Just like last Monday, I spent most of today putting my DVDs into a 400-slot binder. This was my second 400-slot binder after filling up my first one completely, rendering it suitable weight lifting equipment. Same one like the first one, I bought it from Fry's and now knew what I was doing. There was less frustration with the DVDs not always going into the fabric-backed plastic slots at first, and I didn't miss an entire page of slots like I did before, making me move DVDs back many spaces, one after the other. The instances in which I had to move DVDs back or forward was when I missed a DVD in my chronological organization.
In this binder, all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls came first (My first DVD binder has a bevy of TV shows in the first 200 slots and about 50 more in the second 200, including seasons 1-4 and 7 of The West Wing, all four seasons of The Big Bang Theory, all eleven seasons of Married with Children, and the first and second seasons of Perfect Strangers), followed by all Bond movies up to Quantum of Solace (I'm such a fan that I even keep the awful ones, such as A View to a Kill), and then the rest of my movies in chronological order, with some exceptions. Sequels to Clerks, The Bourne Identity, and Back to the Future go next to the first movies, and I put Charlie and the Chocolate Factory next to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory for easier reference. The 70th Anniversary Edition Citizen Kane set had not only the American Experience documentary that was part of the previous two-disc set, but also the HBO movie RKO 281, about the making of Citizen Kane, starring Liev Schreiber as Orson Welles and John Malkovich as screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. Those discs are together too.
I got immense satisfaction from putting all these DVDs in one place and getting rid of all the cases. They weigh a lot when you hold one stack of them. Unfortunately, as I chucked more and more DVD cases into the recycling bin, the book stacks in my room began to look a lot larger, and I don't think I can take all these with me. My permanent collection goes, of course, but as to the others, I know I'll have to give up many and I have no problem with that, but I only will as we get closer to moving because I'm not going to be stuck without anything to read, and I'm not getting a new library card with the Valencia library because there's no point. The only library card I want to see is one with "Henderson" on it.
Also creating more satisfaction for me was that I apply this kind of focused work ethic to my book research. I took these DVDs out of so many cases and put them in individual slots. For the book, I'm plucking facts from many different sources and organizing it in one place. Just like flipping through these binders and feeling inspired by seeing all my favorite movies and TV shows in one place, I think about what I have to find out, by watching the movies, by reading various books, by seeking interviews, and I feel the same inspiration. I can do this. I want to do this.
And now I can also practice weight-lifting with my DVDs while deciding what to watch next. For the next few months, that'll be the movies I'm looking to write about for this book, continuously to pick out all the details I need, as well as whatever else strikes my interest. Probably Swing Vote again. I need another New Mexico fix.
