I’ve decided to restart this blog, after a gap of I don’t know how long! I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I guess I haven’t done it because I just didn’t know what to write about and I just kept thinking I had to have a proper topic to get started. Anyway, about a week ago I did write in my to do list, “write a blog post”, but then I just got really busy again and I’ve actually been feeling really stressed.
But yesterday I started a new 30-day No TV challenge, and firstly, after just one day I already feel totally energised and relaxed because I feel like I have a lot more time, and secondly I thought it would be quite a good topic to start off with because it’s something tangible, and I can just get back into the swing of things by literally just simply documenting the challenge.
So I’ve probably written about a No TV challenge before on this blog because I actually think I started it during my first ever proper 30-day No TV challenge about two and a half years ago (I hope it’s only that long ago anyway!). I did do the challenge again last November and got pretty good results from it again, but both times I’ve done it before have been just before Christmas, and both times I’ve just gotten sucked back into watching TV and doing other numbing behaviours after Christmas just due to the anxiety I tend to feel in January when I’m trying to get so many things back on track, like diet, exercise, work, and other habits, and just having to be sort of serious about life and knuckle down to being a grown-up again after the complete break from all of that over Christmas.
I feel like I should explain what I mean by numbing behaviours. I mean all those habits, bad habits essentially, and addictions almost, that I use to turn off. To turn away from reality and tune out of my actual life because I can no longer stand it or I just want a break, a rest. Often it starts innocently enough. Maybe I’ve worked really hard all day or even for a couple of weeks, or I’ve just run a really good race or done something else that I was nervous about beforehand. I feel I deserve to reward myself for being so brave or whatever. A treat. For me that usually takes the form of some combination of sugar, alcohol, TV and computer games, and sitting for hours just basically withdrawing from the world.
While I do get that it’s kind of an introvert habit to need to withdraw from the world every now and then, I feel like the way I do it often becomes dysfunctional in that I feel worse afterwards and not better. One hour of TV, if you’re able to restrict yourself, or a movie every so often, the odd computer game when you’re not doing anything else, maybe that’s ok, but for me I just find those things incredibly addictive and hard to stop doing once I start them. I also feel that numbing your feelings just isn’t helpful if you want to be happy. I can tell because, after a marathon TV-watching and iPad game-playing session, I don’t feel good! Because all those feelings and thoughts you were running away from just come back and you feel worse because you just spent hours ignoring your problems. I also tend to feel a sense of guilt/fear afterwards in that I’ve wasted hours of my life. I could have been doing something useful, productive or just more actively fun, instead of staring at my iPad moving little blocks (my current favourite is a merge-based game) around while half listening to whatever mindless and comforting thing I’ve put on the TV.
That all sounds kind of dark I know and a lot of people might argue that TV isn’t a very bad addiction to have. But I can waste four to six hours a day at least on it. Meanwhile, I’m sitting for hours, which has been shown to be incredibly harmful. I also often struggle to get to sleep afterwards, which has a knock-on effect on the following day. At the same time, lately, I’ve been feeling increasingly stressed and time-poor and feeling resentful at the demands other people are putting on me. But these demands are from people I love or to do things I’ve volunteered to do. They’re things I WANT to do because they’re important to me. And so the way to make my life less stressful, and to find the time and energy to do everything I really want to do, is not to cut out time spent with friends and family, or doing volunteer work I signed up for because I believed it was a good thing, or to try to work less, or be satisfied with living in a messy, dirty, non-beautiful environment. The way forward is clearly to cut out this numbing behaviour that is having a purely negative effect on my life.
And so here begins the 30-day No TV (or YouTube or iPad games) challenge. The rules are simple. None of those things are allowed, with the exception of YouTube while I’m working out. I made that rule because working out is really important to me and I do sometimes struggle to do it regularly. It’s a maximum of 40 minutes, four times a week, so watching YouTube just in those times doesn’t usually cause any negative problems. In fact, when I’m doing this kind of thing I start looking forward to my workouts because I get to watch a YouTube video so it increases my enjoyment.
I’m aiming for 30 days but I have to say that I’m kind of hoping I might want to continue it after that because I’ve definitely loved the results previous times. Potential obstacles/temptations are athletics, triathlon and cycling. I particularly love athletics so I’m not sure if there is any coming up but we’ll see. Another exception is I can watch TV at other people’s houses. Again, that’s not usually a problem because it’s a different kind of watching, not a numbing behaviour, and it hardly ever comes up anyway. I can go to the cinema, as well, again, not a numbing behaviour and not something I do very often. Within TV, I count all TV on demand and DVDs.
So that’s it. My first blog post for maybe two years? Very rambling I feel. Not at all clear or cohesive. But there we are. I’ll try to post daily as I’m generally best at doing things every day. Might just do weekdays as weekends tend to be pretty busy. And I’m not going to put too much pressure on myself but will just start with providing an update on how the challenge is going so far.
Just a little postscript: I didn’t end up posting this the same day I wrote it as I felt it needed editing and I left it to do later in the day but wound up being really busy and not getting back to it. In truth I think I didn’t want to re-read it. So it’s now the next day and I’ve edited this and am reasonably happy with it, especially for a first post in so long. Hurray!