mDuo13

In the course of the last three days, I've watched all of Maria-sama ga Miteru - Two original series (13 episodes each at 24 minutes), the OVA (5 episodes of 50 minutes) and all 11 episodes of season 4 that have aired thus far (24 minutes each). That's a lot of anime. And it's been a very enjoyable series for me, for several reasons. But as always when I finish with something as engrossing as this most recent marathon, the recoil when I finish is harsh. After such a break from thinking about ordinary matters, I end up reexamining everything with new perspective, often harshly. This time, the hard question I find myself asking is whether I'm actually making progress.

It's hard to tell. There are a lot of things that I have wanted to do for a long time that I've only in the last year or less gotten around to. Unfinished business, I guess. It's hard for me not to think that I'm getting things done there. I think of different pastimes as sort of a checklist, a delineated space to be filled in by experience. Like the Zelda series. Since I took an interest in it, I've completed many of the games in that series, and in fact I feel like I'm making progress because I've both kept up with new additions - Phantom Hourglass, Twilight Princess - while finding time to go back and play older ones (Link to the Past and the original). I still have a ways to go, and it'll be challenging (I'm looking at you, Zelda II), but at some point I want to be able to say, "I've played pretty much the whole Zelda series." Moreso than being able to brag about it, actually, I want the perspective that comes from having experienced all of them. I like to be able to look at something - a book, a game, an anime series - and think to myself not, "I'm familiar with that" but "I've finished that."

The question is always what is on this list. It's ill-defined. Do I really need to play every game with the Zelda name on it? No way, CD-i, I'm not touching you. And what about other things? Xenogears was on the list for a long time - I was introduced to it in sixth grade and didn't finish it until the end of college's junior year. Then there are games, plural, that I've bought but haven't played. In the past I might buy a game, play it, and give up. But until recently, I never bought a game I wanted to play and then didn't start it. I guess it's a matter of doors suddenly opening - finally getting a PS2, finally having enough spending money to pick up whatever games tickled my fancy. So there are a lot of blank spaces that have been added to my checklist. This whole project I've been on for a while, abandoning forums and concentrating on one target at a time, has been my attempt to scratch those off. I even think it's working.

But I also had to wonder: are there things that I'm dismissing because of this project? Are there actually even more important blanks appearing on my checklist that I'm too focused on my present goals to notice? I can't be sure. I'm trying to be reasonable. In an ideal world, I would have the ability to read, watch, and play everything that caught my interest in the slightest. I would still have time for work, for blogging, and for writing. I'd have time for socializing, too. And even beyond all that, I'd need time to do totally different things; to put myself in situation where my thoughts were different and interesting, so that I would have material for writing, too. (In a perfect world, the timestamp on my blogs would reflect not only the time at which I started writing them, but also the time at which I posted them, which is often several hours later than the stated minute.)

But this isn't an ideal world. Not even close. Even if my whole life was like this spring break, where I could wake up knowing there was nothing anyone else was counting on me to do today, and spend 8 hours watching anime, I wouldn't have time for that. But I'm hoping that I would have time for some of them, the most interesting of them. Or, if not the most interesting, the closest. I don't say the "best" because I believe you never know what is best until you've tried it, and sometimes not even then. Things that most people consider average can often touch you in a special way, draw out an ineffable magic that only you can see... well, maybe some rare others can see it, too. So I think that to rely too heavily on ratings, critiques, or reviews for selecting things to do with your time is missing the opportunities to pick out those experiences that are special precisely because no one else sees them; they are unique to oneself. So I don't think there is anything wrong with taking the efficient route of first approaching the things closest at hand, the things that fall into one's path, if they seem interesting. I just hate the feeling of being buried by things that are so close. The only thing I can do is finish what I can and try to be as unambitious as possible about what else to aim at completing.

And this is all leaving out the things I must do, the things without which I wouldn't be satisfied in life, even though they are not as easy to do as pastimes. Yesterday and the day before combined, I wrote nine pages in my notebook as progress in a new story. I even hit a breakthrough in the concept. But today I wrote nothing. I just couldn't see where it was going, and without an ending in mind I don't know what the next step should be. But I need to keep writing to keep my mind set on it, so that the solution will come to me. It's a conundrum.

By the way, this spring break hasn't been nearly the Gensou Sekai I hoped for. I've had a good time, most of it keeping to myself, but plenty of people are just an AIM message away, and it turns out I even have two friends on campus who often want to get dinner together. Don't get me wrong, having this much time to spend as I wish has been a dream come true - I was even able to call my mom without the anxiety that the inevitably long conversation that would ensue would interrupt me. And I did manage to get through one of the longer things on my immediate to-do list. It's just that I haven't felt removed from normal life. Well, maybe a little bit. I didn't realize until I looked at the date for writing this entry, that my break is more than half gone. That may not be entirely a bad thing, especially with the way my A/C is (not) working and my room keeps ending up sweltering compared to even the unattended hallway.

So overall, I guess this was a long, rambling train of thought, with only two certain conclusions: I really enjoyed Maria-sama ga Miteru, and I need to keep playing catch-up a while longer before I know whether or not I'm actually making progress.