Anticipation

As a kid, I remember waiting with bated breath for fall. I was no fan of school, that’s to be sure, but I was desperate for the start of the fall cartoons and for the fall television slate. You see, in the ‘80s the fall season was when the new cartoons would debut as well as new seasons of returning cartoons. At night you’d get the new additions to the television lineup and, for me, the new seasons of some horror shows like Tales from the Darkside, Monsters, Friday the 13th – the series, and others. For someone who hated school, these were the only good aspects of the arrival of September. It got so that I’d wait anxiously for these shows and got terribly excited when the commercials would air for the specials that introduced the new fall schedules. 

It was the anticipation that kept me going and drove my interest. 

We hear it all the time, oh, it’s the anticipation, not the getting of a thing, and I think that’s sorta crap. I don’t buy it. I do buy that it’s the anticipation that makes the getting so much more enjoyable. 

You don’t enjoy a meal as much as you do if you’re waiting a whole day or longer to get it. That makes it special. It makes it different than the rest. 

Think of anything you have wanted in life, anything you have felt that you had to have or had to do and I guarantee that part of the joy you derived from it all was in the anticipation of it. 

Like a concert, a movie, a convention, a date, or whatever else the heart desires, anticipation is as much a part of the equation as the end result. 

So then you look at the modern era where attention spans are pulled in a dozen directions at once, where we fear we’re missing out on SOMETHING any time we commit to do ANYTHING, and where content is dumped into the world unceremoniously like so much slop into a trough. And we wonder why nothing impacts us the way it used to. 

It’s because we’re rarely afforded the ability to look forward to something. 

It’s a product of stretching ourselves too thin, of enslaving ourselves to social networks, of lashing ourselves to the masts of public opinion, and we cheat ourselves of slowing down enough to look forward to something. We are always chasing and never catching. OH, this came out, let me consume it in one night and then move on. 

We don’t digest and contemplate or ruminate, no, we move on to the next like sharks. 

Then there’s the fact that media companies dump SO much content out without much fanfare or build up and they WANT us to gobble everything up and keep eating, so they drop more content into the trough and insist it’s the next viral sensation. 

And some of it is good stuff. 

Movies, special, shows. 

Some of it is great. 

But it has all of a week or weekend to make an impact, to move the needle, before it’s decided whether its a failure or success. 

There’s no patience. 

No build. 

It’s release and kill. 

Release and kill. 

Release and kill. 

And with that sort of sentiment, and the need to ‘keep up with the Douches’ we never let ourselves savor things or enjoy them because we want to be in on the zeitgeist. 

We want to be in on the joke. 

Movies used to play theaters for months, not just a few weeks only to be dumped like unwanted puppies on home release as they try to recoup whatever money they can. 

Even home media doesn’t have much life as companies decide that, darn it, if they make physical media then they have to spend money and that means less millions in their pockets. It’s all about money. 

Art is dead because it rarely makes money and money is what this world is about. 

Money and consumption. 

Eat. 

Eat. 

Eat. 

I know my wife and I are behind on SEVERAL shows and movies we were desperate to see and it’s a helpless feeling knowing that we can only get further behind as more and more is released. 

And do we want less content?

No, of course not. 

I certainly don’t. 

I just want the things people work so hard on to matter.
I want it to get the attention it deserves. 

I want it to be supported. 

One reason I never kept chasing the apple of a publisher for my writing was that I didn’t want to get a book out only to have it supported for a few weeks then shelved as they moved on to their next project and mine languished. 

I wish I’d have found a publisher but at least I know that I have supported these books through and through as much as I could. 

I miss the anticipation that came with waiting for a big movie or a film I wanted to see. I miss watching the proverbial clock as the thing I wanted to experience slowly came closer. 

I miss it because we are cheating ourselves of joy, and that’s a drag. 

It’s like you see with the holidays. 

Summer isn’t even over and Halloween has been in full retail swing for a month. 

Halloween won’t be over and Christmas will be here. 

 We can’t enjoy what’s in front of us because we’re already looking ahead at the next thing we want to make sure not to miss. 

And that’s a crummy way to live, man. 

…c…

The Haunted Bookstore