What I Learned from a Month without Television

A tiny sampling of my TV box sets...

I love me some Boob Tube.  Ask any of my friends: I am prone to animated diatribes about a laundry list of current and past shows, anything from Star Trek: The Next Generation to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Modern Family.  I am happy to tell you all about how The Wire is the best drama—and Arrested Development is the best comedy—ever to air on television.    I get misty-eyed talking about how much I love Alan Ball’s shows, and everything else on HBO, for that matter.  I definitely want to know other people’s favorite parts of 30 Rock and The Office each week.

Not to overstate the obvious, but TV has been a passionate hobby of mine, but one I was pursuing at the expense of others. I had a sense there were too many empty spaces in my life, and TV had become a filler; a stand-in for living.  Our TV would be on every day, sometimes from the end of the workday until bedtime.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a terrible multi-tasker, and having TV on “in the background” would inevitably command my undivided attention.

My first GUU exam for Occupational and Leisure Studies 121 was my Month without Television.  I cheated twice, once a deliberate and planful decision to watch the Glee season premiere; once a totally impulsive break-down resulting in a 4-hour reality TV marathon of Project Runway and Top Chef episodes spurred by a really nasty stomach ache I had a week ago.  (Note that I will diligently be deducting two points from my exam score for these transgressions.)

Overall, I consider the exam a success, but I wanted to sit down and think about why it felt that way.  Here are the things I noticed by swearing off TV for a while:

1)      People with Better Things to Do don’t have time to watch too much TV.  In other words, a life full of activities and plans is not one in which TV has a chance to dominate.  I didn’t just cut out TV; I combined it with a resurgence of other things, mostly brought on by this project: writing blog posts, reading, cooking, seeing friends, going to the gym, playing tennis, and taking dance classes.  In other words, I found a lot of Better Things to Do.  Not better in the smug moral sense of the word, but better in the sense that cooking a healthy meal from scratch and feeding a friend made me feel more engaged in my life than a Law and Order: SVU marathon.  No offense to Christopher Meloni, because he is wearing his 49 years like a glove.

2)      TV had become my default activity, and caused me to ignore the other options out there.  This month, I often found myself sitting on the couch, doing nothing but staring at the wall and wondering what I felt like doing today (and not really feeling like doing much).  Maybe others are familiar with that creeping feeling of both laziness and boredom. Before this No-TV Month, I would just flip on the TV the instant I had that feeling.  During this past month, I was obligated to consider options other than TV.  It turns out there were lots of them.

3)      I realized that TV affected my overall energy level.  Having to do something other than watch TV this month—even when I was feeling the lazy/bored double-punch—required me to spend more energy.  The irony about spending energy is that it restores energy, and then things don’t feel like a slog anymore.  It gets the ball rolling, so to speak.  In contrast, I could remember the feeling of watching a lot of TV, and afterwards feeling restless and even more robbed of energy and motivation.  There had to be a connection.

Now that this is over, how do I feel to be able to watch TV again?  Truthfully, I feel relieved and happy, but a little wary of my old habits too.  I watched the second episode of Glee and a new episode of Project Runway yesterday.  Even though it’s now the weekend, I haven’t felt that gluttonous urge to just stay in my pajamas and make a marathon day of it, which (looking back) is probably not an uncommon way I’d spend other Saturdays.  I’m glad my deprivation has made me more circumspect, rather than wanting to overindulge.

I like, sooo totally missed you guys!!!

That being said, I still plan to watch a fair amount of TV in the coming months.  I really want to know how the heck they’re going to wrap up the Heaven/Hell plotline on Supernatural, for one thing.  Now that I have better things to do—not to mention a dose of honesty about how much TV I was watching before—I believe I’ll be more likely to leave the TV off when there isn’t a specific show I want to watch and hopefully cull some of the less vital shows.  Maybe I’ll be more mindful when the creeping feeling of lazy boredom comes to visit.  I am hoping for many nights where the TV never gets turned on at all.  Let’s be honest: TV—in moderation—is fabulous.  We’re so lucky to live in a time and place in which we have so many diverting options for how to spend our time.  The thing is, I want to explore more of my options now.