Spoilt for choice

Belfast loves its festivals. There were three big festivals in January and February (that I know of, I don’t pick up on all of them). March and April bring us:
The Belfast Film Festival, with 130 films and events.
The Imagine Festival, with 62 events.
The Respect Human Rights film festival, with 68 films and events.
And the Feile an Earraigh Spring Festival, with 13 events.
This excludes the plays, concerts, comedians, etc. that happen every day.

I’ve missed the third and fourth festivals listed above--they were over by the time I picked up the catalogues. I read through the Imagine catalog and picked five events out of 62. Three of them are sold out, I got tickets for one, and I have a conflict with the other. I haven’t made much headway with the Belfast Film Festival’s 104-page catalogue because most of the films in it look interesting. And I do have a life.

I find all of this activity a bit annoying because it takes time to go through each of the catalogues. And then I attend very few. I guess I could blow off the whole festival scene but I have this haunting fear of Missing Out on Something Important. When I was in college, I was haunted by the same feeling. There was a course catalogue every semester, from which I’d pick 20 or so courses and struggle to narrow it down to five. Everything seemed so interesting, but how to ration my time? I guess rather than irritation at being bombarded, I should look on this First World Problem as the twin gifts of curiosity and the privilege of living in a city with so many people who celebrate art and culture.
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