A couple days ago I began my fourth month without cable television. Three whole months without the wire and surprisingly, the thought police didn't come for me, nor did my eyes roll back into my skull from sheer boredom. At first I kind of missed having cable TV, especially when Breaking Bad and Lost started back up and I couldn't watch them, but now I hardly even think about it. I have too many interesting books and DVDs vying for my attention to get hung up on where my entertainment comes from. And I'm saving fifty bucks a month, which is adding up fast. In a way, it's almost like I gave myself a raise.
One of the more interesting side effects of getting rid of the wire is that my choice of entertainment is much more deliberate now than before. By "deliberate" I mean instead of flipping around the dial or idly choosing one of the recorded shows on the old Home Theater PC I have to actually think about what I want to watch, get the DVD out, put it into the player, and then watch. This deliberateness seems to have led to an increase in the overall quality of the shows I do eventually decide to watch. I'm much more likely to choose a nature documentary like Planet Earth or a movie over a 20 minute Curb Your Enthusiasm episode. I'd like to think that's because I'm smarter now but it's probably due to the fact that swapping DVDs in my player is inconvenient so I'm unconsciously gravitating towards longer more substantial shows.
I'm also noticing a tangible increase in my attention span and ability to concentrate. I spend more time reading now than before so I would guess that I'm gaining practice in staying on-task. One notable exception to this is that if I visit someone who has a television my attention is immediately drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It's like I can't look away. Trying to hold a conversation with someone when there's a TV on in the room is difficult. Impossible maybe. So there would seem to be something to all that talk about TV causing (or at least exacerbating) ADD/ADHD.
Speaking of reading, I've read more books in the past three months than probably the previous entire year. I raced through several history books of various flavors, a couple political philosophy tomes, and I'm getting ready to start Guy Murchie's The Seven Mysteries of Life, which gives every indication of being a most excellent read. Paradoxically, much of the money saved by canceling cable has gone towards purchasing books. Funny how that works.
Another thing I've noticed is how many people have nothing else to talk about but TV shows. I'm always getting asked if I saw such-and-such show and when I say No, I don't have cable they just look at me. It shuts the conversation (what little of it there would've been had I been able to partake in it) completely down. So chalk that up as another side effect of ditching the boob-tube: discovering how pointless and shallow much of what passes for conversation these days really is.
Now that I've been without it for a while, I can't imagine going back to the pusher, err, I mean cable TV.
