The wonderful world of television

Up until a few weeks ago I was happy – I had more than enough time to read, to program, to hand out with my girlfriend and waste hour after hour drinking coffee with my friends. I managed to do all these things while working full time, running a photography business and taking a class at a local community college.

When I told people about all the stuff that I used to get done in a day they often wondered if I possessed some secret time-management superpower. However, the secret was simple – I did not watch TV.

Six years ago I realized that I was paying sixty dollars a month for a bunch of cable channels that had absolutely nothing to offer. The only channels that I ever watched – the Discovery, the National Geographic, Animal Planet, the History Channel – were so addictive that sometimes I would stay up until 4AM watching some special on the Coliseum and then after two hours of sleep I’d drag myself out of bed only to call in sick and crawl back under the covers.

After missing one too many days at work because of my addiction to educational programs I finally called the cable company and cancelled my service. All of a sudden, as if by magic, I had endless hours of unoccupied time on my hands – time to read, to take weekend trips, to do all those little things that I’ve wanted to do for years but never had time because of the evil black box in my living room.

The only drawback of not having a TV was that a couple of weeks after disconnecting my cable service I could no longer participate in the conversations of the lunchroom crowd – I had no idea what kind of prank the latest “Jackass” pulled or why the phrase “You are the weakest link. Goodbye” is so annoying.

In the last couple of years television companies, in their infinite wisdom, have introduced even more reality shows, thus making me a pariah among my co-workers. After all, how can you participate in a conversation if you don’t know that “this guy with long hair, you know which one I’m talking about, the one from the American Idol” really sucked last night? Or that someone ate a boxful of roaches to win fifty thousand dollars?

I kept trying to convince myself that (and I successfully did so for 6 years) that I did not need television – I got all of my news from the Internet and thankfully Barnes and Noble has not ran out of books yet – I was going to be perfectly fine without cable TV.

My downfall came from a very unexpected direction. About two months ago my Verizon DSL started to randomly drop my internet connection. At first the problem was simply a small annoyance until one fine morning I was working from home and when the connection suddenly disappeared I ended up losing over 2000 lines of code. Moreover, every time the connection dropped it would take longer and longer to come back. On one memorable occasion I had to live without internet for 2 days. My calls to Verizon tech support did not seem to make any difference – I called 5 times, probably spent a total of 3 hours on hold and did not get anywhere – the problem simply persisted.

Finally I got fed up, cancelled my Verizon phone and DSL services and signed up with Comcast. The sales lady was very helpful in telling me that I could save money by getting basic cable service with my internet services – it would be cheaper to combine the two than to get a stand-alone cable internet.

I made the mistake of giving in…

At first having a functioning TV in my house did not make much difference in my life – driven by the inertia of my television-free years I only occasionally watched “The Simpsons” or “The Family Guy.” That is until my girlfriend became addicted to the “American Idol”…

… And guess what – in the last couple of weeks I only read before I go to bed, I only program at work and I no longer go for walks in the evenings. On the bright side, I know who Simon Cowell is and why you should not paint a love message on the wall with a blood-colored paint like the guy from “Beauty and the Geek.”

All and all, I’m having fun – I come home, grab a plate of food and veg out in front of my TV for hours of wholesome entertainment. Who needs books anyway?