Just Pick One Thing

In a quest to find silver linings in the middle of a pandemic, I was thinking the other day about how glad I am that I'm finally getting around to listening to new music.

The problem is, I had this thought while listening to an album and that led to other thoughts about other things and before I knew it, the album was over and I couldn't remember anything about it.

Instantly, I started to think about how much I'm actually absorbing during this time.

I tried to think about whole podcast seasons I started and finished. Movies I'd watched. Three seasons worth of boring German television.

In my Google Drive marked "Delete This If I Die," there's an entire list of all the culture I take in within a given year, and as you can imagine, 2020 is already twice as long as 2019, but how much of all that has stayed with me and how much breezed by because my attention span is as short as its ever been?

Part of me started to think I should go back and re-watch or re-listen to some of what I'd marked down, bu that felt so overwhelming I had to sit down right in the middle of my kitchen and scream until someone brought me a cheese plate.

Small victories are everything right now, and losing one of those victories felt like it would be enough to send me spiraling, so I tried to see if I could make peace with the fact that somehow I spent four hours listening to a podcast about a Canadian serial killer and immediately forgot everything about it--and Canada, for that matter.

What I came up with is this--

I'm going to try and take one thing from every piece of culture I engage with for as long as this quarantine goes on--and I'm not talking Q-Chapter 1: The Social Distancing. I'm talking the whooooole thing.

From now on, if I listen to an album, I'm going to try and really listen to one song that seems to be resonating with me.

If I'm watching a movie, I'm going to try and pick out one scene or one performance or moment that sticks with me.

Books or things I read online?  I'm going to pick one bit of information or insight I can say I took away from the reading.

Television shows?  At least one episode that I thought was a stand-out, if any.

It's really just a way of letting myself off the hook.  My focus is not coming back anytime soon, and whatever concentration I have left needs to go to important stuff, like remembering to shower and how to use a can opener.

That means I need to lower the bar I set for myself when it comes to processing what kind of entertainment I take in.

As someone who used to be able to recite entire movies from memory, it started to bother me when I couldn't do that anymore, despite the fact that I only used to watch the same three movies over and over again, and now I watch three every two days.

When you're a completist, you're used to letting yourself down, but that's just one thing I need to learn to let go of if I want to make it out of this with my sanity intact.

I started applying this new way of experiencing things a few days ago, and I already feel way less anxious.

Last night I put an album on while I was doing some writing, and midway through it, a song caught my ear, and I took a break and really listened to it, but after that, I just let the music play in the background, telling myself that sometimes even background culture can have a positive affect, particularly music.

Now I even find myself remembering more because the pressure to remember everything is gone.

I wouldn't say quarantine is teaching me how to be a better person, but it is giving me permission to spend three whole days listening to the Ring Cycle then chucking it out of my head like forgotten lettuce in the crisper without feeling guilty about it.

Small victories, right?