What I may not be so forthcoming about is the feeling that all during these past few months I've generally felt an overall depreciation in being able to think clearly, keep track of time, and even short-term memory seems to be affected.
Of course, add to this, a general feeling of a shift in desires and goals such as I identify in this recent post and well, I kind of don't know if I should be a little bit worried.
Here's one of my main concerns which culminated over the past 48 hours or so. And it takes into account the above mentioned posts.
So let me begin by pointing out the post from a few days ago where I talk about the TV show Shameless and how I started a binge. When I wrote this, just a few days ago, I thought I had started a show that I had never seen before. Even though the show ran on Showtime from 2011 to 2021, I knew I never had, or thought I never had, a Showtime subscription, so I thought I never saw this show, so I eagerly began watching and for the first three to four nights of watching this show over the past week, through the first three or four seasons, I thought I was watching a show I had never seen before. Now admittedly I recognized several of the actors, of course. William H. Macy, primarily, Joan Cusack, of course. And many of the others, but every time I turn the TV on to watch this I watched episode after episode as if it were a first run through.
But I will admit that there were a few things that I found funny. Like for instance, in some cases, it seemed I could figure out where the plot was going to go to even though, if you know this show at all, the plot can get quite twisted and crazy. There were even a few instances where I even knew what the character was going to say in response to what their on-scene character with them was saying to them. When these odd things happened I just chucked it up to my experience in watching shows similar to this and that the writers were following a tried-and-true formula and I had guests correctly.
But then, I guess it was right around the end of season 4 or so, everything started to change. All of a sudden every single scene became oh so familiar. I even knew what was going to happen next in the upcoming scene. And then it wasn't before long that I realize that yes indeed at least I could attest that as I started watching through the first part of the fifth season I had definitely seen this all before. Now I couldn't totally predict exactly what was going to happen in the overall plot of the entire season but in small plot points I could make some calls based on what I could recollect and of course just like a lot of other resurrected memories that I've been resurrecting from blackouts for years now, each time a scene played I could recall it all very clearly as it played before me. And this kept going through the next two seasons up to about the beginning of season seven where I remember the very beginning of the season opener but after that things become unfamiliar once again.
All right, I guess it's no biggie that I must have watched a couple seasons of a show that's been around for years and kind of forgot about it. I mean, I guess that happens. But how did I not remember anything during the hours and hours of watching these characters in the family going through that house and all the situations they were going through even though they were unfamiliar in the first few seasons which I obviously hadn't seen or if I had seen them I certainly didn't remember them at all, but I didn't put two and two together and remember the scenes of the show that I had totally seen and was able to fully recall in seasons 5 and 6 primarily?
And there's also the question of, well, when did I see these seasons?
So I couldn't find any evidence of that answer. I had hoped that I would have blogged about it but no such luck, at least I didn't find any mention of it so far I'd have to keep digging, or if you want to go digging we'd probably be talking sometime around the summer or fall of 2016. I say that time. Since here's what I think happened.
Netflix and maybe Amazon Prime and maybe other streamers, but certainly Netflix, will often put shows that were on premium cable channels like showtime and HBO on their channel for viewers to watch, ostensibly of course, to increase their own subscription numbers but probably also in concert with those premium cable channels in order to get crossover subscriptions for them. If I remember correctly, back in the 2010s, Netflix would frequently offer limited seasons of a show that were in current production up to the start of a new season of that current show.
Example, (and this is what I think happened), Netflix probably ran seasons five and six of Shameless in its entirety and had them available on Netflix for viewers to see along with probably a preview of the beginning of the new season season seven, but not including the first four seasons. This way, they would allow viewers to see enough of the show to get a good idea of what it's about and allow of your to get hooked enough to both want to subscribe to Showtime to then be able to watch the back episodes of the first four seasons as well as become current with the ongoing series in regularly scheduled broadcast production. Makes total sense.
And though I don't fully recall my feelings regarding my viewership being as such, I could totally believe that I would totally be tempted very much to want to go for this Hook Line and Sinker tactic.
Of course for me, someone who cut the cable, I would either have to pay for some Showtime streaming service which, back in the 2010s, I'm not sure if it was totally available, and if it would have had the current production of Showtime premium cable.
The whole streaming TV scene has changed so much over the years I'm at a loss for how it all has gone down but also the fact that I can't have an "aha moment" and suddenly recall it all and say "ah yes now I remember I watched it while I was working at Lakewood and also watched it on my TV at my apartment in Casselberry" which would be accurate, I would guess, since it would be around that time.
And I guess I could say that with confidence since the evidence would all point to that. But unfortunately there are no concrete facts to back that up. Most disturbingly, there are no actual memories in my brain to back that up. I do not remember actually watching this show. I just know that I watched it, otherwise how do I know about the episodes as they are occurring.
And it's not just me getting impatient and reading the Wikipedia summaries of the shows, which I do do. It's me watching the shows, since I remember all the imagery.
Then there's the other problem of there's no physical evidence as far as tangible proof. Because, as I've mentioned before, I've started and stopped my Netflix subscription so many times, I guess Netflix got tired of linking all my various accounts together, like they used to, back in the day, because I do remember being able to pull up a history of what I've watched even after I've re-subscribed.
Now, I downloaded the file of my history and it only goes back a year, that's only two subscriptions separated by one interruption. I don't know why that is since they're all under the same email address. And I've had the same email address with all my Netflix accounts since at least 2008.
So this all brings me, and pardon me if this all seems like a big old rambling session, to a wrap up here in a big old set of questions. Is this weird memory dislocation connected at all to the alcoholic blackouts? As I'm drinking less, is it affecting my ability to recall? Are the drugs that are creating this overall change affecting other areas of cognition? Or is this a sign of something more? Some other degeneration? Some other impairment? Something else to worry about?
I guess I just don't know. Maybe I'll ask myself tomorrow? But then again, will I remember to do so?