My Comfort Faves
I think I was listening to Conan's podcast when I discovered the concept of the "comfort TV show." Basically, a show that you've seen a million times that you watch when you want to feel something familiar and comfortable. For me, that's The Simpsons, seasons 1-10. I can quote parts of episodes from memory, and I know the words to all the songs.
This past week has been so rough with losing my dog that all I crave is something that's guaranteed to make me happy. My husband downloaded all the seasons and we've been binging them every day. I unfortunately don't have any friends with Disney+ accounts to mooch off of.
Another comfort fave of mine is The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon. I've been playing them since I was a kid. I used to be obsessed with The Sims, and even flunked an exam in college because I was too busy playing The Sims 2. I wasn't a huge fan of Sims 3 or 4, and by the time those games came out I was a boring, overworked adult who didn't have as much free time anymore, so I never got into those. But I remember how comforted I felt creating a family, downloading a million mods, and customizing this whole world.
I have a Macbook, so playing games on it has always been a challenge, but I managed to find an open sourced version of Roller Coaster Tycoon that's playable on all OSes. I also torrented Sims 3 (and no, it's not illegal since I paid for The Sims 3, I just couldn't find the discs) and installed them on a Windows partitioned old Macbook I had.
So, in a weird way, I've been regressing to my teenage self. I've been doing all the things my teenage self used to do. I'm even blogging again, which I haven't done since I gave up Tumblr. So I don't know — weird time in my life.
In my 20s, I would've went out and drank my problems away, so at least I'm not doing that anymore. I guess that's why comfort faves are so important. They keep you grounded. They keep you from spinning out of control. They help remind you of a time when things were less chaotic. They're safe and predictable and are highly needed in times when life feels like the opposite.