Snacks + a drink + nighttime = happiness.
Like Umaru, watching anime or a film ought to have a little ritual to it.
In reality, though, that ritual kept me circling around instead of getting into bed. [I watch in bed.]
In the end, I watched for only forty minutes, from 10<20> to 11<00>.
But after playing basketball today, I got home at 7<20>. I put off showering until 8<30>. I could not decide whether to play games with my classmates, so I spent an hour browsing Bilibili instead. It was 9<00> after I showered, but I still did not get into bed. I watched the beginning of my Red Dead Redemption playthrough and lingered until 10<20>.
I run into this kind of procrastination often. It is undoubtedly a form of resistance.
At the end of the semester before last, one of my roommates had one fewer exam than I did, so I stayed in the dorm alone for three extra days.
On two of those nights [it was exam week, so there were no classes], I turned off the lights and got into bed at seven on the dot to watch Throne of Seal. I watched sixty episodes in two days. That atmosphere is something I could never recreate.
Even now, my viewing experience is still wonderful. There are funny moments and profound ones—and, it must be said, lying down makes it much easier to slip into the experience than watching while seated.
I did not take more pictures in many places, but even in just over forty minutes, the experience was still very good.
Yet the resistance I mentioned earlier is something that needs to be overcome. I sometimes encounter it while working on projects too: once I get into the rhythm, I can enjoy myself, but a kind of compulsion keeps me from taking the first step.
On Compulsion
There is a man who is going to travel somewhere the next day. The night before, he calls women he knows who live there and wants to invite any one of them to dinner. (A sexual invitation.) Only after every one of them has rejected him does he let out a long breath and say, “Now I finally have time to open a bottle of wine and read by myself.”
In fact, he has plenty of time like this, but he cannot refuse the impulse to make those sexual invitations. Only when he encounters an irresistible force can he escape from it.
My experience is that it is enough to stop thinking and simply take the first step. Thinking is the greatest resistance, because all it considers are excuses.
