During a water-cooler conversation in the neutral-colored hallway of my university, I said to my colleague, “If I had to get rid of all my streaming services save one, I would keep Crunchyroll, without question.”

For the uninitiated, Crunchyroll is an anime-streaming service that has a large library and simulcasts shows currently airing on Japanese television. Regular readers of this column will not be astonished to learn that I’d choose a cartoon service over the Netflix/Prime/Disney+/Max cornucopia that exists for consumers. I find that even across the differing viewing tastes in my family, Crunchyroll is the service that gets the most use in our household. We are, as it were, true nerds about animated media.

But a close, close, close second, I must mention, would be NBA League Pass. Essentially, it allows fans of the National Basketball Association to watch almost all the NBA’s games live or on demand during the regular season. There are a few exceptions, like blackouts for your regional local teams (for folks like me in Baltimore, that would be the Washington Wizards), but on any given night, there are six to 10 different games to choose from. At around 150 bucks for the 82-game season, that feels like a bargain.

What the two streaming services have in common is a deep, broad amount of re-watchable content. And because I am a writer whose imagination is continually fed by the methods, mannerisms, and aesthetics of other artforms, being able to be immersed in something is always generative.

The principle is the same as when creative-writing teachers tell emerging writers to read, read, read. That, too, is a kind of immersion that can be transformative via its absurdity of riches. I don’t find it to be wholly different than the hermetic seclusion monks seek to further a spiritual practice or that swimmers seek when waking at dawn to do laps alone in an Olympic-size pool.

Both streaming services seem like they offer only passive endeavors, but no one really watches sports or anime in some stoic, unexpressive posture. Fans yell at the screen. Fans cry at the animated heartbreaks. Fans feel and emote and stay “locked in” to worlds created by having lots and lots of options about what to watch and the flexibility to watch them anytime.

All of this is a way to say these streaming services provide “texts” in an accessible “library” that is fun, communal, and full of all kinds of stories to keep an imagination strong and flexible. (And don’t even get me started on sports anime like “SLAM DUNK” or “Haikyu!!”) When the Venn diagram overlaps in that way, nirvana is not far off.

Dear readers, in this new year, with so much poised to collapse, with so much finger-pointing, with fires burning everywhere, all amid the miasma of an incoming felon-president, remember you can reach for your streaming comfort food and feed your writing life at the same time. Let those two things be natural allies. Write and watch with your full selves. Be immersive, be immersed, and when you’re up to your neck, see what wild, wonderful creatures fly overhead, swim underfoot, and sing like benevolent sirens.

Steven Leyva’s poetry collection is The Understudy’s Handbook. His new collection, The Opposite of Cruelty, is forthcoming from Blair in March.