Boredom vs. the “drug” TV can become

First, I don’t meant that TV is a drug; I mean that it can be, if one allows it to become a numbing tool.

Eight-plus years ago, I was in a fairly similar emotional state to now when I moved to Jacksboro, northwest of Fort Worth, in the direction of Wichita Falls.

On the outside world, television reception there was horrible. I could not get any DFW TV stations with rabbit ears, and could get snowy reception out of just one of the Wichita Falls stations. Since I was renting, a roof antenna was not an option. For various reasons, not just frugality per se, neither was spending $45 a month for cable.

I was driving 30 miles each direction every day to Mineral Wells. With the time I spent there, it was at least two hours, if not two and a half or more. It was time well invested on myself, as those of you who know me well know, but that also ruled out time to be watching evening TV anyway.

Well, for various reasons of where I have taken my life today, whether in Navasota or going elsewhere, I’m not planning on investing that hour or so of time in person, though I do have alternatives online. (Of course the “personal presence” online is just that; something to be put into scare quotes, and not fully real.)

Anyway, beyond a fairly slow pace at work, that leaves much more time on my hands here. I’ve been walking even more than in Lancaster — another good reason to watch my diet so that I don’t lose any more weight.

On the boob tube, I can get one Bryan-College Station channel well with rabbit ears; the two other commercial networks, plus PBS, are fairly to very snowy. And, it’s a big nugatory on getting anything from Houston.

But, it’s good, I think. I went 18 months without watching TV during my time in Jacksboro. Now that my mind is clearer in various ways today, I might have room for more “inner” work on personal development. I hope I am in the right situations to put more of the inner work into outer action when the time is right.