I moved a few months ago, primarily for the purpose of being closer to work. The advantage of drastically improving my commute times promised that I would have much more free time on my weeknights as well as a greater amount of relaxation on my weekends as a side effect of not being cooped up in a car 10+ hours a week. In addition to gaining time and sanity, my new place is nicer than the old one with responsible landlords who seem to be bound by some sort of law stating that they are responsible for the condition of the building I live in. Imagine that! I am also close to the beach now and I must admit it’s pretty terrific. Yes, I like the new place a lot. I’ve got the beach, a nice quiet community, bike paths, tons of good stuff. Except television.
Now television is transmitted in a number of ways to houses and apartments across America and the world. There’s cable, which is cheap, effective and ubiquitous throughout most urban and suburban areas. There’s satellite which through the marvels of modern technology can be fired from cannons in space directly into your living room without destroying the roof or upstairs neighbors in a blaze of laser light and exploding gas mains. And there is regular old local channel reception through the air. So what’s the problem? It’s not like you can live near the coast and really be in the boonies. The issue is not that I can’t get television, it’s that I didn’t get television.
When I moved into my last apartment just over 4 years ago, one of the first things that I did was go out and buy my very own television. Along with that TV set I ordered digital cable. And my god was it the best thing ever. I didn’t even have a couch. I didn’t even have an entertainment system. The television sat on the floor with the cable box next to it and I laid right there on the floor with it marveling at over one hundred channels of digital goodness. I loved that program guide. Not the full screen one, the one I could browse while I watched other shows, always tuning my viewing to optimal enjoyment. I loved television, and even though she was spending the night with almost every other single guy (not to mention the single women.. and families) in the city, I still spent my evening with television almost every night.
By last year, I watched about an average of two and a half hours of television a day. A little less on some days, but a little more on weekends. I would usually turn it on in the background only to have it absorb an entire day, just because I wasn’t quite bored enough to get into the sunlight. So when I moved, I decided that I would perform an experiment. I would see what happens when you take a TV addict and put them in an environment when they cannot watch television whenever they want, basically… an apartment with no TV. Unfortunately no one volunteered leaving only me. So I didn’t order cable. Really the experiment grew on it’s own out of me not having cable. Moving completely winded me for the weekend and I wasn’t really settled for over a week when I had internet access again. By that point I wasn’t sure if I wanted cable or satellite so I hesitated. By the time I was done hesitating I had decided to try to go without.
The benefits to this plan were good. I would save money on the cable bill and have one less potential way to forget to pay bills. I would have more time to do other things like go outside to that beach, clean my apartment, and write for my website (hah!). And. Well.. That’s it. At the time I made my decision I had forgotten one thing which I really should have considered: I love baseball. One of the biggest reasons that I watched so much television every day was that I would often watch as many as 6 baseball games per week. I realize that’s a lot. I also realize most people can’t even watch one. Well I love baseball. And I have not seen a complete baseball game on television all season. It may be too late to back out now, though. Most cable and satellite companies want a commitment. They want a year contract. Strangely enough, so do apartments. Having already been here four months, I’d be committing to at least that much time in addition to my year lease to get tv. I’m not really sure I’m ready for that kind of relationship. Err… I mean, I might want to move.
So I may be stuck. But it’s not all bad, I still got the free time and money from not having cable. So what have I been doing with my time? I do go to the beach, sometimes I even try to get a tan while I’m down there. I go there to make up for the radiation I’m missing from the TV by being in the sun. So far the sun has burned me an infinite number of times more than my TV ever did. I also spend a lot of time on the couch, staring longingly at the blank screen. Mostly, I use my newfound free hours to sit in front of the computer. All I’ve really done is upset the balance of power between my addictions. Whereas I used to sit at the computer and feel distracted from the internet by what’s on TV, now the internet has my complete attention. They’re not even in the same room anymore, so I can’t put on a movie and have it separate my attention. The worst part is that because of years of sitting in front of the internet at work, it’s not even terribly interesting. As readers of my site are well aware, the internet has a disturbing lack of content.
There is a silver lining to my unsated desire for television though. Whenever I see any TV, I am instantly transfixed. Even commercials are interesting to me again. If I go to sports bars, I usually end up watching the TV there instead of talking to people. All of the content seems fresh there again. It’s not really a rerun if I haven’t seen it. I feel like someone who’s been living off of grubs in the forest, any food that’s actually been cooked is like a boon from the heavens. Television is an amazing supply of inexhaustible content.
Not having TV isn’t all bad, but it isn’t all daisies and ice cream cones either. I miss being able to flip the channels on days when I don’t feel like drumming up a whole lot of entertainment myself, but in it’s absence, television has given way to biking and reading. The truest test of my sanity is still ahead though. You see, the baseball season is very long and the individual games don’t count so much on their own. But the playoffs.. oh god. I’m going to have to hold someone’s TV hostage.