The saga of how I gave up TV for an entire year

  Mr Data is her favourite 
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Television is a chewing gum for the eyes. -Frank Lloyd Wright

We've got TV Turnoff Week coming up next month from April 23-29, and you may wonder why I'm brining this up now.

Kinda looks like I'm jumping the gun a bit, but trust me, I know what I'm doing.

For one thing, it may take a bit of convincing to get some of you to take the plunge.

For another thing, turning off the TV for an entire week is not as easy as you might think. Even if you watch TV a "normal" amount, let's say, at night and on the weekends, you'll probably be surprised that it feels a little weird to not have the TV on.

I don't want to scare you, but there are some definite withdrawal symptoms involved.

I know, because I actually did the TV Turnoff week back in 2005. I thought, "Hey, this is going to be a cinch!", and then the withdrawal symptoms blindsided me.

Here's the deal: When you completely stop watching TV, when you don't automatically have the noise sound piping into the various rooms of your home, it will feel oddly, perhaps uncomfortably, quiet.

You'll feel bored at first. You might feel a bit lonely, especially if you live alone and are used to keeping the TV going for a bit of company.

You'll wonder what your favorite characters are doing this week and worry that you're missing something special. When you talk to your friends/family/co-workers, you may feel left out when they tell you that last night's episode of The Bachelor was to die for.

(BTW--please forgive me if this reference to the reality show The Bachelor is out-moded. Understand, I haven't really watched much TV since 2005, and this was what was on back then!:-))

At any rate, know that turning off your television for one week is serious business that could potentially change your life. I'm not kidding.

Here's my story:

I used to watch TV at night and on the weekends. Sometimes it would just be kept on in the background, even if I wasn't technically "watching" it.

I didn't think it was excessive or anything, but when I heard about TV Turnoff week, I thought it would be a fun challenge. I wanted to see if I could do it.

I was shocked at how hard it was.

This may sound sort of weird, but I had to gently wean myself away from the TV addiction. I made a deal with myself--no TV shows, but I allowed myself to watch movies on DVD (not movies on TV), and also DVDs of TV shows.

Yes, that sounds kind of like I was circumventing the "rules" by watching TV shows on DVD, but there is a huge difference between watching TV shows on TV and watching them on DVD.

If you're watching them on TV, then you've automatically got the commercials, which are constantly telling us that we need stuff that we never even realized we were missing.

When you're watching shows on TV, you're also very easily lured into watching multiple shows. They tease you with what's coming on next, and then you start flipping channels, then you're just sort of watching stuff that isn't really interesting anyway.

By watching shows on DVD, you eliminate the commercials, plus you're in control of how long you watch--if you want to just watch for 15 minutes, you can pause it and then later on come back and watch a little bit more. You never end up watching because you are afraid of missing the rest of the show.

So, my first week, which was actually the official TV Turnoff week, I ended up watching movies and TV shows on DVD.

I was determined to get TV free though (with no DVDs at all), so I kept on cutting back over time.

After 2 weeks, I was weaning myself off the TV shows on DVD. Then after that, I weaned myself off of the movies. Gradually, I started replacing my show watching time with other activities, like reading books.

I also discovered books on tape, so instead of turning the TV on for background noise when I was making dinner, I would put on a book on tape.

I was shocked at how much more emotion and drama the books had than anything on TV. When I was listening to Wuthering Heights, I actually screamed one time! Especially with books on tape, it's so easy to get wrapped up in the story.

And let me tell you, "classics" are called "classics" for a reason! They're really good stories.

No offense to the TV show writers, but nothing on television can hold a candle to the drama and excitement of a good book!

So how did this TV abstinence saga work out--well, once I kicked the TV habit, I noticed such an increased sense of well-being and peacefulness in my life, that I decided to turn TV Turnoff Week into TV Turnoff Year!

For a whole year, I did not watch any television. Nowadays, I occasionally watch the odd show here and there. My TV consumption is maybe an hour or two a month.

Truly, that TV Turnoff week changed my life. I've read hundreds of books I have always wanted to read but never had the time for before. I've started writing more (as evidenced by this blog), exercising regularly, and doing more outdoor activities.

With next month's TV Turnoff Week, you have the opportunity to change your life also. If you start weaning yourself off of TV now, by the time the official week comes, you might truly be ready to completely go TV free for that week (or longer).

It's an accomplishment. It's something to be proud of. It's something that will increase your well-being and add to the quality of your life.

Like Frank Lloyd Wright said, "Television is a chewing gum for the eyes."

Don't we want to feed our eyes (and our minds) with something more nutritious than gum?

Related posts: HowTo Get Started Reading More Books and What to Read When You Do

Comments

[Gavin Heaton]

OK ... I have already commented on this post ... so it looks like there is a comment eating monster at work again!

This is a really great post ... and you know I really love reading good stories too. I must admit that I dont give reading enough time, though I see it as a delicious indulgence.

[Sharon Sarmiento]

You got past the demons! Yay! I'm so happy about that.

There were many books that I thought I simply didn't have the time to read. There were classics, and then new books coming out all the time, and then there were favorite books that I've read before that I wanted to read again.

Finding the time to read the books has been like rekindling an old romance. It's so fun and almost addictive.

Yes, it's definitely a delicious indulgence. I'm with ya on that!

[Verna Wilder]

Great post! My TV has been off for almost 2 years, but I still watch DVDs. I'm working on cutting back on those, especially since I found podcasts of university classes (take a look at my blog post for today). Thanks for this how-to and sharing your experience. Now I'm going to go read a book!

[Sharon Sarmiento]

Hi Verna,

You and I are such alike. We both have a pile of books laying next to our beds (I bet), and we both shun the TV. Ha!

Two years--that's fabulous! Really, when you start reading books, TV just can't even hold a candle to them. Books rock!

[KG]

Sharon — Really glad you're blogging about this. Like Verna, we've been without TV for a little over two years! We do watch DVDs, too, though not many. Proud to say that our little one has not seen any commercials ever — well, at Grandma's house, he has. ;)

Now that I blog, I don't think I'll ever go back to a regular TV-show routine like I used to have. It's either blog OR watch TV; I definitely don't have time to do both. I get so much more out of blogging than I ever did watching TV. Some people say blogging is "virtual" meaning that it's not "real." Now that I blog, I have to ask this: What could be MORE real-world based than blogging and connecting with real people from all over the real world?

Though I have to say, I do miss those golden TV years in the mid-90s when both Seinfeld AND Melrose Place were on. Great stuff.

[Maryam in Marrakech]

I used to volunteer for this organization and never had a TV as an adult until I married my husband. But I still don't watch TV except for the Daily Show... Laughter is good for the soul! And I agree with KG, which blogger could possibly have time to blog AND watch TV anyway?

[Dawn Goldberg]

Sharon,

I've seen several bloggers do this, and I haven't been able to figure out why (well, I do have a theory). Since you focus on blogging as a business, I thought you might be able to give me a good answer. :-)

Why cross out a word instead of just deleting it? For example, in the "Here's the deal" paragraph, you wrote, "... you don't automatically have the noise sound piping into the various rooms..." and you crossed out "noise."

Why?

:-)

Dawn

[Sharon Sarmiento]

Hey Dawn--You know when blogging first started, some of the originators took it very seriously, like when you hit the publish key, you've sort of signed a public contract. Once you publish, you don't change anything. At most, you would use the strikeout key.

Some bloggers do this and some don't. One thing is, if you publish something, and if people start making comments on your post, any changes you make should, in some blogger's minds, be made obvious.

For example, in my post here http://www.esoupblog.com/2007/02/an_epiphany_dav.html, I got some numbers wrong when I was writing about a conversation I had with David Krug. He brought it to my attention in the comments, so I went and did a strikethrough and put in the correct number.

If I had just deleted it and put in the correct number, folks who saw his comment would have been like, "Huh?, what's he talking about?"

So, you'll often see bloggers use a strike through to indicate a change after the post has been published. You may also see them write at the end of their post something like "This post has been updated for accuracy."

Other times, bloggers will use the strike through for humor's sake. They start to type what they really think, then they use the strike through and type what is more politically correct.

For this post, I was more giving you a peak into what I really thought--that TV is just noise, not entertainment. Most folks don't think of watching TV as being watching noise, so I wrote "sound" instead.

Anywho, long explanation to a simple question!

Cheers,
Sharon