This weekend I went to Blog Elevated for the second time. You might think that going to the same conference twice you might not learn anything. You’d be wrong. New speakers, new sessions, new bloggers to meet—I am so overwhelmed with ideas and thoughts and new knowledge. If you’re a reader of my weekly email, I compared my thoughts to seagulls when someone is throwing their leftover lunch at them. My thoughts are many. They are frenzied. They are whipping around and biting one another and fighting over that piece of crust with a little mayo. Okay, so all comparisons break down somewhere. The point: I have a lot on my mind. Changes are a’comin.
One big change I didn’t expect to be making? A change in how much TV I watch.
I didn’t go to the conference thinking anything about TV and yet that’s the easiest and most up-front takeaway. At first I sort of fought this realization and then I confessed it to myself and now I’m confessing it to you.
I’m Kiki and I am a TV holic.
I watch TV when I’m nursing Quin. I watch TV during nap time. During lunch time. After the kids’ bedtime. I watch TV, it seems, ALL the time.
All while I’ve got my laptop so I can pretend like I’m being productive. But how can I write an awesome blog post when I’ve got Criminal Minds up on the big screen? We don’t even have regular TV, much less cable, but we do have Netflix, that foul temptress. After Cooper was born, I watched all ten (TEN) seasons of CSI: Miami. Before Quin, I watched The Closer. Now I’ve been working my way quite steadily through Criminal Minds. Oh–AFTER I finished all of Leverage. (Yes, since Quin was born.) This whole binge-watching thing is right up my alley. I love binging.
But this weekend I heard Ashley Hackshaw from Lil Blue Boo talk about her love of books and writing. This from a girl who professed to have failed English, a girl who didn’t like reading growing up. I could FEEL her love of books and writing and words palpably in the air as she spoke and it stirred something up in me: memory and longing.
You see, I was the little girl hoarding outdated reading textbooks, taking them home from my elementary school classes so I could read MORE after school. I was the girl filling out journal after journal and notebook after notebook for YEARS. Every day. Every. DAY. We almost need a storage unit to hold them all. I think I’ve put pen to paper no more than a dozen times since Quin was born. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THAT LITTLE GIRL?
Children, for sure. (Psst- Click to see my post entitled “Children’d” depicting what would have happened if Teen Girl Squad grew up and had babies.) But other than children, TV has been steadily killing my mojo. I *think* I’m being productive while the TV is on. But if there were a hidden camera, I think I’d see myself slack-jawed, staring at the electric box more often than not. One of my closest high school friends called it the Satan box and she really meant it and we kind of laughed at her. (And then she won one at our graduation party and we really laughed. Then she sold it and went on a mission trip. Possibly the best use of a TV ever.)
Rob and I didn’t even own a TV when we first got married. Sometimes we ask ourselves, “What did we DO?” And I remember this one time we went roller blading on the Terry Hershey trail and there were all these gnats and we kept getting them in our mouths which was gross, but also funny and because we were laughing, we got MORE of them in our mouths and then when we came home we ate a whole pizza to wash down the gnats. That’s just one night, but I still remember it. What did we do last week? Um….
Before Netflix, we didn’t even have the 20 basic stations (which are 8 local, 8 en Espanol, & 4 weird religious). Except for those few years I was American Idol obsessed, when I made Rob fashion an antenna out of wire hangers. There was nothing TO watch back then. It was easy to ignore the Satan box! Now there are too many shows I like and too little time to waste watching them.
So I’m saying goodbye to Shemar Moore. (Note: Hotch is actually my favorite with his perma-grumpyface, but I think Agent Morgan has a bigger fan base out there, so I’m directing this at Shemar Moore.) I’m saying goodbye to TV for at least a month week.
A month sounds terrifyingly long, so we will start with a week. I hope it’s easier than the time I tried the Atkins diet when, on day 3, I was found crying in the aisle of the “health” bars, trying to find something with chocolate and under 5 carbs. Let’s hope we NEVER get to that place again. (Seriously. I cried in that aisle.) I want to get some things done! I want to write real writing! I want to finish an ebook on how to raise kids that DON’T become baby Pharisees and maybe write more of my fiction and also I want to make sure my posts here are stellar.
I’m plan to listen to music and read books and write in my journal. I’m going to find that little girl who read 100 pages a day. I know she’s still in here somewhere but has been stuck in a corner because of the electric box. Begone, you flat screen of mind-numbing entertainment! Find some other soul to suck. I have Things to Do. Saying goodbye to TV means saying hello to much more important things. And tonight I said a nice, long goodbye with four episodes of Criminal Minds to tide me over.
Have you ever taken a TV fast? Is TV even a part of your daily life?
(And also tell me all your favorite shows so I can think longingly about them while NOT watching them.)
To read about what other people learned and what changes they are making as a result of Blog Elevated, you can find recaps HERE.