Monday, October 15, 2012

How Ditching Cable Gave Me More Free Time

A few months ago I got rid of my cable.  I realized the other day that because of this, I have more free time or rather, I spend less time watching tv.

How did this occur?  Well for one, I now only have about 25 channels (my antenna is awesome though half of them are Spanish religious channels) which means I don't have the freedom to switch through hundreds of channels to find something to watch, or watch reruns on demand.  Though with netflix I have plenty on demand, there are few shows that I would actually want to watch every episode of, and only how much I can stand to watch in one sitting of one show (I do not do good with marathons save for Doctor Who with friends).

In the cable days, I was able to dvr shows while working or, at the time studying, and would then skip through the commercials when I watched them.  Now, the majority of the shows I watch are online the following day.  However - random fact about me - I can't just sit and watch something.  I have to be doing something else (like blogging or surfing the internet) while to television is on.  When I watch from my computer, I can't do these things which makes my chances of watching something even less (unless it happens to be during dinner time).  Therefore, I hardly watch any of these shows anymore.

So what do I do with this new extra time?

1. Job applications

Still trying to find a job to call my own.  (spoiler alert: I will be writing a blog post entitled interview roulette)

2. Working on my novel.

Six chapters in.

3. Entertaining my cats.

They enjoy the extra time.  Though....now I wake up with one of them sleeping on the other pillow in the morning.

4.  Volunteer work.

5.  Cooking.  Or trying new recipes.

Anyone want a spinach riccotta stuffed shells, sweet potato lasagna, baked pasta with tofu topping, or mini zucchini pizzas let me know and I'll send you the recipe.


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