In case it helps anyone else who finds they're struggling with this – especially given the current state of the world – I've been keeping track of my media habits for a long time and tracking when and why I do what I do when.
The main reason for not keeping up with series is just having new struggles that leave me with a lot of subconscious anxiety from lots of real life stress. That means that the time where you'd normally watch new things slowly gets replaced with the comfort of passively half-rewatching something you've seen a billion times. That's because you already know the outcome brings, so it brings more relaxation than watching something that you aren't familiar yet – because you're never anxious about what you're seeing no matter how deeply emotional whatever you're watching makes you.
It's also why sometimes you can get yourself to start a
REALLY good series that a billion people have recommended – and then when you're watching it you just regret not doing so sooner. All that means is that the media relaxation you used to get from the
escapism into large amounts of media was for a different kind of mental relaxation that doesn't provide the same de-stressing mental relaxation for new anxiety. That being said, it's still good to push yourself into it from time to time to get back into the groove of things, and it'll help a lot in getting back into things to know what you are/aren't doing passively.
In my case, I'm still ok watching other people stream new games and things, because the parasocial relationship with those individuals helps to ease back into things by providing some passive social support with the combination of anxiety & isolation. I've done a lot of poking around at why things like game streaming & movie/series reaction channels for things people watched a long time ago blew up so much.
Thanks for always reminding me that this is a thing and that I want to check it out! <4
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