Tam, over at BooksBikesBoomsticks recently mentioned that she has no TV and suspects that people think she's weird. Not having met her personally, I can't say for sure, but I suspect not from what I've read of her writings.
This got me to thinking and if my memory works correctly today (never a sure thing), I believe that I have been TV free for about fourteen years now.
It was never a deliberate thing. I moved location to ReallyBigCity, here in the Mid-West of America. As I was traveling light, I dumped all kinds of stuff, including an entire record collection (showing my age there) and anything heavy, especially household electrical articles.
While in ReallyBigCity, I borrowed a TV and a video player and infrequently watched anything. This was a time of working long hours during the week and heading out of town on the weekend to court the lovely Sis. Geek. I was actually glad to be able to return it as it mostly gathered dust and got in the way.
When the time came to move to a different state, the TV stayed with it's owner and I never bothered to buy one when I moved into my new apartment. Not that I'm cheap or anything; what I didn't spend buying a TV, I spent on a nice music system. The music system still works and currently lives in the den where I can rock out or listen to the football games at this time of the year. A much better purchase.
Where I differ from Tam is in the reaction that I get from people when I explain that I don't have a TV. Certainly people are initially surprised, but mostly I hear some variation along the lines of "I wish we didn't have a TV in the house".
The TV, according to surveys that I hear about now and then, is one of the biggest time wasters in this day. I forget how many hours of TV per day the average child is reputed to watch, but it staggered me. If I lost even just an hour a day to TV, I think I'd be so far behind that I'd never catch up.
I'm busy enough as a pastor that I hardly even have time for regular bible reading. I spend much of my time in the bible, but often finding passages by word searches rather than just sitting down and reading it. It's got to the point that I have to read scripture, while car pooling with a couple of my co-workers, from the Bible program on my Palm TX.
This got me to thinking and if my memory works correctly today (never a sure thing), I believe that I have been TV free for about fourteen years now.
It was never a deliberate thing. I moved location to ReallyBigCity, here in the Mid-West of America. As I was traveling light, I dumped all kinds of stuff, including an entire record collection (showing my age there) and anything heavy, especially household electrical articles.
While in ReallyBigCity, I borrowed a TV and a video player and infrequently watched anything. This was a time of working long hours during the week and heading out of town on the weekend to court the lovely Sis. Geek. I was actually glad to be able to return it as it mostly gathered dust and got in the way.
When the time came to move to a different state, the TV stayed with it's owner and I never bothered to buy one when I moved into my new apartment. Not that I'm cheap or anything; what I didn't spend buying a TV, I spent on a nice music system. The music system still works and currently lives in the den where I can rock out or listen to the football games at this time of the year. A much better purchase.
Where I differ from Tam is in the reaction that I get from people when I explain that I don't have a TV. Certainly people are initially surprised, but mostly I hear some variation along the lines of "I wish we didn't have a TV in the house".
The TV, according to surveys that I hear about now and then, is one of the biggest time wasters in this day. I forget how many hours of TV per day the average child is reputed to watch, but it staggered me. If I lost even just an hour a day to TV, I think I'd be so far behind that I'd never catch up.
I'm busy enough as a pastor that I hardly even have time for regular bible reading. I spend much of my time in the bible, but often finding passages by word searches rather than just sitting down and reading it. It's got to the point that I have to read scripture, while car pooling with a couple of my co-workers, from the Bible program on my Palm TX.
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