My New Year’s resolution was to add joy to the world, not see what joy I could get out of it. Part of adding meant writing.
Between Suzie and I, my Mom, our son and two dogs, I needed space to write without distraction and with a full house there was only one place left. Yep, the room with the television. So, I moved the cable box out and turned it off to see what would happen.
Nothing. Nothing at all happened.
It was boring and long and quiet and eventually sad. It wasn’t the lack of TV that was sad. It was the long stretch of me doing nothing with no excuses.
Except think, a lot of thinking was going on. Then I had a mind-bending, future-changing thought.
I realized I’d always been doing nothing. I was just doing it with the TV on.
Now, when I’m staring off into space with a blank look, I’m not doing nothing. I’m writing. Though it looks almost the same it’s anything but.
I’m contributing, not consuming. I’m trying to add the joy instead of flipping channels to the next distraction.
I’m serious about my New Year’s goal. I still watch TV with Suzie. But I watch it less and only the shows we love and only after I’ve done something good.
But things have changed. Nothing never happens at my house anymore. There’s always something.
Photo Credit: jambina via Compfight cc
It funny that you shut your tv off. My wife and I also shut our tv off. We only watch a pre recorded episodes of MASH right before we go to bed and sometimes the local news. It has changed our lives too. We do things like… Talk, play games, study the Word and study our passion. Mine being music.
I might have heard about that music thing. Author Dean Koontz refuses to get on the internet, even to do research. He hires someone to do it for him because it’s such an attention thief. I guess I’ll have to work up to that one. Can’t afford it yet.
What an insight! Way too true!