OMG! No Cable! Experiment # 555

I did it and I'm proud!

 I took a deep breathe and discontinued my cable. It was a conscious decision for a few reasons..all sound ones! My son' s grades were looking mighty sick, my challenged daughter was becoming a true TV addict and I was beginning to turn on the TV as soon as my keys hung on my hook. No more...my rebel yell bellowed across the valley! Enough!

So...began the first few months of severe withdrawal. Profuse swearing, sweating and intense craving started. No "Dancing with the Stars".... "Breaking Bad" or ESPN. My son couldn't get it...this was for his own good and the good of all mankind. After all, how can he get into Med school with his mind only on Tosh O instead of geometry? And my challenged child wasn't being challenged with canned laughter from her fav Disney shows! And I certainly wasn't getting my writing done or the dishes as I hung to the very words of the crew on The View! So drastic measures were taken.

Now..I don't intentionally want pain and suffering for my family but I knew we could do this. After four months things got slowly better. We rented movies from our local library...5-8 a week...and I actually got to see many a movie I had missed watching all those fake "reality" shows. We became a family who truly Chose what we viewed and it was empowering. We read more...spent more time doing arts and crafts and yes..talking to each other! We sat as a family, popcorn and chips with salsa and had fun. Of course to the rest of the world we were like the Amish.

 Other family members asked when we were getting the horse and buggy and we weren't as up as the world on what was happening in TV land...but we were fine. Internet kept us abreast if necessary on what the new episode of Justified was doing and sports scores could still be viewed. Our daily newspaper still informed us on current events. We survived!

So now its nine months into my experiment # 555. I plan to have cable back for the summer but I can honestly say we will have limited viewing. My son's grades improved a great deal and my budding artist child produced some Picasso like works. We all lost a few pounds and we now use the yoga mats for yoga. Even my cats seem to enjoy the sound of tribal drumming over the annoying commercials screaming at us to buy buy buy!

  Do I believe the world will find peace and all our economic woes will be cured now? Of course not...but as for me and my family....we will watch the "boob tube" much less frequently and my experiment # 555 was a success. Next...we will try being vegans....watch out world!!!!!