How to bring peace into your life, lower your blood pressure, etc..

TURN OFF THE TV!

Step by step directions this is for those of us, like me, who has been recently retired, by choice or by bad company decision (my own particular situation) note...with the exception of a few, these can be taken in any order

wake up
make a nice cup of coffee, bowl of cereal or granola
sit in the yard and contemplate the comings and goings of the birds
walk the dogs, talk to your birds, play with your cat
have a nice talk with your significant other
spend a few minutues catching up on news - peep into DU, check the sports scores, etc

LUNCH!

take a walk in the woods, do an around the house project, dig in the dirt
grocery shopping or any other shopping (not recommended)
repeat some of the steps above if desired

Dinner!

Find out what your kids have been up to at dinner
take an after dinner walk
see what Netflix movie came in
peek back at DU, CNN, ESPN just to see what you haven't missed by not turning on the TV all day

Day 2 - repeat, with minor modifications

The world will go on, news will happen, without listening to talk radio or watching American Idol, Surivivor or talking heads news ops programs.

Welcome to my world!

Didn't miss a thing.

I especially recommend it to those who have children. It really cuts back on the materialism.

...TV is a huge "time-suck"

;)

:toast:

....that thing called "MY JOB"?

Wake up at 3:30 AM
Make coffee
Gulp down coffee while getting dressed
Leave house at 4:00 AM
Spend 1 hr in traffic cussing rude drivers
Arrive at job at 6:00 AM
Face overwhelming workload
Go to bathroom at 10:00 AM
Take out gun, blow out brains!

Welcome to my world!

TYY :hi:

You wanna take away my only out? Shame on you!

Ha ha! I've been retired for 8 yrs! I wake up and decide if I want to go fishing or just do nothin! Of course, I could sit around worrying about how to invest all my millions, but that is too taxing.

I just wanted to support those who do still work jobs they hate, but have to go to so they can make a living!

except'n of course a little early morning local news and KO and Bill Moyers, and an occasional cspan. And you are right it has done wonders for my bp and hell, just my outlook on life in general.

What about the millions whose livelihoods are tenuous or worse, who are a paycheck away from the street - if not already on the street.

What about the people who can't afford even the coffee and granola?



I realize that what you're describing is almost necessary to stay sane, but your quip "Welcome to my world!" reminded me a little bit of Barbara Bush's "beautiful mind" comment.

I'm actually doing better financially than in a long while - starting a new, better-paying job, but I still am nowhere near being able to buy a home, still have a long way to go to pay off my student loans, even though I'm pushing 40, and I honestly wonder if I'll ever be financially comfortable enough to screen out what's going on in the way you describe.

I can screen out the right-wing hate, their idiotic schemes, even the deaths of our soldiers in faraway illegal wars. But it's hard for me to screen out the suffering of working people all around, because I've been there, and I'm still not what I'd call "comfortable". How are people who earn 1/3 of what I do making ends meet with these insane prices, when I can barely get by? My heart genuinely aches to think about it.

after school, when my teenagers get home, it's the best time to listen to them and hear about their day. If i am even an hour late, I lost the chance because they have settled into their teen mind.

:hi:

Thanks for posting.

There was a claw hammer by my tv chair, as I had been hanging shelves
a few days before and neglected to put it back where it belonged.

When Kerry conceded, I threw it through the tv screen.

I haven't watched tv since.

I get everything I need on the internet (mostly at DU)
and streaming, at first AAR, and now Nova M

:hippie:

But I'm glad that you found a system that works for you :toast:

i don't why i open these threads that promise miracles -- they are always a cruel joke

must be nice to not have to worry about the cost of all those meals but plenty of us don't need teevee to tell us that there's a major economic crisis going on, i don't have a teevee manufactured in this century and yet i have noticed the price of groceries, there is nothing that lowers blood pressure about somehow having to figure out a way to provide two meals a day (three is madness)

if all you have to raise your blood pressure is the last episode of survivor, you don't know what the rest of us are struggling with down here on earth

i have not had cable in my lifetime and do not own a full-sized teevee, if all of your fears were sent to you by teevee you are one of the lucky ones and have nothing to teach me

First though, let me repeat from the OP: TURN OFF THE TV!

This alone will add at least 15 points to your IQ and may even pull you back from the brink of drooling, babbling insanity.

If you find yourself sneaking a peak at one of those steaming piles of dog merde and member of the punditocracy, take the remote to the nearest hazardous waste disposal facility.

If you still find yourself completely disconsolate and spend the evening fumbling with the on-set controls, you'll know the time has come to just take it out back and shoot it. But if you do go that route, please clean up all the pieces of glass, plastic and electronic parts before they can harm any animals or leach toxics into the ground water.


Another sanity saver: Commuting is as close to waterboarding as I ever want to get. Any day I don't touch a steering wheel is by definition better than any day I do, no matter what else happens. If I get stuck in traffic on top of just being in the car -- and this happened almost daily, Monday - Friday, for maybe a decade -- I might go a little crazy. In fact, I did go a little crazy.

I didn't end up howling at the moon or running screaming through the forest, but I did develop some really toxic quirks. After a couple of weeks of this, I realized I was stressing about the damn Monday morning commute and ruining half my weekend in the process.

So if you've had it with commuting and if you can possibly do your job from home -- even a couple of days a week -- try to get your boss to agree to a trial period. Then work like hell when you're home, increase normal output a lot, and you'll probably make a pretty good case for a home office. They might even subsidize some of the necessities, like paying your broadband bill.


And looking at the bigger picture, this shit has to stop. There's no possible way to justify the American way of commuting: thousands of cars idling in traffic, going nowhere, burning expensive fuel and generating 25 percent of the world's carbon emissions.

All for the privilege of leaving a comfortable home, grinding your nerves to powder and spending the next 8 - 10 hours in cubeville, doing exactly what you could be doing back home anyway.

With the double whammies of global climate change caused by burning insane amounts of carbon and the price of gas.

I don't want to give these parasitic profit-machines a single dime if I don't have to. And I've put my share of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. I'm probably way over my quota and I'm not going to participate any longer.

Btw, I've been a freelancer working almost exclusively from home since 1993. Other than being a decent reporter -- meaning I'm good at researching background, interviewing sources and writing up the results -- I have no special talents.

Except that I'm one of the most stubborn people on earth and, having decided against commuting ever again, that was it. All I had to do then was figure out how to make enough money to keep things going.


Good luck to all.


wp

I waste more time on this damn computer. I'm addicted. It is as bad, if not worse than the TV. Sure it is not as mindless, but it is pretty bad. Sometimes I think about all I could be doing if not sitting in front of a monitor and surfing from here to there. I'm sure my life would be more productive and I would miss out on much news that does nothing more than upset me. After all, the world will march on whether I pay attention or not.

There are no Internets in the car so there I listen to the stupid talk radio. More bothersome crap that I can do nothing about.

You give good advice.

Many days I say "This is it, no more Internet for me". But the next morning I'm back to checking my email, peeking at DU, reading a couple of new posts, replying to posts and wasting my life.

Broadband access is a curse upon our homes.

Perhaps we need Internets Anonymous...

No lie. Cycling together has been fantastic for my wife and I in terms of mental and physical health and strengthening our marriage. Give it a try!

MoonLight Garden


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x7979

Its tempting to kill the TV,
but we are not yet willing to give up Boston Legal and Bill Moyers.



"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone