My hobby: watching documentaries

Just about every Friday for the past three months I've spent my nights watching documentaries on netflix.com. I can't remember how it all started but now I typically get an urge to watch one or two films after I have spent a few hours writing an editorial piece for my university's newspaper. It's like I feel really compelled to watch something mind stimulating and worthy of my recreational time. When I do watch the documentaries I usually don't have a specific preference of what kind it is but most of the time I choose one that involves music, foreign language (Spanish), dance or social issues. However, now that I think about I guess I can trace these interest back to the Ballet, Human Rights, Women Studies, Spanish and other random classess I've taken as a college student.

Tonight I watched a documentary called "No Impact Man" about a guy and his family deciding to go over and beyond Green for an entire year. At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to sit for an hour and a half and watch it but I figured I'd watch the first five minutes of it to see what kind of story line it had. As I sat and watched the film a few emotions and thoughts crept into my head like: 1)Wow. This guy is really serious and dedicated to this cause and I respect him for it.
2)I liked the fact that he didn't just jump right into the idea of doing EVERYTHING at once, but slowly taking steps into fully engaging himself and his family into: buying home grown food, no tv watching, no using toliet paper, no buying anything new, no electricity for 6 months, etc....
3)The positive and negative feedback that he was getting from enivornmentalist, the "average joe" and the media about his project and the questioning of his motives were a bit daunting at times.
4)I enjoyed how he made it through the entire year because he had a very strong support group such as his wife (she was amazing!! despite her couple of times when she cheated), young daughter, friends and the outside help/community organizations.
5)There was a moment in the movie where I saw things getting real, and when I say this I mean the capturing of the family having a real life moment: his wife wanted another child and he didn't. He says in the movie "I rather not talk about this in front of the cameras because this isn't a reality movie/show." I thought to myself 'this is a documentary or atleast that's what it's supposed to be so why not document this issue?' Plus, I saw the scene as an opportunity for me to see if the film was ALL about his project of the process and progression of it.
6) The film seriously had me thinking about all the things that I do and don't do that contributes to harming the environment and the people surrounding me.
I guess in a nut shell the movie sucessfully executed what it intended to do to it's viewer which was to inform us on how to be aware of the issue, think of things to prevent it and how to get involved with fixing it.

Sigh...what a good way to end a OVERLY stressful week and another conversation starter with my other parent (I use his netflix account and he's always asking me about the movies I watch on it. lol).