I was so sucked in by the magical glowing box that I'm surprised that my roommate didn't start calling me Carol Anne. One time in this creepy little girl voice I said, "They're here..." and that was when I knew I had enough. TV is a total waste of time. There is nothing redeeming about the box and it really serves no purpose. I'll admit that I'm a victim of it as will most every other American citizen. It's our way of life and a huge part of our culture. Honestly if it wasn't for sporting events (well really just the Milwaukee Bucks and the Milwaukee Brewers) I wouldn't need TV at all because to me that's the only thing out there worth watching. I can't even begin to comprehend how many hours of my life I have lost to this device, so I'm going to see what happens when I take a week away from the boob tube.
This whole idea stemmed out of three things that have been been on my mind lately. The first thing is my side venture which I like to call the Pookon Empire which consists of this here blog, Pookon.com, TimReck.com and The Reck Room Page on Facebook as well as any other miscellaneous project that falls underneath that umbrella. I always intended to use this blog to share random ideas and to be able to free write in a way that my website doesn't allow me. I don't care if people come here to read it, but I still try to make it entertaining in case they do choose to spend a few minutes here with me. But it feels like the only things I have posted here in a year's time are the Milwaukee Brewers "25 in 25" entries and updates from the World Series of Beer Pong VII. While those entries I did are some of the best things I've ever worked on, they just aren't enough because I have so many ideas swimming in my head. I consider myself to be a very creative person as well as an award-winning writer, and 37 (I'm 37!?!) blog entries just don't cut it seeing as the possibilities are endless. So this week I'm going to instead focus on writing instead of watching marathons of Storage Wars or Full House.
This kind of goes hand-in-hand with #1 so I figure that I'll call it #1.5. I'm seriously at least 6 months behind on my work over at Pookon.com. Right now I'm trying to finish up Afterglow 2011 and I really should considering that as of today (February 6th) we'll be back up there again in 165 days. That may seem like a lot but Opening Day for the Milwaukee Brewers is in 60 days. I work at Miller Park, so from April until October I'm working two jobs and upwards of 60 hours a week plus all the time I commit to watching every single game home and away. It's a huge commitment in my life but I wouldn't have it any other way. That having been said it still does take up the majority of my free time in the summer and the rest is spent hanging out and doing summer things here in Wisconsin. The bottom line is that I don't do a whole lot of writing in the summer because I'm so busy doing other things. So in a vicious cycle I keep on taking pictures that I want to post and comment on for my website but I'm backlogged still working on things from last year. So instead of watching TV I should be doing that instead.
The 2nd thing is something that has become very important to me since my brother Timmy died. If you didn't know much about him you probably at least knew that he was a musician and played guitar, drums, piano and pretty much anything with strings or keys. He was a very talented musician and person and the same blood that moved him to be great in life also flows through my veins. We get our talents from our parents who are both very good singers and musicians. They pushed us to play instruments and sing in choir since we could talk but I kind of dropped music to work more on my writing after High School. Timmy honed his talents and decided to make music his life. I've been playing guitar off and on for about 8 years now but I was never any good. My musical talent lies in my voice. Timmy played guitar and I sang. That was the dynamic we had in our band June's Blanket. He also played in our Afterglow campfire group The Uncle Greg Band. I figured that as long as I had Timmy I didn't really need to play guitar. But I don't have Timmy anymore. Not physically at least. As he lay in the hospital kept "alive" by machines I promised him that I would learn to play guitar well enough to play around the campfire on vacation. I never intended to be the next Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix or Tim Reck. That was never important to me. I just wanted to be able to play in front of family and friends. So instead of wasting my time watching people on TV do things I am going to do things instead. Like being a rockstar and jamming out the hits of REO Speedwagon.
The last reason why I wanted to do this is to start a new kind of experiment that requires me to make some kind of change for a week so that I alter my lifestyle and live outside of my comfort zone if only for 7 short days. I call it "7 in 7" and it might feature 7 things in 7 days or 1 thing for a whole week. The common theme is that I will have to write an article about it every day describing my experiences. I have a whole list of ideas that range from "Going Bananas" (eating nothing but bananas for 7 days or until I go crazy, whichever one comes first) to every day donating $15 to a charity or a charitable cause and explain why I picked it and also why it is important. Too often we go through the motions. Wake up, go to work. Punch in, punch out. Go home make dinner. Watch some TV and go to bed. That's no way to live. We need to constantly challenge ourselves in a matter that stimulates our brains. This will be different for everyone but for me this means creating something out of nothing, and the best way that I know how to do that is to use my words. So for the next 7 days I'm not going to watch TV or movies. I understand that I can't avoid it like if it is on at a bar or I'm over at someone's house and they have it on. I'm not going to tell them to turn it off. This is my fight. There's no reason to involve other people. I am just pledging to not purposely watch TV or movies while I attempt to catch up on things like my website and guitar playing, which are the two things troubling me most like you read before.
The whole not watching TV thing will be fine because most of what is on there is garbage but what's going to be hard is not watching movies. I honestly watch at least 1 movie per day and sometimes on the weekends it's not uncommon for me to watch 4 or 5 in a day. Why just about a week ago I watched 50/50, 500 Days of Summer, 10 Things I Hate About You, Inception and then Rise of the Planet of the Apes. All in a row no less. Now I sometimes manage to work on something like the website or some other shit while the movie plays in the background but I can't help like sit and watch Inception for the 4th time and still sit there wondering just what the hell is going on. I suppose that I just need a break and go back to what used to give me so much joy before I sat and stared at a glowing idol.
I have no doubt in my mind that I will be able to complete this task. Giving up a week of anything (besides breathing and drinking water) isn't very hard. It's just 7 days. In the grand scheme of life that's such a minuscule segment of time that it really doesn't matter. But I can make it matter by writing something profound or learning a new song or technique on the guitar. Then the absence of something that I really didn't need in the first place is now filled with something else that I learned in the meantime. After all we shouldn't really worry about what we don't have. You will worry for the rest of your life because it is impossible to have everything. Instead we should try to focus on and be thankful for the things that we do have. And in the 12 + hours that I've been awake today without the TV, I have written an article for this blog that will hopefully allow me to share some of my insight with the world. You can't change the world. That's ridiculous. But you can change yourself and the entire world changes around you. Try it sometime.
Now that this article is done. I have to go try and find something to fill my time. I wonder what's on TV?
- Pookon -
email: pookondotcom@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment