My move to Seattle has been more stressful on me than I realized. And I didn’t really figure that out until the first night I spent in the new town house that Angela and I will be calling home for the next year.

Since May, I’ve been living out of a temporary one bedroom apartment, barely big enough for a couch and a bed. I moved into that after packing up and leaving a 2300 ranch-style home in North Dallas where I’ve been the last 8 or so years. So it was a big change. And at first I thought “Oh shit. I immediately regret this decision.”

But I think that small space really helped hold me together. I think I got into a routine of retreating to it when things started feeling too big. Pick up dinner, go home, hide in that small hole, and watch TV until I felt better about things. It worked like a charm.

I think that’s why when I left it two nights ago to go pick up my dogs at the airport cargo center and spend my first night in our town house I had a total breakdown. Suddenly this was all VERY REAL. I left my dad and my brother. I sold my HOUSE. I moved my dogs to a town house with no yard and they’re going to hate it. What if Angela hates it here? What have I done? Holy shit.

So yeah. I kind of lost it for a bit. And I could not find my center again until I put the dogs in their crates, drove to Best Buy and picked up season 1 of “Glee” on DVD. I just put it into the Xbox and hit “play all episodes” and then things started getting better. I’m almost finished with the whole thing and it’s really turned me around. No joke.

Talk about a bullshit first-world form of therapy. It’s so dumb. And I felt kind of ashamed when I went and bought it. But I knew it would work. Because it’s worked before. When my mom died, I remember the only thing that made me feel normal again was reruns of friends. When I first moved into that small apartment it was burning through seasons of “The Office.”

I understand the idea of retreating into the familiar. One of my favorite TV shows of all time is Newsradio. But I didn’t buy Newsradio on DVD. I picked up Glee. A show I do not like. Nor did I use this opportunity to catch up on some amazing TV I’ve yet to experience like “The Wire” or “The Shield.” Nope. Straight to singing teens.

And, I’m not the only person that does this. I’ve asked around and everyone I’ve talked to has had exactly the same experience. When things go topsy-turvy on them, they like to retreat TV. Sometimes the more horrible the show, the better the comfort. A friend of mine confided that when his girlfriend’s mother, with whom he was very close, got sick the only thing that held him together was reruns of the TV show “Viper.” It seems to be a very human commonality. But how long has Television itself been common to the human condition? This can’t be built into us.

Is this something that would work on my parent’s generation? Would popping in a DVD of “M*A*S*H” or “The Ed Sullivan Show” help during a time of crisis? What about my grandparents? Their parents? For some reason this feels like a construct of us kids who grew up in the 80s. People who saw the birth of cable TV and HBO. Our parents thought we were spending too much time in front of the TV, but what we were really doing was building important coping mechanisms that will benefit generations to come.

I just picture people my age or younger in therapy, describing their problems and talking about how overwhelmed they are, and these doctors are handing out box sets of “Small Wonder” and “Step By Step.”

Therapist: “I’d like to refer you to a colleague of mine, a Dr Jonathan Chase.”
Patient: “Who is he?”
Therapist: “He’s known as ‘The Manimal,’ and he’s about to save your LIFE!”