Another super laid back weekend to recharge from another super busy week. Or if not actually that busy but sort of stressful for me personally; work-related and such with so many balls to juggle and the constant fear of dropping some or all of them. As I’m prone to do, I also worried too much over nothing, which of course stressed me out as well.
In a previous life – so it seems – I used to unwind with watching TV shows on a streaming service or DVD. A variety of TV shows and many many episodes. These days I can’t really be bothered to start anything new. Nothing seems to catch my interest and to be fair, if I have to choose between reading a fictional story or watching a fictional story, the book always wins. Sometimes that makes me feel like a bit of an outsider because a lot of people seem to pick the TV over the book and they have things to talk about and I can’t join in because I’m not up to date with any of the new / hip shows.
The impulse to want to belong and the impulse to feel weird (wrong, outcast) if I don’t, is still going strong here. But I notice it much earlier and I’m mostly able to handle it and not beat myself up too much about it. So, Go Me!
But I still often I like to have some moving images on a screen in the background when I’m doing other things like having lunch / dinner (I know: not the most healthy habit) or when I scroll through social media or the news or do random personal admin stuff. Again I know, not the most productive, because multi-tasking is a myth. This desire for a background noise led to me having re-“watched” the complete boxset (DVD, remember those?) of “The West Wing” these past few months. Since that ended I did try some other shows, but nothing felt really interesting to me and I seriously considered to just start over with “The West Wing”. At that point I remembered there used to be a accompanying podcast: “The West Wing Weekly” which ran from 2016 to 2019. I think Netflix started airing the show a bit previously? I hadn’t listened to any of it before and thought that might be a better use of my time, even though I realized multi-tasking while listening works even less.
But I definitely enjoy the “Behind the Scenes” insight from Joshua Malina (Will Bailey) and his chatting with his old friend and co-host Hrishikesh Hirway and of course the occasional guest on the podcast; fellow actors, writers, costume designers and such. I’m only at episode 1.08 so I’ve still got a long way to go. It’s been so interesting to hear how the real political Washington DC reacted to the show back then (25 years ago!). They loved it – at least the Democratic Clinton government did – and the cast and crew quickly got all kind of access and invitations. Joshua quoted John Spencer (Leo McGarry), who often used to say “You wouldn’t get that on a cop show” and he was right. Bless his soul.
But the West Wing cast and crew also early on got in touch with a lot of other public service organisations. And to bring this all full circle (sort of): in one of the episodes so far they mentioned Melissa Fitzgerald (C.J.’s assistant Carol), who after the show had ended moved to D.C. to start working for a Veteran Non-Profit Organisation. I had heard that before, but then I googled her again and imagine my delight when I read in the organisation’s news section that a “Behind the Scenes” book about the TV show and all the good public causes the actors and crew support since had been released. Just days ago!
That will keep me occupied for a while, I guess…
***
Some of the podcast episodes made me think a lot about how the people who work in politics are portrayed in such a good light on this show. On purpose, because this show was also meant as a love letter for public service. We need people who want to do those jobs and I don’t necessarily mean the politicians as such but all the staffers, who work long hours on a governmental wage. Who do this because they want to make their country / the world a better place.
I thought about how these days many people probably don’t have a positive view on people working for any level of any government. The distrust in government and polarization of society has reached such a toxic level. We all know why: Russian and Chinese bots, Elon Musk, the Trump-cult in the US… I thought about all the staffers who might join government if Trump wins. They probably also claim that they want to make the world a better place. The thing is, that their idea of a better place and mine are probably diametrical and that scares me quite a bit.
Ugh, this is a gloomy note to end a post on. Can I turn this around? Less than two weeks till I’m back by the sea for a week. Even less than that till I’ve got time off work. I can’t wait.
Yes I know me being by the sea is only an upside for me and not you reading this, but at least there will be more ocean / beach / dunes content (on my Insta and here) then and that’s hopefully something to look forward to…
