Last night with a mixture of sadness and anticipation for the future, my family bid adieu to cable television. This morning while drinking my cup of English Breakfast tea, I remembered what we had done; we stripped our family of entertainment leaving us with no other choice than to engage with each other, or to get hooked up with Netflix asap. What were we thinking? Had we temporarily gone crazy? Did we actually believe that we would be satisfied with a life filled with conversation, puzzles, books, music, and possibly friendship? We had just discovered Episodes, a delightful new show on Showtime with Matt LeBlanc and two charming English main character (sorry, I forgot their names). Well, so much for that new love. And what happens in the summer when the new season of Weeds begins? Will we have to wait for the season to finish before we can access it on Netflix? Okay, I am starting to get nervous.
I must say that there is something quite sweet and rather empowering about renting movies once again. Once we got cable we stopped thinking for ourselves and started letting ATT Uverse make our decisions for us. It may have appeared as though we had choices, perhaps many choices as to what to watch, but they weren't our choices, they were Uverse choices. Although I may be going through withdrawal, I am also excited about taking some power back over our television viewing, and the possibility of having a life outside of watching cable.I usually only watched about an hour or two a day, however, I was comforted in knowing that it was there. It brought me comfort to know that if ever I were lonely or feeling empty I could turn on the little box and the voices would come to soothe me.
I would like to close by thanking my cable box, which will soon be sent back to its rightful owner, for bringing so many wonderful images into my life over the course of the past year. Thank you for standing by my side and bringing entertainment into my life during good times and bad. You never questioned or doubted my decisions or my competence, you just kept playing movies twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week as long as the bill was paid on time. I miss you already. I'll try to write. Adieu.
I must say that there is something quite sweet and rather empowering about renting movies once again. Once we got cable we stopped thinking for ourselves and started letting ATT Uverse make our decisions for us. It may have appeared as though we had choices, perhaps many choices as to what to watch, but they weren't our choices, they were Uverse choices. Although I may be going through withdrawal, I am also excited about taking some power back over our television viewing, and the possibility of having a life outside of watching cable.I usually only watched about an hour or two a day, however, I was comforted in knowing that it was there. It brought me comfort to know that if ever I were lonely or feeling empty I could turn on the little box and the voices would come to soothe me.
I would like to close by thanking my cable box, which will soon be sent back to its rightful owner, for bringing so many wonderful images into my life over the course of the past year. Thank you for standing by my side and bringing entertainment into my life during good times and bad. You never questioned or doubted my decisions or my competence, you just kept playing movies twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week as long as the bill was paid on time. I miss you already. I'll try to write. Adieu.
I got rid of my cable years ago, and just recently, I got rid of my antenna, too. Now I watch everything through streaming media services: Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Amazon Video on Demand. I love it. It's not free, but it's still cheaper than cable. Pandora.com provides customized background music when I don't want complete silence.
ReplyDeleteI am now only watching things that I choose very intentionally. What I choose to watch now is different from what I chose to watch before.
I wouldn't like it if I was a sports fan or a news junkie, but for me, it's a great setup for filtering out the miscellaneous "junk" from my daily TV intake.
We got rid of cable years ago, mostly to save on money. We still use an antenna, but when my husband was here for 2 1/2 weeks, we never even turned the TV on. I always like to watch Masterpiece Theater and Mystery on PBS, but the rest of TV time is maybe 3 or 4 hours a week. I have so many other things that I thoroughly enjoy to keep me busy. You'll adjust and find a happy medium.
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