As always, let’s start with the numbers …

Physical Comics Read: 2 (0/2)
Digital Comics Read: 0 (469/471)
Trade Paperbacks/Graphic Novels Read: 10 (16/41)
Books Read: 2 (119/130)
Movies Watched: 0 (115/123)
TV Seasons Completed: 4 (83/90)
TV Shows Completed: 0 (35/37)
Podcast Episodes Remaining: 213

Well, at least the podcast numbers went down?

I knocked quite a bit of those episodes out while also handling new episodes of my favorite shows, which was pretty cool this month. As I write this, though, I think about how my listening to podcasts tends to coincide with activity that doesn’t require a lot of concentration or even thought. Like, I rarely, if ever listen to podcasts on my planning period; however, I will listen to them while cleaning the bathroom. And yet there are times when I find them more entertaining and interesting than the favorite television shows I watch on the regular. Yet I don’t sit down and just listen to a podcast at night the way I read a book or watch television every night.

I don’t know why that is. Maybe part of it comes from being raised that “having your headphones on is rude”, or really that having your own entertainment when you’re around other people is “rude.” But that’s a whole other line of discussion about shit I should have gotten over and didn’t. I will say that I find an irony in the fact that there’s community around podcasting or listening to podcasts (my wife and I, for instance, listen to a couple of the same shows) and yet the listening to a podcast is mostly a solitary experience.

But that’s just one pile. There are others, and they fluctuate, both physically and on this list. Lately it seems like there are five or six piles of books in various places in my house. The comics are pretty much put away and the movies are on a shelf, but the piles of stuff that I either have to read through or sift through are very out in the open. And sometimes, I don’t know what I should actually do with them. That is when I can find the time and the focus I need in order to do them.

Focus seems to be an issue with me, at least in the last few days. There’s a pile of stuff to take care of and time marches on whether I get to it or not. And it always seems like it’s the same stuff or I’m talking about the same stuff. Even in this post, I wonder how much of this is pretty much a rerun from the last few months, another testament to whatever rut I have gotten myself in.

Then again, maybe it’s not a rut. I was recently reading a couple of books about hoarding (for research mostly) and while I can relate to the way “cleaning out” projects can go, this is kind of a slower burn because I’m actually taking the time to read through/watch/listen to those things that were sitting “unused.” It’s good to remind myself of that every once in a while.