The Challenge: No television for 30 days.

Background

The other night I was laying in bed going through old episodes of Angel, and I was thinking about all the time wasted just sitting around watching TV. Not doing anything at all, except staring at an electric box in the corner of the room. For the most part, I hate sitting down with the intent to watch TV (unless it’s bed time). I have to be doing other things too, even if it’s just writing or drawing. But I always find myself getting distracted and I’m sure I’m not as productive as I should be.

Fears

This experiment has me worried for a couple of reasons. My biggest fear is that I’ll fail at it. Not so much that I’ll get the shakes and have an uncontrollable urge to watch soap operas, but that I’ll either forget and innocently start watching, or that I’ll make an exception (for the finale of True Blood, for example). I feel stupid for even worrying about this, but what does it say for me if I can’t go without television for one simple month?!

Now that I got that out of the way, I can say that I’m also kind of worried about not being able to sleep since I NEED a tv on to fall asleep. Unless I’m completely exhausted, my mind wanders for hours.

Ground Rules

I’m setting some rules for this coming month. Number one: Exercise DVDs and movie nights are allowed. I’m wondering if I should allow seasons 2 & 3 of the X-Files since I’m reading a book about them. If I do, I feel like it’ll be cheating, but if I don’t I’ll have to put reading my book on hold since I like to go through the episodes as I read about them. I’m considering putting my Netflix account on hold (gasp!) because it’ll make it harder to accidentally watch something, plus I’ll save a couple bucks. (Note: I don’t have cable so Netflix IS my cable.) Should TV be allowed at the gym? I don’t really pay attention to it anyway, but I usually tune into the Simpsons if it’s on after work. I think I might let that one slide because if I don’t I probably won’t do cardio for a full half hour. I guess that’s up in the air for now.

Speculations

I think it’ll be weird and quiet at first. Already just thinking about giving up TV makes me realize how much I watch it. Hopefully I’ll get some more reading done that I keep putting off.

I’m curious to see if I actually become more productive. Maybe I’ll read more, maybe I’ll do things outside more. I don’t *think* that my current TV habits prevent me from doing those things, so it’s hard to tell what will happen.