I have an almost insatiable curiosity that drives me to want to know just about everything, particularly when it comes to stories. That’s why I’m not into excerpts of writing or clips of video. When I read a book, I don’t like to skip around (even with textbooks where it doesn’t really matter). When I watch a show, I hate missing any part of it so I prefer watching online, where I can pause and rewind as needed. I guess part of it is due to a desire to experience things as the author meant it to, but mostly it’s because I don’t want to miss a thing.
Whenever I find a new TV show to watch, I have to start from the beginning – I usually have to go back 4-5 years and watch for weeks to catch up, but that is exactly what I do. I can’t just hop in partway through the story and be satisfied. When it comes to news stories, I usually have to find half a dozen sources to read through before I am satisfied that I know all there is to know. Often I still feel like they left me hanging though, not providing the deep level of details that I was hoping for. This is typically because they only provided one point of view or didn’t plot out enough historical information to provide a rich context.
And so I find myself spending a great deal of my time looking into things, finding articles linking to articles in a seemingly infinite loop of reading material. Or I spend a lot of time sitting there patiently watching all the old episodes of a show in its 5th season and still going strong, until the day that I finally catch up to modern day and the most recent part of the story. The desire to know – the need to know is a strong motivator for me and drives a lot of behavior, all because of my inquisitive mind.