Simple Christmas idea #4 -- Turn off the TV

Removing distraction...

I've moodled this idea before, but it seems to have even more significance for the Christmas season somehow. When I was growing up, my sisters and I decided we would give up TV for Advent one year. Not veging in front of the boob-tube gave us a lot more time to prepare homemade Christmas gifts, curl up and read, practice Christmas carols on the piano or guitar, hang out with friends and each other, and a lot of other things that made us happier than any Christmas TV programming could.

When it comes to the holidays, the fact is that people connect better without background noise, or top news story interruptions. Giving up the TV might seem difficult during Christmas special season, but time to do special things with the people you love is always worth more, isn't it? Heck, it might even be worth turning off the cell phone, at least on Christmas Day. Or longer, if you dare!!

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Here's a little something that's too good not to share. At L'Arche last Monday, I told my core member friend Thomas that we got a new car on the weekend. (After becoming a single car family we soon realized that we need one that will be able to make it through back alley snowbanks in the winter time and pull our trailer in the summer, so we opted for a Hyundai Santa Fe. Our smaller, shorter car is up for sale.) Nothing excites Thomas like a new car. He went straight to the window to look for it, and was a little disappointed when I told him that my husband took it to work.

On Tuesday, Thomas asked me about my new car again, and I told him my sad story. The fellow who parks beside Lee somehow neglected to notice the slightly larger new vehicle beside his usual parking spot, and managed to scrape the paint off the rear corner of it on the first day. 

Thomas was alarmed. "You sad?" he asked, sitting down beside me. 

"Yes, Thomas, I'm a bit sad," I admitted. 

He leaned in closer. "You wanna talk about it?" he asked. "You can talk to me."

He was ready for me to cry on his shoulder. I was so touched, I offered him a cookie from my secret stash. 

"You're nice to me," he said, happily munching.

"You're nice to me, too," I smiled.

Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and I'm celebrating Thomas and all my friends with disabilities!

Simple Suggestion #71... Give up TV for a week

One of the big complaints of our time is that there aren't enough hours in a day. So here's a good suggestion for recovering a few hours: try unplugging the TV for a week. We all know that active participation in life is healthier than passive observation, and honestly, it's not that important to keep up with who's who on the soap operas and sitcoms. World news will go on with or without us, and we may well go to bed happier, worry less, and sleep better if we don't watch The National every night.

It might feel a bit weird, but if we abandon our usual couch potato time -- for a walk around the neighbourhood (I was surprised last week at the renovations and new homes that have gone up in my neighbourhood during the summer), or a trip to the library, or a game with the kids, or a chance to listen to some new music and flip through some unread magazines -- maybe we'll find that we have more time than we knew!

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

#28 of 100 Simple Suggestions... Turn off the television (or computer)

As I've mentioned before, I'm not much of a TV watcher. I can't seem to find anything in the how-many-hundred-channel-universe that I like to watch, vs. reading a good book or doing some creative writing, or playing with my kids, or walking/chatting with a friend, or working in my garden, and... the list goes on. But I do enjoy the internet, and admittedly waste too much time with it.

When I typed this moodling heading last week, a little light went on for me. I got to thinking about a conversation I had with my daughter earlier in the day about how I didn't have time to do something for her... and I realized that I hadn't done that favour because I had been sitting at the computer doing something totally useless (a word bubble game). Uh-oh. This is not living as purposefully as practitioners of Voluntary Simplicity do. I've been getting caught up in the irrelevant.

In other words, the internet has been cutting into my time too much. So I've made a resolution to turn it off earlier in the evening, and do the things that I never seem to have time to do because of it.

Are you finding that there aren't enough hours in a day? Do television or computers steal your time for more important, more valuable things? Join the revolution, and turn them off!

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.