Unplugged

We are officially on a TV sabbatical. At first it wasn’t by choice because our TV gave up on us, I’m sure from overuse. Actually it was 9 years old and had been warning us for sometime now. However, after much discussion we have decided not to buy a new TV. At first there were some withdrawals from not being able to watch some of our favorite shows but we’ve had the infamous writers strike and a trip to Texas to help us cope through the first couple of weeks. We are officially at day number 39 and counting. We cancelled our cable but are hanging on to our online movie rentals--since we do have a computer.

What have I learned during this transition? 1) A new big screen plasma with all the bells and whistles that my heart could desire doesn’t come cheap. If I give it some time maybe I’ll convince my self that a television that has images as tall as my children is not a necessity in life. 2) As a family we’ve gained a huge chunk of time back in our lives that we didn’t realize was missing. We’ve become more oriented and tuned into each other instead of the box in the center of the room. We play games, talk about our days, read, play outside and just rest. We’ve also been able to reorient our living room. 3) It is not necessary to keep up with the Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters, House, American Idols and Wolf Blitzer’s. (There are many, many, many other shows that filled our time) The world around us will go on and so should we. 4) I don’t feel as isolated as I thought I would. The water cooler talk that I thought I would miss really is very minimal. Again more time in my day. 5) Children really are like a sponge. Around the time that our television was going out we had been watching a lot of CNN and there were several election ads, not to mention the fact that we were in Texas just before the primary elections. Needless to say Zane now does a really good imitation of Barack Obama. Whenever he sees a picture of him online or a billboard he says in a deep voice “I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message.”

I’m sure we’ll have a television again some day but for now we are enjoy being unplugged.

Michael