The tube first made its debut in my household at my tender age of nine, and I have been hooked ever since. Well up until 4 months ago when I declared a need for my time to be spend more wisely. It hit me one fall day, like a brick falling from the sky that I spend an average of 5 hours daily glued to the television. On the weekends I would spend anywhere from 6 to 8 hours on each of the weekend days. If I choose to be conservative about my calculation that is approximately 40 hours a week.
Yikes that is an incredible amount of time to spend on something that is bad for you! So…the tube had to go!

My initial strategy was that I would continue to get cable but only watch a few shows as opposed to all the mindless surfing and watching whatever was on. So with my cable still available to me when I needed, I would get home from work and not watch television but instead do household chores, play tennis, read etc.

This lasted all of one week! By the following weekend, I was craving my much needed daily dose of mindless television. Since my cable was still hooked up, there was nothing in my way I went ahead and fed my starving addiction.

Two days later with my gluttonous addiction well fed, the thought of using my time wisely popped into my head once again. With the first strategy tested and failed, I had to come up with something that had a better potential for success. Hence the idea to have my cable disconnected. With no cable, even if I wanted to watch television so bad, I had no way of doing it. There was only one hurdle with this strategy, get my hubby (K) on board. Fortunately convincing K did not require too much effort as he is not much of a tube fan. Yeah! So in a couple of weeks the cable was disconnected and that brought an end, cold turkey, to television watching.
So what to do with all the extra time?

1. Reading - I have always enjoyed reading and now I have all the time I need to read to enhance my vocabulary as well as my imagination.
2. Knitting – this is an art that my mother and I used to enjoy together, now I do it to remember the good old days, my mother and knit gifts for friends and family (very personal, cheap and the receiver will think you are so thoughful)
3. Radio – when am knitting I like to listen to the radio. My favorite radio station is National Public Radio (NPR) .
4. Games – occasionally I will spend quality time with K playing board games and one of the favorites is Carcassonne
5. Eating Right – With the television on, I ate a lot of crap! I attribute this to the fact that I was mindlessly eating because I was so engrossed in television I was not aware of what I was putting in my mouth. Now, K and I sit at the dinning room table, talk about how our day was as we savor a healthy dish together.
6. Exercise – I have embarked on a running program, Couch-to-5k not only to lose some weight but to maintain a healthy state of mind. I always found an excuse not to exercise and that excuse revolved around watching television. Not any more.
7. Writing – writing, just like running, is my way of channeling built up tension from my days allowing me to relax.

Every person is different, so what has worked for me might not necessarily work for you BUT if you limit how much television you watch and use that time to work on things that improve your life you will surely not go wrong. Give it a try!