Looking Forward

I don't think I've ever been more excited to go to Disneyland.

This last few weeks has really taken its toll on me. I won't go into all the gorey details, but if you can imagine combining the stress of finding a new job, possibly moving, family issues, and financial struggles, then throw in some abnormally bad health problems just for fun... well, you start to get the idea.

Times like this (and yes, I have been here before) make me desperately wish I could just take a month off from life and lay on a beach in Hawaii. Or go to Paris and sit in a Cafe and write in my journal every day for two weeks without a care in the world.

I think the attraction of Disneyland is its artificiality. People go to Disneyland - and see movies, watch television, read novels - because we want to escape. Disneyland is always pretty, clean, fun and happy. Not to mention nostalgic, helping us remember the happier moments of our childhoods (another great escape tactic).

There was a time during the late 90s when television and movies began to tend toward reality. Producers reasoned that audiences no longer wanted to escape, they wanted to see real life in all its grim, gorey, messy disfunction. It worked for a while, until even so-called "reality" shows started moving back toward a fairy-tale and often soap-opera-ish view of life (e.g. Survivor, Desperate Housewives, The Bachelor, American Idol, The Apprentice... even my beloved Grey's Anatomy has become so over-the-top drama-filled that I find it hard to watch sometimes). Even game shows and sitcoms have swung so far to the reality side of the spectrum with nuerotic consestants and dysfuntional families that they allow us to feel superior and disconnected, therefore escaping what we perceive is wrong with our own lives and making us feel better about our own mild (or not so mild) neuroses.

All this leads me to believe that all people, even seemingly happy people, want to escape the stress of real life as much as I do. This gives me some comfort, since lately I feel like I am betraying a part of my normally confrontational personality by wanting to run away so much. It's the classic fight-or-flight syndrome that is the hallmark of my personality type ("Sentinel," classic Aquarius, and either ISFJ or INFJ, depending on the day I take the test), at least according to research I did to try to "find myself" in high school (consisting mostly of online personality tests and self-help books).

So I guess the conclusion of my rambling is that I will be in good company this weekend, side by side with thousands of other escapees, desperately hoping our real lives don't come to find us.