Changing my TV Habits

I’m changing up my TV habits.

The thing is, I realised fairly recently quite how many hours I spend watching TV shows and it is honestly shocking. It’s my default to ‘put something on in the background’, and whilst I still do this with YouTube videos or music, there’s more of a feeling of being able to dip in and out of things.

A TV series is a commitment.

Once I’m into a programme, I need to watch every episode. I need to know when the new season starts. I need to watch the latest episode before anyone on Twitter spoils it for me.

And the problem with Netflix is there’s always a new series to watch. And all of the episodes are ready and waiting. Binge-watching has almost become a sport.

The release of a new season of Orange is the New Black leads to the update tweets of how many episodes people have stormed through by the end of the first morning. And it can be hard to turn down that temptation when the next episode is all cued up and ready to go.

You don’t even need to move; it autoplays in fifteen seconds.

A few months ago, I looked at the amount of TV shows I was watching or waiting to return. And I looked at the shows I had started watching on Netflix to fill in the gaps between episodes of shows I had to wait a whole week to see the next episodes of. And the amount of hours that viewing time adds up to is just ridiculous.

So I then thought about which of those TV shows I actually love, and look forward to, and which I watch because I’ve got into the routine of doing so, or even more commonly, because I was bored.

And again, I was pretty shocked.

And I cut back.

I’ve not quite cancelled Netflix. I’m just finishing one show I’m watching currently, but then that’s it.

And when it comes to TV shows running in ‘real-time’, I’d say I’ve cut back what I watch by about four-fifths. And I still watch plenty!

I think what I’m trying to say is that I’ve been doing some re-assessing of how I’m spending my time.

And I spent a lot of hours mindlessly watching things I wasn’t even fully engaged in.

I’d rather use that time to do something else, thanks very much.


Have you done anything similar, or are you a TV fiend?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Writing fiction as a way to move forwards.

Image
Last week I shared a bit about the writing course that led to me writing my short story, Aftershock. Today I thought I'd share a bit about what it was about, and the process of writing it. I had planned to write it slowly, leaving myself lots of editing time and really making use of the month or so we were given. In fact, I wrote most of it in one sitting, on a single afternoon when I most definitely should have been doing other things. The words just kept coming and I didn't want to cut them off. I based my story on something that had actually happened to me, as one of the things recommended on the course was that it could be easier to get inside a character or situation if it was something you knew and understood. I share a lot on this blog and I'm incredibly open about my journey with anxiety and depression, but one of the big things I haven't spoken about was something that happened to me in October 2016, when I was living and working in London. It h...
Read more

The Reading List #7

Image
The weekend seemed to fly by and I didn’t get around to finishing my reading list post, so here it is now. I’m still going through my period of pulling lots of books off shelves that I haven’t read yet, so the wide mixture of books continues… The Sea, John Banville I read two Banville novels at university and was more than impressed, so was excited to find this gem on my parents’ bookshelf. In ‘The Sea’, art historian Max returns to a place he holidayed as a child, following a personal loss. The novels flits between two periods of his life - the then and the now - leading to themes of childhood discoveries, maturing, and loss. The time periods almost blend into one another, yet there is something distinctly separate about them too, so it is not confusing. It reads almost like poetry, and is utterly beautiful. Any literature fans, or fans of superb writing and narrative, need to give it a go. A Small Part of Me, Noelle Harrison Christina’s mother, Greta,...
Read more

The Reading List # 5

Image
Weekends are the perfect time to catch up on reading, so here’s the latest instalment of things I’ve been reading recently. Fatherland, Robert Harris It is 1964, and Hitler is nearing his 75 th birthday, having been victorious in the Second World War. Detective March finds a naked dead man in a lake, and this begins to unravel a huge conspiracy. The premise of this book was so interesting, and it certainly delivered. There is enough fact weaved in to make the events believable, and the atmosphere and architecture of this 1960s Germany is conjured up well. The book is realistic in that there is still plenty of discontent in the country, so it was a rounded picture, and then in amongst it all was a gripping detective story. This is well worth a try. Revenge Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger Ten years after The Devil Wears Prada ended, Andy is co-running her own successful wedding magazine. Her life has changed a lot, and is the usual rollercoaster of emotio...
Read more