No, this isn't a tabloid story or saga on the Dr. Phil show. I'm admitting a guilty pleasure, right up there with mystery novels and Kraft Dinner (you 'mericans call it Mac & Cheese) with wieners: watching Dr. Phil. Right now I'm on the couch and just reveling in all that mud being thrown, enjoying with the schadenfreude of the voyeur. I think I've said it before: it's got all the titillation of Jerry Springer but with higher production values and the gloss of the upper middle class with more SUV's than life skills. Notice how none of the Phil guests ever seem to live in low end housing whereas most of the Maurys or Jerrys sound as if they are one step removed from a cardboard box.
Come on, Dr. Phil is voyeurism in the guise of therapy. Reality tv is just a less scripted form of soap opera. It's basically gossip. Why is that so pleasurable? Does it take the focus off our own problems?
Guilty pleasures like gossip, junk food, or trash novels are ok in small amounts, but I can go overboard with them way too easily. I've been reading a ton of mystery novels. I've been running from the fear, the dread that...? The best I can say is it's a fear of not being enough. I met the most recent challenges but it never feels like enough. That's the time when I feel the most like eating, giving up, flaking out in front of the squawk box and turning off my brain. And yet when I can confront that fear, after a few moments of terror, I feel so much more alive and capable. It's been a difficult month, and I feel as if I'm just coming out the other side but I'm still frightened. I rented a studio almost 3 weeks ago, and after moving most of my junk in, turned the key and left. Haven't been back since. It's all part of the package.
Hey, I don't understand this stuff, I just write it down.
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