No TV

I wanted to share an interesting experience that I have had recently. It started when I realized I was watching too much TV, finals were approaching, and stress levels were rising. So I decided that I was going to go 20 days with no television. This included everything from netflix, TV shows, and movies (although I did allow the occasional short youtube video). This was really just to get me through finals, but as every day past I was amazed at the changes in my life.

Some of you don't know but sometimes I struggle with what I have diagnosed as seasonal depression. It hasn't been terrible this winter, but it does occasionally sneak up on me. I had no idea how much my television watching was affecting my mood. After I stopped watching TV, my emotions became calmer and easy to deal with. I actually had control over how I felt. I pinpointed this to the fact that I would watch a range of shows from exciting comedies to tense dramas. My "real-life" emotions did not stand a chance when I was bombarding myself with this roller-coaster so frequently.

I also believe my mood was better because I had time to do other things. I read an entire book during this time (Lamb by Chris Moore. It was fantaaastic, but I wouldn't recommend it for my Mormon friends), and Kevin and I played games and talked more. I listened to music for hours every day, usually while doing school work, and I've gotten into instrumental and more mellow music. I had time to do some cleaning too.

When it came to school work, I was so shocked because procrastination became almost nonexistent. I would get on facebook for a few minutes, get bored, and start doing school work. I completed projects faster than I thought possible and I felt good about the effort I put into them. Because of this my stress was so mild compared to other semesters. Stress is the worst for my depression so it was such a relief to not have to cope with that during finals. When I get stressed I can become claustrophobic and staying home for an entire day can become painful. This never happened during the 20 days. It was fun to stay home.

I even lost a little weight.

I was truly blown away by this whole experience. Of course I have slowly reintroduced television into my life, however, I've noticed I get bored with it now and it is not the first thing I jump to for relaxation anymore. I especially avoid TV during the day and limit how much I watch at night. I had no idea what I was doing and what I was missing by watching TV. I do realize sometimes it's good to just relax in front of the screen, but I'm going to cut back during the semesters and if times get tough for me, it's goodbye to television till I'm back on my feet.