The Way We Consume Media

Our insane habits put on display.

We’ll keep this intro short since this is a pretty long one.

Livia

Hello. I have ADHD. I don’t really ever know how to tell people that, as you can see.

For me, this means a lot of things. Many of which I won’t go into at this time. But the main way this presents itself to me on a daily basis is the way I choose to consume media.

Now, I won’t pretend to be an expert in ADHD, but after a few years of therapy, I am very aware of how it manifests for me. Meaning, if any of this rings true for you, I’m not saying you also have ADHD. I’m not a therapist. I’m just a writer.

One of the biggest revelations I had in my therapy journey is something called ADHD Paralysis. The Attention Deficit Disorder Association describes it as “when a person with ADHD is overwhelmed by their environment or the amount of information given.” This presents itself in three ways: mental, task, and choice. Mental is when you’re overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions — sort of like a sensory overload. Task is when you feel too unmotivated or scared to even start a task. Finally, choice is when you feel like you’re faced with too many choices and the overwhelm prevents you from making a choice. I struggle with all three in varying ways, but today, let’s talk about choice.

As a freelancer, I’m great at making choices because, not to brag, I’m good at my job. I’ve trained and worked in my field for over 6 years, so I’m more than capable of making choices when it comes to my clients and being confident in them. But for some reason when I have to choose a movie for Sebastian and I to watch, it’s almost impossible. I did not study in the art of scrolling through several streaming services to feel confident enough to choose Madame Web and be okay with whatever happens as a result of that choice (by the way, it was awful and we loved every minute).

So, with my therapist’s help in discovering how my brain works, I’ve come up with systems to determine what music, books, and movies I consume. Warning: each system is more insane than the next. So, let’s get into it:

Music

I have never been good at listening to music. I have maybe listened to 10 full albums in my life. I rely on Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist to help me find new songs. And even when I do, I usually only add that one song and never listen to any other music from that artist. I didn’t realize this was odd until Sebastian told me he had over 1,200 songs saved to his Liked Songs playlist on Spotify. Mine was just above 300.

I knew I must be missing out on some good music from artists I already know and it bothered me that if pressed, I could name only a handful of artists that I could see live and know more than 5 songs by heart. So, I decided to change that by going through each artist I have in my Liked Songs playlist alphabetically and listening to their entire discography to fill up my Liked Songs.

I’m not even halfway through and I already bumped my liked songs to 857. I’m rediscovering so many artists that I didn’t realize I was a big fan of. And if anyone’s curious, I was most surprised by how much I loved Anderson Paak and Eric Clapton’s discographies.

Books

As some of you may know, I’m trying to read one book a week this year. I’m still going strong despite the many times I’ve fallen behind the past few weeks.

Picking books is pretty easy for me. I have a list of over 100 books that I’ve compiled from the recommendations from people on YouTube and TikTok. And when I say “compiled” I quite literally mean that I have a list on Google sheets that I add these books to. I like Google Sheets because it’s numbered and I am a very very big user of the random number generator (I use it for everything, even to help me pick out my outfits each day). When it’s time to pick a new book, I use the generator to pick a number and I read that book. It makes it very simple for me, which I love.

The biggest thing I struggle with is deciding when in my day I should read vs. do the other things I want to do. My therapist recommended an app that was a true game changer for my ADHD paralysis. It’s called the Capricious Timer. Ideally I would be able to say to myself, “You can cross-stitch for an hour, but then you have to stop and read 10 pages before you can continue,” then actually do it, but that’s never how it works out. When I hyper fixate on something I enjoy like cross-stitching, it’s hard to tear myself away (I was in a puzzle faze a few years ago and I’d regularly forget to eat dinner because I was just puzzling that damn hard).

I also don’t like giving myself exact time limits because I usually just find myself being distracted by the timer’s countdown. But the Capricious Timer is different because it deals with approximate times. Essentially I just put that I want the timer to run out between 10 minutes and 20 minutes and it randomly chooses a time for me. It’s so good for moving on to a new task or even timing the task you’re doing. I highly recommend it.

Movies

I don’t really remember how I was able to choose movies before Letterboxd. The fact that I can add movies to a watchlist and the app randomizes itself is insanely helpful. The problem is, I do sometimes think that having to watch the first movie that it randomizes is too much pressure (lol I know, I can’t really expand on what I mean here, so don’t ask) but it has a shuffle button that helps me feel less overwhelmed if the first option is not what I really wanted.

I know it sounds exhausting to live in my brain and although sometimes it is, the things I’ve outlined above have really helped me. All the insane little rituals I have to just listen to music, read a book, and watch a movie are just the ways I have to adapt in order to keep myself sane. The irony of that sentence is not lost on me, by the way. And I say all of these things to poke fun at the complicated way I do things but also to hopefully make some of you feel better about the way you live your life. And I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I didn’t seek out a therapist to learn about how my brain functions and adapt the world to help it navigate life better.

So if you take one thing away from my very long section, I hope it’s this: whatever you do to consume art is not important. The fact that you’re consuming it, interacting with it, and sharing it is what matters.

Anthony

For my entire life, I’ve looked forward to being 23. I told myself it was going to be the best year of my life, my golden year, and it truly was. I had a lot of “firsts”: my first full year in Seattle, work anniversary, and promotion. It was also filled with life milestones with Keila. We adopted a dog, went on our first vacation with just the two of us, and got married (she was a sort of a big part of my year). When she asked me how it felt to turn 24 this year, I was speechless. My brain has honestly never thought past 23. How the hell could I top a year like that?

Since putting the best year of my life behind me, I’ve had plenty of time to create realistic expectations for what’s in store for year 24. This year is going to be all about living my life with intention. I can think of no better way to work on this goal than reconsidering and changing the way I spend the majority of my time—consuming media. Let me guide you through my process for navigating the overwhelming amount of movies, books, and music out there.

Movies

In 2022, I watched 574 movies in a competition with Livia to see who could watch the most in a year. I technically won, but at what cost? I watched an average of almost 2 movies a day and still felt like I was fighting a losing battle. I barely watched all of the movies that came out that year and made a tiny dent in the list of classics that my coworkers are floored I’ve never seen before. “But The Godfather Part II is so much better than the first!! You have to watch it.” You know what? I’m gonna pretend they only made one of those—I don’t like your attitude.

I’ll never put myself through watching that many movies again, it’s exhausting and not sustainable. What’s arguably equally as tiring, is the time spent struggling to navigate and find something to watch on any streaming service. With all of these obstacles, how does one reach true “cinephile” status (watching films from a wide variety of genres, languages, and decades) while living life outside of purely watching movies constantly? I have no idea but here is my current solution:

When I decide I have enough time to watch a movie, I’ll go straight to my watchlist on Letterboxd. I sort by “When added, earliest first”, otherwise I’ll only watch the movies I added recently. Then, I’ll go one by one to see if they’re on a streaming service I haven’t used in a while. If a friend, family, or coworker recommends something to me, I typically toss that in and prioritize it so I can have something to talk about with them. This method works on two different levels. First, I typically get a good rotation of streaming services so it feels like I’m not wasting any money. Second, these are all random movies I decided that I wanted to watch at some point in my life. It makes me feel accomplished that I’m living the life that my younger self imagined I’d be living. Sometimes, I struggle with finding a movie that fits my current mood I’m in but I’ve never been disappointed in forcing myself to stick with whatever my watchlist tells me to watch.

Books

One of my favorite public library resources is using the Libby app to check out eBooks for my Kindle. It’s what got me out of my reading slump last year and it makes me feel good about myself. As with many of my obsessions, I quickly overdid it and burned out a few weeks in. I stopped reading for about 6 months. It was re-reading Dune for the release of Part 2 that got me out of it. Since then, I’ve been reading consistently, with my new and improved system.

When I finish a book, I’ll typically wait a few days before starting another. I use this time to decide whether I’ll read from my Kindle, an audiobook (is it still “reading” if it’s an audiobook?), or a physical book. I also decide on a different genre than the one I just read. I have only been bouncing between non-fiction and fiction but would like to eventually be more specific in my choices (romance to sci-fi to memoirs and so on). I’ve read 13 books so far this year which is huge for me, I think I’ll stick with this method for a while.

Music

When I started my full-time job, I realized I had a unique opportunity to revolutionize the way I listen to and discover music. Before this change, I only had one playlist (my Liked Songs) that I listened to on shuffle. I have accumulated around 800 songs since first joining Spotify in 2014. My 9-5 became music discovery time.

I started listening to my Discover Weekly religiously, doing deep dives into artists I like, and cataloging all the new songs I found in monthly playlists. I even went so far as to try using YouTube music and the Spotify AI DJ. All of these methods introduced me to so many interesting artists I would have never found without being intentional with my downtime at work.

As you can tell, the overall theme for these shifts has been about finding the right balance. I’ve spent too much time over the past couple of years wishing I was watching more movies, reading more books, listening to more music. These rotations of genres and methods of consuming have kept me from wanting more. I no longer expect too much from the little free time I have. I don’t feel guilty for not spending every waking moment consuming something. This is what I’ve found that works for me, for now. It’ll definitely change but as long as I find a good balance and enjoy the things I do make time for, I’ll be all right.

Recommendations

Livia recommends The Intervention

Available on Kanopy

I have a rotation of movies that I rewatch regularly to comfort me and this is one of them. It used to be on Prime Video but was taken off and I couldn’t find it anywhere. Then, as I was scrolling Kanopy (free with a library card) I gasped when I saw The Intervention in the “Recently Added” section. I love this movie. One of my favorite subgenres is “life-long friends getting together again in one big ass house” and this might be my all-time favorite movie from that subgenre.

It’s written and directed by Clea Duvall who also stars among many of her actual friends. It’s a drama-comedy about what happens when you try to intervene in your friend’s failing marriage. It’s so simple, but the characters feel real and lived in and the writing is sharp and well contained. I love this movie and I hope you do too.

Anthony recommends Sometimes I Think About Dying

Available on Kanopy

I often add movies to my wishlist that premiere during film festivals but don’t get picked up by a major distributor. These quickly leave my brain due to this fact and because I’m still working on the movies I added to my Letterboxd watchlist back in 2019. This movie popped up on my radar again a few weeks ago after seeing that it was on Kanopy. I watched it immediately.

The most powerful viewing experience you can have is when the themes explored by a movie resonate with you. It reflects something that you’ve been feeling or experiencing in your world. Watching this movie did that for me and made me want to watch it again almost immediately. I was blown away by how simple yet powerful the visuals were. I won’t give anything away but I hope you find the time to watch this. Please let me know, I’m dying to talk to someone about it.