My experience with the Timewaster Challenge.
If you've been a loyal reader and caught my last article you might have been wondering what I was doing last year.
Personally I like to think that it was a year of rest.
Near the end of 2019 I was going through a really deep depression and having someone to talk to even if the form of a horror blog was something that helped me get up in the morning and be motivated. Once I dug myself out of that hole I managed to have a near manic amount of energy which might be just because I knew that dark chapter had come to a close.
2020 was a year of worry and horrid events that I busied myself with 6 or 7 articles a month as well as 4 edited videos. I was a fucking content network beast. The downside was that for the majority of that year I was heavily burned out always feeling the pressure of the deadline even though I was at a place in my life where I could finally relax.
I didn't really post much anywhere in 2021. Barely on my YT channel and not at all on any of my blogs. I know you're my favorite but not my only child. I am a truck driving whore of content creation. I like to think it was a year of catching up. I started dating, through I'm recently single because I have terrible luck stats. I learned how to sew, (not well, lol) and I took the next step in my career. Which is cooking not journalism I do this for fun, (through feel free to give me money).
Another thing I really feel that I got into last year was films. I had already been on Letterboxd but I joined a film group on Facebook, and began watching more film content. I also took place in the Timewaster Challenge.
If your not on Letterboxd you might not be aware of the challenges that people make. Similar to Readathons on Booktube, Letterboxd creators will create a series of prompts for people to watch over a select period of time. The Timewasters Challenge was what it sounds like. A challenge of 50 films to watch over an indeterminate period of time. I chose a year because I liked the symmetry.
So for lack of a better way to format this article please enjoy a bulleted list of my thoughts and musings.
A BULLETED LIST OF MY THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS:
- Film Frequency: In 2020 I watched films in a stream of consciousness manner. At lease once a month I did a movie review and the rest of the month I might watch whatever catches my eye either that or get drunk and watch mst3k again for comfort. Towards the end of that hell year I began a weekly ritual of pizza, beer, and a movie as a treat for the middle of the week. 2021 I came a lot more prepared. Every week instead of watching some random ass movie I had one preloaded. When I started the timewaster challenge it was really difficult for me to watch more then one film a week and that on top of everything else made me not feel as adventurous as I usually did. After my mom died the one or two extra movies I watched dropped off and I spent a good couple months only watching my timewaster films. I never really thought of myself as a movie buff but the more I've gotten into the hobby the more I started watching films outside of my set ritual. Which culminated in me watching hold on let me check. 16 films in November and 22 films in December. Letterboxd lists that I watched 141 films last year but when you take away the short films and mini-series it's only a little over a hundred. Which at the beginning of the year would have seemed impossible to have imagined.
- Film Selection: I like horror films. What who would have guessed. I review mostly horror properties on this platform and my PFP is a creepy black and white photo of my wearing a hoody from a horror podcast. I don't like to think that my viewing selection lacks variety but I also know on a day to day basis if I'm going to a theater or scrolling through the Leaving Soon tab on Tubi that I'm going to gravitate towards whatever type of horror trash flouts by me on the river on content. While I still managed to watch plenty of horror movies (34% of the List), I also managed to watch at least one of every category on Letterboxd. Except for the "History" tag which I assume is biopics. That makes sense out of the 555 films I've recorded I've seen two "history" films both in 2022.
- Some choice out of my comfort zone films. Include Perfume, a mumblegore film; The Brother from another planet, a Afrofuturist experimental film that is an analogy for the immigration process; Lure, a polish horror comedy musical that involves mermaids, the male gaze, and burlesque; and Barbie in the Nutcracker, which as someone who is not the target audience was actually not bad.
- "Classics": I define a classic as anything that was vaguely pop culture and people talk about. some notable ones are Princess Mononoke, Paprika, Blue Velvet, Donnie Darko, Inglorious Basterds, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Fargo, The Fly, Twister, Parasite, The Blair Witch Project, Kill Bill, and The Craft. Most of these films I wanted to see before hand and I feel like I now know what I'm talking about. See me in two weeks sitting in the gentlemen's club and explaining to you simpletons why the Ballet Mechanique is the perfect example of Dadaist Urban Isolationism.
- Favorite Films: But I'm a Cheerleader, Donnie Darko, Coraline, Twister, The Banana Splits Movie, and Working Girl.
- Most Disappointing: Perfume, The Wicker Man, I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, The Haunting of Sorority Row, The Houses that October Built 2, and She's the Man.
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