Media diet

You'll be seeing a lot less of me on the internet for the next 4 weeks.

I'm hoping to get a chance to blog regularly still, but our family is going on a media diet and that means limiting my time on the internet as well. My husband knows there is no way he can take away my internet completely and still have a sane wife, so we're simply putting a daily cap on the internet instead of taking it away completely (like we are with TV).

We've been having discussions lately about what we are spending our time doing - how much time is spent vegging out in front of TV reruns, messing around pointlessly on the internet, etc. - and about the quality of stuff that is entering our home in general. So this is our experiment to see how much we can do without and if we are happier, better adjusted individuals when it's over. Less entertained maybe (I do love my TV) but I would put money on the better-adjusted part.

We will be doing more together as a family. We will be doing some of the chores we have been putting off. We will likely be doing more ready and games and conversing instead of flopping on the couch with mindless entertainment in front of us.

To remind himself, my husband removed the batteries from the TV remote. He disabled the wireless card in my computer (which I made him restart since I DO still get to come online) to assist with the reminders, too.

We went 2 months 2 years ago without cable (and therefore without much access to TV at all) and really got out of the habit for awhile of just having the TV on and watching reruns of reruns of shows we like (you know, on the cable networks that show reruns of still-running or recently defunct shows for hours every day) . We were better for it and we weeded out the shows that we didn't really care about that much to begin with. But now we're in a rut again and it's time to do something about it.

There's a blogger I've read for years now that doesn't have a TV. They rent movies and even some TV shows on DVD and watch them on her laptop. Sometimes they even watch the shows you can find online if they are really interested. But their kids have very little to no TV in their lives and I bet they don't miss it at all. If I weren't such a TV addict, I would happily go that way, myself. And maybe, when this is done, I can. Who knows how we will feel on the otherside of this experiment? But I'm ready to try it out.

So, you may see me less often on Facebook. You'll definitely not see me racking up any new high scores on Bubble breaker. I'll still be visiting my favorite blogs and my favorite message boards, but possibly less frequently. And I'm not sure that I'll be any worse for it, honestly.