While road-tripping with AJ and Bethany (Mark’s brother-in-law and sister), we decided that we would all ditch tv for the entire month of July. This came about because we talked about how Chip and Joanna (from the tv show Fixer Upper) took marriage advice to not watch tv at home for the entire first year of their marriage.
Mark immediately moved the tv out of the living room and into the closet. I think this was vital for us to not cheat. We had all just come home from an exhausting camping trip so it was especially hard because we all wanted to unwind and watch tv. We kept trying to figure out what to do but then someone would inevitably forgot about our promise and suggest that we watch a movie. It’s such a good default. You don’t have to be on 100% of the time when you’re around other people but you’re still around and “socializing” with people.
Mark and I noticed that we tend to turn on the tv when we’re about to eat dinner and then we end up keeping it on all night. We didn’t feel like we had enough time to talk ever which is such a bizarre thing to say. It turned out that we didn’t like interrupting and talking over the television to each other.
It’s been less than a week since we started this. In that time, I tackled cleaning two major cleaning projects. I finished my pile of unread comics which was ridiculously daunting for a while there. I got caught up on all of my pen pals, I wrote a blog post last week, and I’ve been writing a ton to get ready for my talk next week. I tried to find a dress with cupcake print, and after struggling to find one, I decided to go to the fabric store and get fabric to make one myself. I did a test project by making a skirt, and I felt so powerful that I made something myself. When the tv was on, I never found myself being able to devout 100% of my energy to doing something creative and cool. It was such a high!
I keep going back to this quote that I heard about wanting to create more content than I consume. It seems so impossible, but I’m really glad that I’ve had the peace and quiet of time without the tv on. To be fair, we have been listening to Hamilton non-stop, but I’ve been able to really listen to the soundtrack and feel all of the emotions involved. I stopped trying to do too many things at once. I’m curious to see what we’ll do once it’s August. We’ll see if this lasts, but it’s been nice so far.