The Year Without Cable TV

May 31, 2014 we cancelled cable television. The minute Doug made the call I felt a curious sense of liberation. We were never intense watchers of TV, but speaking for myself, it became all too easy to let one cooking show slide into another. The friendly women and the invitation into their kitchens was hard to resist some evenings. A voice was growing inside of me that warned it was not healthy, it wasn’t a real world. I didn’t want to spend the last half of my life not living a life. A life that I defined by my choices, a life that would engage me with vibrant individuals, a life where I could rediscover beauty. Grief and child loss is very isolating, and the more isolated I became, the less likely I was to ever journey out of the safety of my home. So, we pulled the plug.

I didn’t want to spend the last half of my life not living a life.

It was a non-event, until that first evening alone. I usually ate dinner with my “girls” Ina Garten and Rhee Drummond. Doug works late nearly every night and I have to eat early, so I turned to watching fairy tale lives of a gorgeous beach house and a ranch with horses. I had carried my plate out and even sat down, then realized no more dinner with Ina and Rhee. So I wandered back out to the table, cleared the cats off, and sat down. It was odd for about a week, and only at dinner time, the rest of the day I never gave the TV a thought. Now I am back to good habits, I even use utensils most nights.

I have mused back over the year to see if unplugging had any significant impact on my life. The answer is a resounding yes.

• I stopped watching other people talk about their recipes and wrote five of my own, one of which got picked up on a major site, another was shared on our dairy’s website. I received the nicest letters, coupons, and a box of products from the various manufacturers of the products I featured, and all I did was write to them about something I loved, something I created using their product. That feeling of connecting with a world outside myself was sweet and uplifting.
• I read some pretty significant life-changing books. I read fiction and non-fiction. I traveled through Asia, Spain, and Germany without ever leaving my chair.  I experienced the great pleasure of connecting with a world so much bigger than cable. I wrote to authors and poets, and was so humbled and excited when they wrote back! Every single person wrote back. I learned the power of a quick note, an acknowledgement and an encouraging word can make the difference between living and just existing.
• I culled through Justin’s boxes and read his notes from all of his classes. I pulled out his quotes, his written thoughts, I looked up every scripture verse that he jotted down in the margin, and copied down every hymn he wrote out. I gathered over ten typed pages of his innermost thoughts. I found some of his reading lists of what he had read over the summer, what he wanted to read. It was slow and exhausting work, painful and wrenching, but it was real, my real world. My flesh and blood story.
• I discovered that I am not the only grown-up who loves to color, evidently there are quite a few of us out there – like millions. And where I haven’t had the pencils out since the weather broke and the days are longer, I found great peace in silent evenings allowing my imagination to run wild with colors like Copenhagen Blue and Peacock Green.
• I allowed myself the grace of receiving a gift from Doug, a Nikon D3300. He had been wanting to gift me with a dSLR camera for a couple of years, but I found it difficult to accept a gift of that expense. The world that opened up was beyond my imagination, nothing on cable compares to the solace of getting lost with my camera.
• And I wrote this year, submitted stories for inclusion in an anthology, submitted stories for a writing contest, overhauled the blog, and throughout this last year my voice emerged. A year ago I could have not narrowed down 29 categories to 7. I believe in radical self-care, gentle nutrition, a spirituality that is earthy and ancient, and that dogs are healers, cats keep us humble.

Do we still watch some TV? Yes, but programming of our choice, delightful BBC productions, wonderful old movies. The TV goes for weeks without ever being turned on. When I do watch something, it is a mindful, purposeful choice. Please do not assume that I am saying cable is evil and TV is a spawn of hell, because I am not. I am simply sharing what our experience has been during our year without cable.

I learned that a “no” to something is often an adventurous “yes” to something new and exciting. No is not the end, it is only the beginning.