Introduction

I am not a tearful person.

In fact, in the past three years I’ve cried a grand total of three times: at my wedding, when the Philadelphia School District screwed me out of a substitute job in a seemingly corrupt manner, and on my last day as a long-term substitute at Cheltenham High School in response to seeing my students cry. 

Which the fact that my tear trigger seems to be two parts support from others and one part pure rage might be a rabbit hole I want to explore at some point, but not right now.

What I am curious about is the one exception to my crying habits: while consuming media. Since watching The Return of the King in high school, but particularly this past year, I cry often while watching movies and television, as well as while reading comics or listening to music. Crying has become common enough I decided to reflect and make sure I wasn’t broken, however introspection brought no understanding. I cry while consuming a variety of media visual and auditory, good and bad, live-action and animated. 

While I have no insight into why this is happening, I also decided I didn’t care. If I saw it as a problem I would try to find a solution by writing in some sort of journal where I parse out my feelings. No, what I see as the interesting issue at hand is the fact that I haven’t sat down and intentionally sort through my connection to media since college. I don’t feel I need to further gaze at my navel, but instead at my television.

So the plan is to turn a critical eye towards media that inspires emotions in me, specifically tear based emotions, but this is a blog so I’m not sure how strictly I’ll stick to the conceit. In fact, I already have a long list of movies that don’t make me cry, but do bum me out in a substantial way.

I’m not sure how often I’ll update, but I’m going to use this as a space for me to sit down and critique some stuff and occasionally myself.