Believe it or not, I used to want to be a serious person, who did serious things, set serious goals and seriously kind of met them. Instead, I seriously stare at the TV for eight hours a day. When you take 12 credits and only go to class two days a week, you have some serious time on your hands to seriously think. And seriously, if you think about it and say seriously"" over and over again, it seriously starts to sound weird. These are the things I seriously thought about this Sunday on my couch, as I reflected on the semester thus far.
When starting my second-to-last semester, I realized I didn't have much time. I was diagnosed with a fatal form of Senioritis and I started to feel a sense of impending doom. I would walk to class and hand out cigarettes to homeless guys and smile, and all I could think about was the fact that I would be gone next year. And with my track record, possibly dead.
""Shit,"" I'd say to myself. ""A year from now, I'll be gone and in hell. I'll probably be stuck in an office, my eyes stinging as they stare at a computer for eight hours a day before I go home to the room in my parents' basement.""
But somehow, while I became more cynical about my future, the things around me started to become beautiful to me again. I didn't mind the annoying construction barring me from Library Mall and making me walk an additional 83 or so steps, which in the past, would have really pissed me off. I didn't mind the loud girl shouting into her cell phone walking up Bascom Hill about needing more money. I almost didn't even care when American Apparel opened and someone decided that wearing shiny lubricated leggings was now, in fact, cool. I just laughed to myself. I just wanted to suck it all in and live a life like a film montage accompanied by a really good song - a collection of short shots of me laughing, looking thoughtfully at the Capitol and holding hands with beautiful homeless men who need cigarettes.
I decided to become serious about my time left, so I made a sort of bucket list. There are things I want to experience in Madison as a student before it all ends. So I decided to get a job. I vowed to work on my writing, sign up for a ceramics class and take up African dancing. I also wanted to hang out in more coffee houses, befriend a modern-day poet, maybe even have a functional healthy relationship with someone who bathes, reads and has nice hair. I wanted to have time to become a real person, read historical fiction while eating tofu and seriously start thinking about the world, life post-graduation and, of course, myself.
Somehow all of these grand intentions on my bucket list turned into a fuckit list. All because I have OnDemand. Besides getting a job, my list had every box unchecked. Instead of finding poets and making sculptures, I lie on my couch and watch people live.
""Californication"" satisfies my sex drive. ""Iron Chef"" makes me almost feel full, though that might be all the Cheez-Its. ""Mad Men"" replaces the historical reading I wanted to do, but I mean, it does takes place in the 60s. ""Dirty Jobs"" helps me think about my career path and I now know I am not cut out to do anything involving the ocean, running, blood, machinery or other people. I've seen this one TLC documentary 13 times about the world's fattest man and this reminds me to go to the SERF or at least watch ""Biggest Loser."" On a lonely day, re-runs of ""Sex and The City"" almost make me feel like I went to lunch with four of my friends, and additionally serves to remind me to write my column without using any rhetorical questions.
At first, when I watched the entire fourth season of ""Weeds"" for the second time, I was mad at myself, but I can never stay mad at me for too long. I decided to go through my drawers and find the list.
It's the only piece of paper in my desk that's unwrinkled and undoodled on because I never bothered looking at it. I'm just too busy these days.
Re-reading it, I began to feel the same enthusiasm I had in September. I felt better about myself, when I saw that ""watching classic movies"" was number 16. I figure, hey, TV was pretty close. This motivated me enough to put on gym shoes, walk to the SERF and run on the treadmill while simultaneously watching ""Jeopardy."" When I got home and made a dinner that didn't need to be microwaved, I seriously felt good. And I decided that this was enough - this semester I could study the art of feeling good - and the good news is I seriously don't even need Adderall to get through this class's material. Just a TV changer and a few small steps in the direction toward a real, serious life.
If you'd like to watch TV with Ashley, provided you bring boxed wine and Cheez-Its, e-mail her at aaspencer@wisc.edu.
