Okay dear readers… We’re all friends here, right? So I can admit to you things that are somewhat embarrassing right? Okay then… Here goes… My name is Jamie and I am a TV-aholic.
No seriously. I am. I like watching TV. I just do. And there is this huge part of me that wants to be one of those totally hip people who only has one TV in their house that they barely turn on. But I’m not. And I doubt I ever will be.
I grew up being an often latch-key kid. I was raised by a mostly single mother who worked full time and didn’t get home at 3:30 when I did. There were often not a lot of other kids nearby and if there were they weren’t always kids that I wanted anything to do with (welcome to small town in the Midwest where your people generally fall into 2 categories- redneck and snob). During that time I didn’t have siblings in the same house either so the TV kept me company while I waited for my mom to get home. I had the TV while I did homework. It became the norm for me and I don’t think I ever did homework without the television on until I was in graduate school when I finally was able to realize that no, unlike what you’ve been telling yourself for the last umpteen years, you DON’T work better with the noise.Anyway, I’m sure that this early TV as babysitter had a lot to do with watching too much. I know other latch key kids who also have the same problem. Well, this, liking TV, in and of its self is not necessarily a problem. As a storyteller, I am attracted to that aspect of it, even in the reality shows. You know, I write a lot of creative non-fiction and in essence isn’t that that reality TV is (I know some of my writer friends are having heart attacks right now, but seriously, think about it). But when TV becomes something that you don’t think about going without, then it is a problem.
Let’s, just for kicks, take a look at the television shows that I watch regularly. IE- I DVR them, almost always catch them live, or make it a point to catch up on on the internet.
Modern Family
America’s Got Talent
Biggest Loser
Law and Order SVU
CBS Sunday Morning
The Amazing Race
Survivor
The Good Wife
American Idol
Glee
So You Think You Can Dance
Project Runway
Top Chef
The Glee Project
Flipping Out
Falling Skies
The Walking Dead
The Daily Show
Now, let’s talk about the shows that I watch if they are on but don’t always make it a point to do so:
Any of those TV News magazine shows like Dateline, Dateline ID, 48 Hours, 48 Hours Mystery, 20/20
Most anything on ID or Court TV (or whatever they call it now)
Star Wars the Clone Wars
The Simpsons
Family Guy
Dancing With the Stars
The Bachelorette
Extreme Makeover Home Edition
Kitchen Nightmares
Hell’s Kitchen
Pretty much any of the Law and Orders except for that new one, not in NYC (What were they thinking???)
All this and I am sure I am forgetting some. Not to mention others that I catch from time to time like Super Nanny, or American Dad, or Tosh, or The Colbert Report, or reruns of the Gilmore Girls… Or reruns of so many things!
And, there’s a whole list of things I don’t watch but wish I did because I know I would like them like Mad Men and Dr. Who among so many others. My friends are constantly talking about these and I feel out of the loop.
It’s just… A lot. It’s a lot to keep up with. And you know, it becomes almost like a chore. I’ve gotten good in the past couple of years at cutting shows out that become something I have to do rather than something that I want to watch (a recent season of Dancing with the Stars was like that… Both my roommate and I found ourselves avoiding it on the DVR, thinking, Oh crap I HAVE to watch that episode of Dancing with the Stars… Until it finally dawned on us that, um no thank you, we didn’t. And we happily erased it from our lives).
For those of you who have been introduced to the wonderful world of DVR (which is probably most of you since you are reading this and not living under a rock), I know what you are thinking. What’s the big deal? Why don’t you just record it and watch it when you want to.
Well, see, that’s good in theory, but when I know something is there waiting I want to watch it right away. Very rarely will something of mine be parked on the DVR for more than a few days. I’ll get home after a late shift or a night of rehearsals and think, oh I’ll just watch that one thing and save the rest for the weekend. But I won’t. I’ll watch everything that was on that night. I have no idea why, other than it’s a matter of instant gratification, something that I struggle with anyway. I know it’s there. I want to watch it. Hence I must watch it now. Which is ridiculous.
So that’s why this was challenge number one for me.
I woke up Sunday morning ready to turn on CBS Sunday Morning like I always do. I even picked up the remote before realizing what I was doing. It’s just a routine that is ingrained. I stopped myself, made some breakfast and then headed to my computer where I got some writing done among other things. Once I got into other tasks it wasn’t even something I thought about. Same thing Monday night, after work I spent most of the night writing and doing some things around the house.
Now, I admit the rest of the week was easy because I was so busy. Tuesday after work I had an early birthday dinner at my friend’s Joe and Kelly’s. Kelly, ever the supporter of all of my self improvement whims, made sure the TV wasn’t on in the house when I got there, which was terribly nice of her considering she has 2 very active boy who are sometimes tamed to allow the grown ups to talk by having the TV on. Later in the night the distraction for them became almost necessary and instinctively Joe went to turn on something for them to watch. “NO!” Kelly stopped him. “We can’t!” While I appreciated her support, I also appreciated that I was in someone else’s house, that the boys were wound up, and that the chances of a melt down were pretty high if they didn’t have some kind of diversion from the super boring grown up talk around them. So of course I told her to go ahead and turn it on. They landed on Billy the Exterminator, which luckily is something I neither watch nor care to watch.
But I will tell you, it is bizarre how a TV being on almost forces you to watch. We all found ourselves getting sucked in a little and I had to actively force myself not to watch it. It was an interesting realization. I mean how often is the TV on and you are purposely not trying to watch it? If you are anything like me you will often turn the TV on while you do other things as “background noise”. You have no intention of really watching it but feel like you need a little less quiet. But the reality is that if it’s on, you are probably watching more than you think and so I gotta wonder, how much attention to we really devote to it when we claim to be devoting all our attention to something else?
But I digress.
Wednesday night I had a creative meeting for a new show I might be working on and didn’t get home until around 10pm. This was one of those times that in the past I would have plopped down and watched whatever I had missed that night, but instead I bypassed it and worked on other things.
Thursday was my birthday and between running around doing things after work and a late celebratory dinner that night there was no time to think about it. (And an 8am doctor’s appointment the next morning kept me from even thinking about wanting to turn the TV when I got home).
Friday I took the day off and ran around doing things all day including getting my nails done as a present to myself. This was another of those moments I hadn’t thought about. They totally have TV’s in there positioned in such a way you can’t help but see them… but what am I gonna do ask them to turn them off? Of course not. So I tried to distract myself with my phone, but I gotta tell you… That Ellen… She’s a funny lady… And hard as I tried, I did get a little sucked in to her show… Makes me think about all the other times a TV is on somewhere that is so commonplace to us now we don’t even think about it. Sports bars, breakrooms… We’re just inundated and we don’t even realize it.
Friday night was a big get together at a local bar down the street from my apartment. There’s a giant TV screen in there but we were at kind of a weird angle to be able to see it and frankly it was playing some kind of sport thing which I could care less about… but it did give me pause to think, oh yeah… There’s another one.
Which brings me to today. I had thought that today might be the toughest. I knew that all my celebratory shenanigans would be over, all my friends would pretty much be doing other things, I’d be chillin out, bored, putzing around the house, and tired.
Well I got the tired part right… Let’s just say that the birthday shenanigans lasted well into the wee hours of the morning and I didn’t even want to get out of bed today let alone think about turning a TV on. To top it off, at some point during last evening’s festivities my cell phone took a nose dive off a table onto concrete and I was forced to spend some quality time at the Verizon store to try to replace it ($100 later I will be without a phone until the replacement gets here on Tuesday… Damn it!). So that has filled up most of the day along with writing this. Now I am waiting for my friend Kelly to get home so I can go over what she missed by not being there last night and then the lovely Whitney has saved me from a nothing to do fate by coming over for a girl’s pizza night to discuss what she missed by leaving early. And, well… There’s a lot to talk about. So we don’t need no stinkin TV.
So, week one a success! Now, maybe I officially cheated by the TV being on in 2 places that I was, but I feel like it couldn’t be helped. And maybe I officially cheated by running the DVR all week so I could watch what I missed tomorrow. But you know, this experiment is not about cutting things out for the rest of my life, it’s about proving to myself that I can do without and remembering what else I can fill my life with when I take things out I don’t need, or at least don’t let them become a priority. I’ll probably watch most of what I missed tomorrow but if I don’t, that’s ok. And if I find myself not caring about watching something, then that’s probably a good sign that I don’t need it anymore at all. Lesson learned.
No comments:
Post a Comment