Entertainment

Day 12 Theme: Entertainment (Student led day by Jess and Olga)

(ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?! has just been playing in my head on repeat all day.)

We went to the museum of moving pictures. Which had an entrance and lobby that looked like an apple store. It was so white. So clean. I love it. I could live in a house like that. I kind of like both extremes though. My room currently has every piece of "art" that I find and like displayed, and has a million clashing patterns and colors, and feels very lived in. I like the onslaught of stuff or the lack of stuff for home decor.

While exploring the museum I was just struck by how much really goes into movies. It's not just actors and directors and people filming. It's everything. It's soundtracks, angles, costume departments, make up, and hair. It's about the color and the style and the right line in the right tone. Everything is so elaborate just to make something fake seem real. Entertainment is better when it's authentic, nobody wants to watch bad acting in cheap costumes. It's a billion dollar industry. It's not like we're tricked into it as consumers. We pay money for the stuff. We want to be entertained. We can't stand to be bored --to not be engaged.

One of the things we talked about in the morning was how entertainment fits into our relationship with God. I think it definitely distracts in multiple ways. I think the lack of boredom means we can't stand to be alone with our thoughts, and at least for me, that makes it difficult to focus on God. Or even to focus on conversations I have with people. I get bored within two seconds of stories sometimes. I want to streamline it. I tell my friends, "give me the 30 second version, I'm in a rush." It takes away from the relationship. It's exactly what Sherry Turkle was talking about in Reclaiming Conversation. I'm so much more aware of how I have the attention span of a goldfish, now that I've read that book. I need entertainment just as much as the next person. One thing I like to do sometimes is pretend that cell phones are actually just bricks. If I'm not using my phone for actual communication then I'm not getting a lot out of it. It's like sitting holding a brick and staring at it for a certain amount of time, which makes me spend far less time doing that. If I'm looking at dumb celebrity news on snapchat for over an hour then that just seems idiotic. I'm just being entertained. I'm not learning, not connecting, not laughing. Just learning mind numbing facts about people I've never met. Sure entertainment does have it's place. For example, I love movies. I've watched a lot of movies. But movies actually do a lot for me. They help me understand my own life in different ways. I can draw parallels between myself and characters, and watch as plot lines unfold. I can watch movies with people, mainly my dad and I, we both love to watch movies. And I'm perfectly content doing that for a whole day. And they teach me things about how I want to live or not live, or give me ideas for things I want to go do one day. Or if I can't do those things I can live vicariously by watching the movie. I just think they're all together awesome if they're well made.

[I'm updating this back in Spokane. We've already had the first day of our new classes]

I consider myself the "entertaining one" in my friend group. I sometimes talk with another friend who's also the entertaining one in a different group of people, and we both find a lot of similarities in our lives. It's fun to be the entertaining one. People want you around. It makes me feel admired and loved, and it's kind of hard to not want that. But it's exhausting. It's on you to make sure that group get togethers are entertaining. It's on you to tell the right joke at the right time. It's not always easy and effortless. Sometimes it's a lot of work. When I'm in a terrible mood I tend to hide. It's hard to be entertainment when you just don't have any good things to say. It's hard to be authentic with the people around you if you feel they need you to be one version of yourself. I like bringing joy to people. I like uplifting my friends. But it's also super important for me to give it up every once in a while. I have to trust that they're still going to be my friend even if I don't entertain them. That's the scary part. One thing I've really completely let go of while I was in New York is that pressure to be entertaining. I spent the most of the time very pensive, just introspecting and trying to make sense of everything. I felt no pressure to be anybody. There was no need to entertain anybody. And that was the most amazing feeling. I have yet to try that back here at home, but I'll give it a shot. I think I put way more pressure on myself to entertain my friends then I ever need to.

In my consumer behavior class, our professor is very entertaining. He knows how to tell jokes on just about every powerpoint slide. The whole class is laughing for a lot of the time. I just kept thinking about this idea of higher education turning into something that has to sell to students. We can pick a different school like we're shopping, and we can write reviews about classes if we don't like them. A lot of my classes have adapted into a form of entertainment. I'm not sure if that helps us or not. Maybe I remember the information better when it's presented with humor, but then again maybe not. Maybe I still tune out the stuff that's uninteresting. I have a lot of fun in that class. Which is awesome, but I'm not entirely sure that fun is the goal. And I don't think this class in particular should change. It's a really great class, and it's entertaining. But I think a lot of classes are on this trend to being forms of entertainment. And I don't think that's good for us. I don't think that's what our generation needs. I think we should to learn how to not need entertainment. We should develop the skills to focus for longer periods of time. We should focus on people when their talking. I think an over saturation of entertainment causes worse listening skills and less empathy. It's a huge concern. And it's easy to ignore.

It's been really easy to start watching Netflix again. I'm not reading as much as I wanted to this semester. I'm watching TV because the characters distract me from my own personal problems. I don't want to think about my feelings or make informed decisions based on them. I want to make myself busy by barely scooting by. I have zero free time. But that's not true. I just spend it on the wrong things.

How do we change? How do we kick these bad habits? I have music and tv on the TV set upstairs, on my computer, and on my phone. I can be entertained at any second, I carry it around with me. The other night I was going to watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother before I fell asleep, so I went to pull if up and it said "there are too many users on your account right now". And my response was "oh thank god". The option was taken away from me and I could just sleep. There was nothing else to do. That's one way to do it. Take away the option. Delete the app. Leave your computer in your backpack. That's something we talked about on entertainment day. To limit your options means you don't need the discipline to tell yourself not to. I've started trying this in some small ways and it works really well. I'd have to go out of my way to do something I've already told myself I shouldn't be doing. I've also started just adding events to my phone for my free time. For example, 5:00 it reminds me to read for class. Then when I get home, it's not like I can do anything, I can do the next thing that's in my schedule to get done.

Anyway. To recap. Entertainment is a huge part of my life. Whether I am entertainment or I'm a consumer of entertainment. And I think I should keep a careful watch on that. To limit entertainment when it takes over, and make sure it's only adding to my life and not sucking it away.