Waking up was difficult this morning, but somehow you managed to get yourself out of bed and to work. Good for you! That’s no easy feet some mornings, there are those morning where you just want to be a couch slug, but you got up and showered.  You should be celebrated. While you’re at work you let your mind wonder to how badly you wish you were at home and in your favorite spot; whether that’s a chair, couch, bed, pillow on the floor, or other item you park your rear on, with your current binge affair on Netflix. This thought carries you through the day and as the hours tick by you get more and more excited. If only time would stop moving so slolwy! But screw it, you start to plan your meal and your snacks for when you receive your freedom. You do the math and figure if you start right when you get home you’ll be able to get five episodes in, six if you’re feeling adventurous. Work finally ends and you Fred Flintstone your way home, burst through the door, heat up your food, sit down in your spot, start up Netflix and go to watch your show, but something’s wrong. Suddenly that icey “I might throw up nothing but liquid and pride” feeling slips into your belly as you frantically search for your program. It’s not there. It’s gone. Suddenly it has vanished off the face of Netflix just like your appetite. Your entire day has been a lie and now you’re floating in the abyss of despair. You want to cry but instead you just stare off into the deepest, darkest corners of your home until you slowly get up and fall asleeep with the lights on. Defeated.

Has this happened to anyone before? You’re watching something on Netflix and come home one day to find that it’s gone. Like it was never there to begin with. The relentless, heart aching, cold, bleak, Netflix break up is a very real thing and is very painful to experience. The best way to sum this up is picture yourself in a relationship. Go ahead, I’ll give you a minute. Got it? Great. So you’re in this relationship and you guys live together and things are good. You’re happy. Suddenly there’s something to do every night and life has purpose. Then one day you come home from work ready for dinner and adventure, and you find all their stuff is gone. All of it. No trace that another person even lived there, and there’s no note. Just poof, gone.

That’s the equivalent of being in the middle of a binge and Netflix removes a show from it’s roster. Contracts expire, that’s a real thing. Not everything you love on Netflix is always going to be there, but I think they can do a better job of letting their viewers know that programs are leaving. Granted, there are tons of websites out there that are willing to update you on what’s coming and going on Netflix, but don’t you think the responsibility should fall to Netflix itself? Maybe a monthly email to mentally prepare people that something awful is in their future. At least the email gives people the opportunity to call out sick and try and cram all the binge watching in before the show is gone.

What about all the shows that leave that you never get to love? This happened to me with Doctor Who. I had tried, and tried, and tried to get into Doctor Who. I still feel it’s something that I would love, but I struggled with the first three episodes. I wouldn’t give up though and did research on the interwebs to figure out better jumping points. I had geared myself up to give it another run, and… it was gone. There wasn’t even a trace of it left on Netflix. No note. No nothing. Just a missed opportunity. Who knows, maybe Doctor Who was the person you should’ve asked to the prom but never got the courage to ask, and now that they’re gone and on a different streaming network, you’ll never know what would’ve happened. There is nothing worse in life than the “what if”.

Why are we discussing this today? It was sparked by learning that Star Wars: The Clone Wars will be living Netflix in early March, and that bummed me out a bit. I still have the lost episodes to watch but I know I’m not going to get to them. Just isn’t enough time in the day, so, I thought I would come here and make you, my Geeklings, aware. Not everything you love will always be on Netflix. Some things will leave you and some will leave you before you’re done with them. All I ask is that you educate yourself. Go on the interwebs and research what’s staying and what’s going. Don’t allow your heart to be broken by a Netflix runaway. Be better then that. Be prepared, and be strong.

It can’t hurt you if you know it’s coming… or if you finish the binge.