not title

I have a horrible tendency to binge-devour content. Pop-culture content. Informational content. Any and all types of content. I am eternally prowling for my next fix--looking for a certain emotional, intellectual or some other kind of response. The trouble, though, is that I feel like I do nothing with this content. Once I see something new, I discard it as "already seen," so that I'm not applying it to anything.

And the thing is: I can't go back and re-experience that stuff. It loses its appeal the second I see it or experience it for the first time. So, in effect, it feels like I'm constantly overwhelming myself with new information but none of it sticks. I am and will always be, it seems, who I was or who I am essentially--before exposure to the content. I think in the same way, I choose words from the same mental wordbank. I'm seeing all this new stuff, reading new books, articles, watching new movies, listening to new music but it's impact is almost always temporary.

I'd like to be one of those people who is able to take every little bit of whatever kind of information, commit it to memory and still feel inspired by it later.

I don't know why I'm stuck in this pattern where I'm constantly chasing the "new." The things I like--whether its art or books or movies--are almost always regurgitations of information I'm already aware of. This ties in to all those cliches you hear about art or poetry--that the really good stuff is just the old stuff reconfigured. I don't lack the ability to look at things I'm already aware of in new and interesting ways. My problem is that I'm constantly searching for new and interesting things--things I've never seen before or experienced.

There are so many experiences to have, I know it's naive of me to think I've "seen everything." Because I haven't. But I'm old enough now, I feel, to have experienced most things and to know that any new sensations are just combinations and variations on things I've experienced before.