I love TV. I love the stories, the drama, the complexity, the cheap entertainment — any and all of it. But as much as I love TV, I realize that it keeps me from living my own life. I get so excited to watch other people’s (real or fictional) lives that sometimes I get more excited about their lives than my own.
But not this week. For better or for worse, this week I turned off the TV.
Okay, so it wasn’t that dramatic, but there’s more. In its place, I cracked upon some real, physical books. Oh yeah, the kind of thing you have to actively engage with to fully immerse yourself in. Like Game of Thrones (I’m talking both the TV show and the books).
There were some interesting discoveries made in my TV-less week that I want to tell you about. So without further ado, here they are.
TV is an addiction
Turns out, I had an addiction and I didn’t even know! The first day all I could think about was the fact that I couldn’t watch TV that night, and it bummed me out. My palms were itching to grab the remote, click on the power and hear the low buzz of the TV, if anything just to know it was there. This sounds absolutely ridiculous, I know. But I’m telling you, I was addicted. The thought of reading without having the TV on didn’t even sound pleasurable; it sounded like homework. And I think that speaks loudly to the kind of world we’re living in. So many of us, myself included, want easy stimulation — to scroll through our social media feeds, watch One Direction’s Tattoo Roulette video on YouTube for the 12th time, or flip on the TV. In our downtime, most of us want to relax by having some sort of passive entertainment, not to become actively engaged in another thing when we’ve been actively engaged in life all day. Now, looking at this from a new perspective, I think that’s kind of sad.
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As much as I love it, TV makes me feel complacent
I didn’t realize how much I truly cared about what the Kardashians are doing until I stopped watching TV for a week. Actually, I didn’t realize how much entertainment as a whole ruled my life, until it didn’t. Just to give you an idea of the amount of TV I watch in a week, here are a few:
Dance Moms
New Girl
Catfish: the TV Show
MTV Suspect
The Amazing Race
How to Get Away with Murder
Sherlock
I Am Cait
American Horror Story
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry
Pretty Little Liars
E! News
…and any number of movies on Netflix or playing live on TV
The worst part? This isn’t even all of them. I’m telling you, I get roped into TV so easily and it makes me so complacent. I should tell you, this is something I knew before this week. But, it was a thought I didn’t care to entertain. Like I told you before, I love TV. And you never want to face up to the fact that something you love is also something that holds you back, something that has you cancelling your Friday night plans…
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I read my textbooks more thoroughly
One of the most productive parts of resolving to read more meant that I read more of my assigned readings for class. It’s no secret that most people don’t read all of their assigned reading for class (and if you do, know that I genuinely admire you and am proud of you). With all that time I had spent watching TV, I could now use it to better myself by actually reading my textbooks. Now, I’m not going to shit you, I didn’t read everything. Just because I wasn’t watching TV didn’t suddenly make my textbooks more exciting. But there was a 31-page reading assignment I was given for one of my journalism classes that I read all the way through, which I never do. Typically, I just read the first ten pages of these 30+ page assignments and call it a day. But this time was different. The story was one that had run in the New York Times in December about a transgender woman and her transition, along with the difficulties she had been having because of it. It was a moving story Seriously, I got a lot out of that reading. So much so that it’s still on my mind; it’s still something I find myself thinking about — this woman and her struggle. A phenomenon I rarely experience with TV: having my thoughts significantly provoked.
Reading makes me feel really good about myself
Perhaps the greatest thing I learned in this time is that reading makes me feel so good about myself. It makes me feel strong, intelligent and empowered. Like I’m doing something to better myself. Instead of paying attention to the actors and reality stars on TV, I’m paying attention to myself and to my life. I read a mix of nonfiction and fiction books along with some magazines, including:
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (author of Gone Girl)
God No! Signs You May be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales by Penn Jillette (actually a really funny read)
Man Up! Tales of My Delusional Self-Confidence by Ross Mathews
Binge by Tyler Oakley
Seventeen Magazine (one with Fifth Harmony on the cover, and another with Ellie Goulding)
The Woman I Wanted to Be by Diane Von Furstenberg (she has led one of the most interesting lives)
Condé Nast Traveler Magazine
Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth beyond Blackfish by John Hargrove with Howard Chua-Eoan (I’m low-key obsessed with the 2013 documentary Blackfish)
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It’s a shorter list than TV, but it’s a more profound list. By nature, books allow us to go deeper into a subject than we *typically* can with TV and movies. For me, this allows for a better sense of achievement once I’ve finished a book. When I finish a TV show binge, mostly I just feel like what have I just done with my life? Which, admittedly, aren’t my proudest moments. Also, I just want to note, I didn’t finish any of these books, yet. But I will.
I wrote this whole article not to say that TV sucks the life out of you and you shouldn’t watch it. I wrote this article to say that I think reading is really underrated. One of the most interesting things I found was that when I stopped watching TV, I stopped giving concern to it. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that Kim Kardashian is still living with Kris Jenner, or that yet another person found a way to catfish someone who was just trying to find love in this big, bad world. No, I was concerned about the connections I was making to the authors of these books and articles I was reading. From what I read, I came away with the hard-won lessons of these writers and a sort of relationship with them and the other characters they introduced in the book, whether they be fictional or nonfictional.
All in all, I’m still going to watch TV, but I’m going to make more time for reading and limit the amount of TV I watch in any given week. Because I deserve my utmost attention, not the people living in my TV.