I did it. I never thought I could. I never thought I would. I turned off the TV. No more television for me. At least not in the foreseeable future. I watched too much TV anyway. I'd become dependent on it. And there was nothing I really liked anyway. Old movies mostly. It was a hypnotic distraction from the harsh routine of life and in its own way it worked for me. But it wasn't good for me.
Too much news. Too much old news. Too much repetitive news. Too much celebrity news about people with frail personalities, boring personalities, self-indulgent personalities and pseudo-accomplishments. Too many stations. Too many commercials. Too many sales pitches. Too much droning and droning and droning about the same things over and over and over.
But now I am released. It's as if someone took a heavy blanket off me on a day that turned warm after a chilly night. Really. I had the sensation of comfort and clarity in just a couple of days. It's like one of those vacations you never take where you think you'll leave the phone turned off so no one can bother you and you can finally get some real rest. You can have the peace of your own thoughts again...or just the thoughts of those you choose; your friends, your family, the people you'd like to see again, and most importantly the people who write books.
And exercising too when I get tired of reading the 4 or 5 books I have going at the same time now. And work of all kinds. Doing things that give me real satisfaction because I've created so much time I didn't have before because I was being stupefied into nonexistence by the television's hypnotic images.
But I'm not manic about it. I don't turn it on and I avoid it when it's on in the house. There's no big temptation for me now. The Internet satisfies me for news. It's more current anyway. Minutes and hours away from the events instead of days away like you get on TV or in the newspapers.
I'm confident about it. More importantly, I'm comfortable with it because I've been through this before. An age ago I stopped smoking cigarettes this way. I thought about it for a long time but then I just decided one day to give it up and I did. I've been through a few diets like that too. It takes a long time sometimes but it eventually works for me.
I have to be honest about it though. It's not all willpower. Usually it's some traumatic experience that forces me past the same resistance in my mind that we all have to face. For the cigarettes it was easy. I couldn't breathe and I like breathing a lot so it was really a simple decision for me to quit. One of my diets started when I saw myself on a bicycle in just a pair of shorts. I had that Ugh! moment and right after that I lost 42 pounds in 2 months. I gained it all back but I'm older too and I look better anyway. And this time I found myself with a money problem stressing me out so I looked for whatever actions I could control to get a handle on it and in a tangential kind of way dumping TV was it.
So what next. A lot. Things are going great. It's not that my problems have disappeared but my time and ability to solve my problems has expanded. Also my personality is being nurtured by the books I read with great ideas about courage, engagement, and resolution in achieving my goals.
I don't know how long this will last but every other time I've done something like this I've never returned to my previous self. I always took some of my new self-control with me and made my life better for it. Until this day, my successes have stayed with me more or less. Better eating habits. Better body shape. Better mental attitude. And well the cigarettes, I never missed them a bit.
So for anyone who can make this very very difficult leap, take it from me that there's a wonderful world waiting for you on the other side. It's the world you dream about, and with your new found freedom you have the opportunity to make it real for yourself. Just get off the stuff.
