The Critical Asshole: Listening to...

kiyoshimartinez:

My friend, Brian Mackey, recently wrote a column about procrastinating on your Netflix queue. What’s our reasoning for putting off watching films, listening to music and reading books that we’ve either purchased or rented? I’m sure everyone’s had an experience like this:

Unrealized ambition now has a recurring cost.

For me, the all-time record for an unwatched movie was “Rashomon,” which Netflix says I had from July through December 2008.

[…]

By the time I finally watched the DVD, I expected it to change my life. The thing is, few movies, books or albums ever seem to live up to expectations.

That’s especially true at the intersection of a slowly unfolding, subtitled film and our always-on, Twitter-addled attention spans.

While I’m not a Netflix subscriber, I have several DVDs I’ve purchased that are still wrapped in plastic and books whose spines I’ve never cracked (even two by my favorite author, Chuck Palahniuk).

I think Brian’s got a legitimate point about how it’s become harder for me to sit down and commit time to something for several hours at a time. And yet, I can sit in front of my computer for hours and scroll through Twitter, Tumblr and refresh the Drudge Report.

It’s something that I’ve become more and more aware of recently and set out to slowly correct.

I’ve begun to read more during my commute to work. I print out longer articles to read on the Blue Line and keep them in my messenger bag. I’ve subscribed to a few magazines and started making it a point to read them cover-to-cover, starting with the features.

I’m doing this because I have a concern that if I can’t rewire my brain to concentrate on something for an extended period, I may eventually find myself not wanting to learn something that takes time, or enjoy films of a higher intellectual order. That scares me.