessed me since news of the impending closure the previous December, I was surfing blogs and came across some raving about the NBC series Heroes and out of curiosity went to the NBC site and discovered that the whole season was available for streaming and I watched all 22 episodes in four days. The last time I allowed myself to catch up on Lost I watched 12 episodes in two days. Then there was the time when I watched four whole seasons of Gilmore Girls in less than a week off the DVDs my niece loaned me.

Previous to giving up my TV series in 2006 I was chained to the TV schedule and my list of weekly must sees included: Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Six Degrees, Monk, Medium, Dead Zone, The 4000, Desperate Housewives, Star Trek Enterprise, three on Sci Fi channel whose names I can't remember, Friends reruns two to four times per day (there were two channels offering two different episodes each day from different seasons) because I'd discovered Friends only a couple years before that and was obsessive about catching up via reruns. I remember counting twenty weekly stories at the time but I'm having a tough time recalling them all now.

And that doesn't even include the ten hours per week for Oprah and Dr Phil. I cut back on them significantly that season and this past fall I stopped altogether in honor my commitment to the upcoming second round of 70 Days in October and NaNo. I started watching Oprah occasionally since January but not every day.

So you see, I have valid cause for being tough on myself. But sometimes that toughness becomes obsessive itself and I seem to be the last one to notice that it has become unreasonable and as pathological as any of the other change worthy obsessions.