I'm officially out of the mainstream

Not that this would surprise anyone who knows me, but I took myself out of the mainstream today. I left the 75% of Americans who have cable or satellite TV and have gone the route of a plain of TV with a DVD player hooked up.

Here's my justification - TV is too easy. A DVD - be it a movie to TV show on DVD - requires some commitment. It means telling yourself that I'm going to be occupied for the next 30 minutes to 3 hours. A TV just requires that your remote have working batteries. So I found myself killing 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, an hour over there watching the TV when there was nothing really good on. I'd turn on the news and watch it while I ate breakfast. Lunch, dinner? A good time to see what's happening in the world from the view point of Discovery or CNN. Nothing but the laundry to do? Let's see if there's anything good on TV.

So I was paying $40 a month to piss away my days 10 minutes at a time. That time is much better spent writing, fiddling with or riding one of my bikes, or just doing nothing. Sometimes, with all the distractions we set up for ourselves, the sheer conscious act of doing nothing is all you need to unwind from the day.