I’ve never been very attached to television. Growing up with four siblings, we had one tv and one phone, so access to both devices was limited and as well, Saskatoon had two channels: 3 and 8. I don’t know what happened to Channels 1, 2 and 4 through 7 but they never made it to our house. This of course was well before cable tv.
The one show I watched a lot was the Flintstones, only because my mother insisted on watching it while eating her lunch. My mom was a really hard worker, what with the five kids, the farm, volunteer work…she did it all. But it didn’t matter what was else was going on: at 12 noon Mom would sit down, turn on the Flintstones and laugh her head off at an episode I am sure she’d seen several times already. I thought it was really weird AND I have the Flintstones theme song permanently etched in my mind.
“I Don’t Watch TV”
When I left home, the challenge of figuring out how to buy and set up a television didn’t seem worth it… and as the years went by, watching tv became one of those things I didn’t do. When the kids were little and I had a million things going on, I remember saying quite proudly that the way to get a lot done in life was to NOT WATCH TV.
Um, I watch a fair bit of tv now. What started as a way to get myself motivated to go on the treadmill morphed into a full-on hobby once we renovated our home this winter to put a living area and **big** tv just off the kitchen. But I have to say – I think I was wrong before, with my holier-than-thou attitude about tv. What I now think is this: it’s hard to find ways to just turn off the world for awhile and if watching an episode of Breaking Bad or House of Cards does it for you, great!! I now understand where Mom was coming from with her Flintstones addiction.
And the benefits are…
The other thing is that it isn’t all just fluff…sometimes when I am watching a good show and I’m not thinking at all about work, a really good idea related to the business will come to me out of nowhere, maybe because I am relaxed. The other thing is that sometimes the reality shows have some interesting ideas that make a lot of sense. In my next post I’m going to tell you four things that I’ve learned from my current favourite show, Project Runway, and although I know you may think that is a stretch, please suspend judgment until you’ve heard me out 🙂
