I watched a bit of television the last couple of nights. Despite the notion I have of television being relaxing, one that I take to be shared by the majority of the population, after turning the television off I was uncomfortable, jumpy, my mind racing, my eyes tired. Television did not relax me at all.

But why?

• Was it the commercials? (I generally have trouble tuning them out, I don’t watch enough television for my mind to just ignore them. But that is probably not the cause. I feel the same general post-watching uneasiness after watching commercial-free shows streaming on the Internet.)
• Or the complicated plot lines? (No. If you’ve read Steven Johnson’s “Everything Bad is Good for You”, you’ll have some familiarity with the concept of the the increased complexity of story lines on current-day television. But I digress.)
• Or it the blood and gore? (No, not on 8-10 PM major network programming. And definitely not while watching Red Sox baseball.)
• Did I just try to follow and understand too much rather than vegging out? (Possible… but the stories are not that difficult to follow.)
• Am I so used to reading and trying to understand and mentally cross-index everything that TV is just too full of disparate things that I can’t process and cross-index it all? (Hmm. An interesting idea.)
• Is it just the flickering lights? (Oddly possible.)

I’m not sure of the cause in the end. Maybe I just need more sleep…