We Turned Off the Television and Turned on Our Lives

Television has become a major part of everyone's lives. Almost every room in the house will have a television. Children's rooms even have televisions in it. Many of the rooms with the television also is hooked up with cable or satellite connections and DVD's so that there is never s shortage of entertainment to watch. I used to be one of these people, probably worse. I worked for a cable company and had all the channels on every television and DVR's on each set. But then I quit my job and moved and haven't called to get cable set back up and may not get it.

I am learning to live without TV. I haven't watched TV in about 3 months and really do not miss it at all. I am shocked more than anyone. I am shocked more that my family hasn't missed television. They were the ones that stayed home watching TV all day while I worked, they had the TV on 24/7 most the time. Whether they were watching it or not they had the TV on for background noise. So what do we do now since we don't watch television?

The things that we are doing instead of watching 5 hours of television every night are much better than watching other people's lives. Now we are creating our own reality. We eat dinner then go outside and walk or we grab the fishing rods and head to the lake for a few hours. We talk to each other. We actually have a whole conversation now instead of trying to fit a conversation into 60 seconds spots several times an hour.

We pulled out the board games, dusted them off and play games and laugh and enjoy each others company. We have music playing in the background and sometimes actually get up and dance. We play cards and learn new games. We even played charades one night. It was so much fun.

When we do want to watch something, we watch a DVD, this happens maybe about twice week we will watch a movie after it gets dark and we can't be outside doing something. But then it has to be a really good movie or we don't spend the time watching it.

We have benefited greatly by turning off the televisions. We have lost weight because now we walk at night after dinner and we're not couch potatoes eating in front of the televisions. We have a happier dog because she gets the attention that she wants and walks with us. While we don't see many of the neighbors because they are inside watching TV we are enjoying ourselves greatly. So we have the whole neighborhood to ourselves. Even most of the kids are inside watching television or playing video games.

Do we miss television? Sometimes, I would be lying if I said we didn't. But we can still watch some of our favorite shows online without the commercials, and when we do watch a show online we are very choosey about what we want to watch. Most of the shows we watched were just on to have something to watch we really weren't interested in them actually.

Television doesn't control our schedules anymore. And we have never been happier.