I am going to say something very shocking to most of you I’m sure. It’s tough keeping up with all the nerdy things coming out. I kind of try, at least to catch trailers and know what is coming up, but I can’t. There are shows and movies and books and anime and board games that come out that I don’t know about. There is an expectation, though, from a lot of people, that if you are a nerd you need to have watched, read, or played certain things. But how do you keep up?

Why Do People Expect It?

I think before we talk about how you can keep up, we need to talk about why there is a pressure to keep up. And, honestly, if this pressure is even a good thing. I’ll answer the second question first. No, it is not a good thing. But let’s talk about why there is pressure.

People Want You To Like What They Like

This one generally is pretty harmless, though, it can be twisted. People often want you to know what is coming up and be involved in it because they are. They want to be able to talk about it with you, and, at it’s purest form, they want you to have the same joy that they are feeling.

It can be twisted into an expectation, though. Often people will use this as an expectation that you will like what they like. All of these things are very subjective. I might not like The Witcher not because it’s bad but because I don’t like fantasy. Now, we know that to be a lie, I do like fantasy, but as an example.

To Show You’re Cool

This one is never a good reason, liking something doesn’t make you cool. And expecting someone to like someone, or pressuring them to watch something and like something, also doesn’t make you cool. This comes from social media and the expectation that you can post about stuff and that will show a cool credibility. But there are plenty of people who will put on pressure and expectations that you need to keep up, or I need to keep up.

Why Should You Be Keeping Up?

There’s very few good reasons to be keeping up on everything. In fact, I don’t think there is a good reason to keep up on everything. Instead, I think that you can and should keep up on what you really love. But don’t give yourself the expectation that you need to.

Alex Radcliffe from BoardGameCo talked about this a bit with board games and board game reviews in particular. And it makes me think of a review that No Pun Included did on Tainted Grail. They powered through the whole game in a span or a week or two and did not like the game. And you can equate this to a Netflix show where everything drops at once. When you create an expectation for yourself that you need to watch something or play all of something immediately to be first, to be able to talk about it best, it loses it’s fun.

So you should be keeping up with stuff you love at a pace that is reasonable for it. For me, this can look like board games I don’t need to back on Kickstarter. For example, I talked about Mythwind today. This game is on Kickstarter currently and it looks really interesting. It is supposed to be like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing where there is no win condition. I want to play it. But I do not need to back it right now, I can buy it later if I really want to.

How Do You Keep Up?

The answer, to me, is you don’t. Not because it’s bad to keep up, but because you literally can’t. For board games, thousands come out a year, anime episodes, thousands a year, movies, most years thousands a year, comics, thousands a year. I could go on to drive home this point, but the point is that even if you have a very focused hobby, there’s probably more than enough to keep you busy for more than a year.

So I think the question is less how do you keep up, but how to be at peace with not keeping up?

Keeping Up Doesn’t Make You Cool

The first piece is that you aren’t cool by keeping up. Sacrificing sleep to watch a show doesn’t make you cool. Spending lots of money on action figures doesn’t make you cool. And it’s a bit harsh for me to put it that way. But let’s turn it into a positive, you don’t need to feel the pressure of this. It can be a load off of your shoulders as you remember that being the first to something doesn’t make it your life more enjoyable. Instead go at a pace that brings you joy.

Not Keeping Up Means You Can Delve Into Stuff Deeper

For a lot of people keeping up means diving into something 100% for a week and then moving onto the next thing. Netflix seemingly drops a new show ever week, add in Amazon Prime, Disney+, Funimation, CrunchyRoll, Apple TV and more how many things can you keep up on. The speed you’d need to dive into the new favorite thing is going from weeks to a week to eventually days before you need to move onto the next cool thing.

I actually really like that the Marvel shows come out one at a time. Because I get to sit with and think about the show more. I can go into the breakdowns that New Rockstars, ScreenCrush, and Mr Sunday Movies are doing. I can chat about it every week with a coworker who loves Marvel as well. If Disney+ dropped them all at once it’d be a one and done experience.

Relieves The Pressure of Having to Love the Right Things

When you stop trying to keep up, you don’t need to love everything. Or at least seem like you love everything. You now no longer need to think about something that doesn’t interest you. When I stopped watching Game of Thrones it was nice. I always knew I wasn’t that interested in it but it was a group activity, and that group was fun to be around. When that group stopped meeting, I watched some more on my own because I felt like I should.

It was only when I stopped watching it did I realize how much I didn’t care about Game of Thrones. And I was happier for not watching it because it’s a depressing and frustrating show. Now you might love the first seven seasons of Game of Thrones (or even eight) and that’s great, but for me, it was nice not to feel like I should be watching it.

And you can do that with anything. Whether it’s the newest hottest board game, the video game that drops on next week, whatever it might be. And it leads into the last thing.

It’ll Be As Good One Month or One Year Later

If it is something that is great, you can find it later. So going back to Mythwind, if that is a game I want, I can find it later. It might cost a bit more on the secondary market, but that’s okay, it’s not taking up space now. And as much as physical space, it’s not taking up head space. If a game isn’t on my shelf, I won’t see it and think about playing it. Same goes for Netflix or a book. Don’t add a show to your queue, if it’s worth your time you’ll find it again. If a book is really good, they’ll show up at book stores for a long time.

Will you miss out on the initial hype, on that moment in time when to be cool you Tweeted about it? Sure. But will you have the bandwidth to get in on that anyways? The more you have to try and keep track of and keep up with at once the less you can dive into it and enjoy it.

So Don’t Even Try?

There are some things that are worth keeping up with. So it’s not that you don’t try, it’s that you find what is worth keeping up with for you. What do you care about knowing about? What do you want to dive into deeply and get immersed in? That’s up to you, not what is popular at the moment, not the newest hottest thing that is coming out. It’s not that you don’t try, it is that you get to choose what you really care about, which is way more fun. And if something is great, you can always come back to it later.

What is the thing that you dive the most into?

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