Kill Your Television!!! Is It really as easy as it sounds? To go home after work and instead of turning the boob tube on for some gibber-gabber, a silly satire, and an adventure packed movie, you settle for switching on the tunes, painting on some canvas, and doing some late-night cookie birthing. Maybe. Maybe it is just that easy. I do know, however, that the idiot box and myself have a long-history of wasting hours (and my consciousness) away and just severing that chord will not be as easy as it sounds. Actually it will, it just will take some time by using the consciousness that normally would have been fully developed (like a bicep the size of a bowling ball) by now but unfortunately I have been mesmerized by the talking cube of negativity. 
"What is with this dribble?" you may ask? Well-after hearing that a long-standing friend (and person of inspiration for me) was on 36 years without a television I had to admit I was crazy impressed and dumbfounded at the same time. I mean, I am not ignorant and know of many people who go without a television for long periods of time. I am just not one of them. In fact, this child was brought up with the tube as her surrogate baby sitter. I had Jim Henson's puppets and Wonder Woman's long legs and boobs to keep me company during my wee little years.
Hey now, I was a sponge with books, but this budding actor's love for acting had me infatuated with tv at an extremely young age-and that was a drug that I took to like white on rice!
So, for retrospect, I compiled all the hours that I have spent watching tv in my head-averaging 4 hours a day-that is 1459.9 hours a year!!! That is 60.8 days of doing nothing but sitting in front of the tube and checking out! That means that for every 6 years of my tv-watching life, I am spending 1 of those years doing nothing but watching tv!!! I realized, "HOLY SHIT!!! What a waste of time in my life!!!"
So last night I made the decision that I would start weening down my tv time to 2 hours or less every day and start using that other time to be more social with my friends, whip out my artistic ideas on canvas, or be more proactive with pursuing my acting career.
Cutting tv time doesn't sound like a big deal but let me tell you, it REALLY makes you evaluate what kind of programming your going to want to watch when you are limited to only 2 hours! That is just enough time for 1 movie or 2-1 hour shows.....no aimless channel surfing or netflix browsing here anymore! What was interesting to watch was my girlfriend was being very supportive and showed interest in this new-found challenge of mine, but she would easily get sucked in to what my roommate was watching on the tube-I think it was G.I.Jane or something. I was whizzing through the living room and made a comment and she was humorously baffled because she didn't even realize she was getting sucked in to the program in the first place. That made me realize that the power the television has at distracting us and removing us from reality is just as powerful as drugs or alcohol! 
So I will keep you posted on my luck at cutting back on the tv time-and more importantly-I will be including stories of all the new adventures that I am having with all of my free time!
Till next time-I propose to you to ween back on your tv time and explore what you do with all that free time~Liberty
