Journal 002 | The Trouble With Visiting Middle Earth as a Working Adult
Matt Ferguson
You don't just watch The Lord of The Rings, you spend quality time with it. You can't just up and decide you're going to immerse yourself in this kind of experience, all willy nilly out of the blue, especially if you paid a hundred bucks for the extended, four hour per movie edition, like I did...like an ass. You've got to plan it, like a vacation, a really expensive one.
If you are a college student, particularly one who survives off refund checks and parental care packages, attempting to watch The Lord of The Rings trilogy in its entirety is a breeze. The weekends are wide open to you. Buy a bunch of snacks, sugared drinks, some Ibuprofen, and go nuts. Luckily, The Lord of The Rings is an institution that is deeply imbedded within popular culture, so if you have some semblance of a social life, it will remain in tact. Your friends will understand; the trilogy is rather awesome. However, you will need to prepare yourself to turn down any and all summons to clubs, house parties, BBQs and romantic rendezvous, as you will not have any time for such frivolous pleasures while following Frodo Baggins and The Fellowship on their perilous journey to Mount Doom...THIS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS!!
“You can’t just up and decide you’re going to visit Middle Earth; that’s rich people people shit.”
However for the rest of us who work 9 to 5, forty hours a week, exploring Tolkien's world requires taking significant time off from these insufferable little appendages called, “jobs.” And most people only gets one week worth of vacation time for the whole year, and or a handful of sick days, so you gotta be tactful; you can't waste them. You have other priorities. You're gonna wanna use that time to socialize with friends, catch up on yard work, travel and visit family. You can't just up and decide you're going visit Middle Earth, that's rich people shit. You have to carve out time for The Fellowship.
If you have small children, you might want to get a good babysitter, or pawn them off on your attention deprived parents, or devise some type of indefinite distraction, because despite the inherent whimsy of Middle Earth, it won't hold the attention of a toddler for twelve hours. This does not include the time you will need to take power naps, bathroom breaks and emergency snack runs. You can't feed the little bastards, change diapers AND watch The Battle of Helm's Deep at the same time; it's not possible!
Honestly, you mine-as-well book a flight to Martha's Vineyard and do something worth the precious time you're wasting. Anything less than well coordinated travel arrangements and verified time off work will probably result in you being fired, because I mean, a person who shucks their financial responsibilities to play World of Warcraft for a couple of days doesn't deserve a paycheck, and neither do you.