Turning fun time into assignment

I've known that I take myself too seriously for a long time; my parents raised me demanding good performances at school, and I learned to take this ideal to every single area of my life. Surely it's good to be hard-working and fight for great achievements, but everything needs limits. And I have gone to ridiculous extremes last year.

It had become very difficult for me to concentrate in any book of personal interest. Watching any media had turned into an activity difficult to bear. If I went through ten movies last year, it was a lot. TV shows? Only managed about three or four, with few episodes and even less seasons, and for that I needed lots of courage and determination. Heck, I loved these things, why did I had to go through pain to do something light I used to enjoy?

One could say it was only me that had changed and all. And in fact, I did, just not for good. I would procrastinate and all because I wanted to do these things properly. I wanted to get all the innuendos, to critically analyze the photography, soundtrack, and all other details. Oh, and to pay attention to the story, too. Same with my reading; I'd transformed my hobby into an assignment without any meaningful purpose at all. I was treating myself as a professional critic - which I am not.

I guess I wanted to watch and read things critically, but I was doing it all wrong. I wanted to do those things for fun, during my free time, why was I doing this to myself? And it finally dawned on me that it was simply cause I took myself so seriously I couldn't bear watching and reading in a 'shallow' way. Also, I thought everyone I knew was doing it like that. I realized very recently it's not true. Most people are just like me: we watch/read, enjoy and form opinions AFTER the thing, and most times by thinking about what others have to say on the subject.

Of course we must have a critical view of stuff, but we too must chill out! If something about the material we're experiencing is important, we'll see it straight away or just after finishing it. Let me give you a simple, but nice example: the details of sexual subtext with Jaime and Brienne. I saw it straight away during my reading of the ASOIAF books in fact, they're so obvious I thought everyone had got it...  other details we missed can be appreciated later, like I'm doing now, rereading some POVs of this same saga.

My point is: WE CAN'T GET EVERY SINGLE THING IN ONLY ONE SITTING/WATCHING. Most probably, we'll need loads of them to get all the details. That's why it's so nice to discuss things with others - alone, we get only what matters to our view of life and fiction, according to our ideals and prejudices. With others, we are able to grasp more stuff by dealing with way different opinions!

So, if you're reading this, I really don't recommend acting in that way I used to. In fact, I still behave like this to some extent... If you're watching, reading, whatever, because you are interested in the story, go and enjoy it. Reflections upon it to form opinions on more deep level are definitely important, but they should come after experiencing all the material. Turning those nice activities into a chore so that you can mark it as done on Goodreads or other tracking sites is not fun at all.