My bro & co-poster Rick has kicked-off a new phase of life wherein he has decided to eschew tell-lie-vision for a more involved life, more social connections, more experiences. I wholeheartedly support his efforts. Wade and I moved in together in 1998 about one year before we got married. Neither one of us owned a television. In both of our previous living situations we had roommates who owned televisions, so neither one of us had ever had need to purchase the dreaded appliance. At the time, we were used to having cable with full access to 100+ channels. When we moved in together (still in the glow of first attraction & Luhv {sigh}) we decided that we wanted to leave room for creation (Wade wanted to write, I wanted to paint) and excised teevee from our lives. I have always been more of a reader than a television person, but with ready access to broadcast opium I would find myself stretched out on the sofa for hours watching mind-numbing stuff coasting on momentum alone. We found many ways to entertain ourselves, but that decision to surgically remove commercial broadcasts from our lives cemented our love of engaging in long-winded discussions, riffing on each other’s preposterous political ideas, and sharing our humorous, scatalogical, and childish jokes.

Eventually we did buy a telly and used it to watch movies. When Netflix revolutionized the way one could rent movies, we set up a queue and our lives set into an easy pattern: watch two, maybe three movies week; read the local rag, which we loathe 5-7 days a week to keep up on local issues; plug into the hive on a daily basis and consume our media via teh intarweb. We noticed that without daily injections of the hysterical evening news and other serial media that the objects of our desires and wants shifted. Instead of being driven by outside forces, a new voice emerged from inside. Our urges to conspicuously consume waned, our desire for status objects decreased, a need to be like others dwindled. (Of course, we still shop, seek new objects, & find inspiration in others. It’s just more self-directed rather than driven by media.) On the edge is an awareness of how commercial media i.e. media generated by corporations, for corporations, shapes our appetite.

However, not all is peaches and cream. Although I rarely visit corporate websites as the main course of my internet meal, I still spend quite a bit of time plugged in. I have had to make a conscious choice to limit the amount of time I spend with my square-headed girlfriend. A screen is still a screen even if you are pushing different buttons. Although I gain immense amounts of inspiration from the websites I read, I am concerned by how often my intentional reading becomes mindless perusing. I find that I need to leave space in my day for creativity or else my weeks go by and I fell more and more drained until I have to take action to infuse my life with positive energy and reaffirm my goals and bring *my life* back into focus. There is a middle path where we can enjoy the works of others (plays, museums, television shows, movies, music, blogs, concerts, books, zines, &tc) and still be actively and creatively living our own personal lives. That balance is crucial.