February – TV has reached it’s limit!

I have to admit. I love TV.

Not just TV shows, though I love them too, but my actual TV. I love the big screen, the fact that it plays (with my direct request of course, not by itself!) all of my favourite movies, shows, and an occasional game. I love that it’s always there, always ready, always providing background noise when I need it. I love that I can pause, rewind, fast-forward, and record (OK so that’s my digital box, but you get the picture!)…

I love TV.

However, as I move toward becoming a mom, I feel like there are many things I want to achieve before that happens. I want some momentum in my creative life (writing/editing) so that when we are united I will have developed habits that will *I hope* continue well into our future.

Even if I wasn’t in the process of becoming a mom, at this point in my life I want to make this change to develop habits that will take me one step closer to the future of my dreams.

I have many projects – writing and otherwise – that I would like to achieve, that have been in my imaginative future for a long, long time and have not yet translated into my current reality.

Though I have to give myself huge kudos for the past year, which was a great year for me and I took many incredible first steps forward, and some great leaps too…I am definitely walking the path just by talking with you now!

Yet, as we turned the corner into 2014 and I acknowledged that this was the year I would be approved as a parent and matched with my children, I started to feel that I either devote more time to our future or accept that writing is a hobby, to be enjoyed for sure, but not a real career path.

Just the thought of giving up on my dream to become a published author and an inspiration to others, made my heart constrict. Yes, I will write as a hobby for the rest of my life because I love, love, love it, but there is a place in my very essence that believes I can touch people with my words if I truly connect and open up to that possibility.

So, if I believe that, if I really want to make that happen, then it was time to take a hard look at the way I utilized my “free” time outside of the 9-5, and put some action where my dreams lay.

One thing that became clearer and clearer to me last year, as I made changes in my life that excited me, is I do not want to work for someone else’s dream for the rest of my life – no matter how good the pay scale, or the benefits, or the vacation time.

To spend even one day of my life working on someone else’s dream when I have so many dreams of my own going unfulfilled, feels like a waste of life and I don’t want to feel that way. I don’t want to live that way. And that is definitely not the example I want to set for my children.

Working for 7 hours, then coming home at the end of the day to watch 4 hours of TV, go to sleep, wake up and do it all again the next day, started to feel really pointless. Not that I did that every day, I have other activities during the week too, but honestly whatever it was – sports, meetings, get-togethers, TV – it all started to feel wasteful. I was allowing myself to get sidetracked with fluff, fillers, activities of no substance.

Taking steps forward last year toward a life that has been in my dreams and imagination for many years, gave me a new perspective on time. I found myself feeling a huge sense of urgency within my heart and I realized change was needed.

January I made some healthy changes in my life. Choosing to go to the gym 4-5 times a week. Walking for leisure and fitness the other 2-3 days. I have incorporated a daily meditation practice for at least 15 minutes a day every day. I signed up for a weekly 3 hour yoga chakra workshop. And I started to de-clutter my living space as mentioned in a post a few weeks ago.

So I was feeling good about those steps and ready for more.

Turn off the TV – Schedule:

The last week of January I trialed the “turn off the TV” plan. I set myself a schedule as follows:

Monday to Thursday – I would only allow 30 minutes while I ate dinner (a habit I don’t feel ready to break just yet), and 30 minutes when I get into bed – I have a ritual before sleep and I enjoy those 30 minute of wind-down TV. So I allowed about 1 hour per day Monday to Thursday.

Friday and Saturday – I allowed any amount of TV that I felt, without judgement or guilt.

The first Friday with this schedule, I actually chose to write for a few hours after my 30 minutes of dinner-time TV, before I sat down to watch a show before bed. The first Saturday I wasn’t home until late, and I did watch a one 1-hour show when I got home.

What about Sunday? I hear you asking.

Sunday is transition day. I was tempted to start my “no TV” week on Sunday. But Sunday has traditionally been my “me” day. Some days I write all day in my pyjamas, some days I hike or walk for a few hours, sometimes I take a long bath, or read a book, always it is laundry and cleaning day. So I left Sunday as an open to me based on the “day I’m having” day.

My first Sunday of the month, I started with the yoga chakra session, wrote for a few hours (4300 words), walked for an hour, took some photos, did my laundry and cleaning, caught up with a friend, made some dinner, read a little, and then watched about an hour and a half of TV before bed. It was a productive day and I was happy with it.

It was a good trial week and I felt comfortable with the schedule.

What was interesting to me was that after only one week without watching “my shows” some of them no longer appealed. I became painfully aware how non-uplifting they were and I ended up deleting a good portion of them without viewing. Others I skimmed, fast-forwarding much of the show and turning a 1 hour show into about a 25 minute show – I still knew what happened and felt satisfied by the story.

I was truly surprised at how sensitive I’d become to the images I was seeing on the screen. Previously, I would not have been phased by dead bodies, or victims of crime, or people making fun of others, or families turning evil toward each other, but after one week of choosing to focus on a harmonious, positive future, those things I’d been watching burned me like a branding iron.

I’ve always wanted to write a TV show (I have outlines and some dialogue written for several shows) and all of my fiction stories play out in my mind like a TV show or a movie. I love and adore both mediums and would be overjoyed to see my stories on the big screen. Over the last few months though, I would often catch myself watching a series and wondering whether the writer sat around watching TV? Or if they spent their own free time writing their dream? More likely the latter.

What to do with the time?

This is what I figured I could potentially do with the 4 hours of TV time:

• 500 words – fiction (about 1 hour)
• 1000-1500 words – non-fiction – on my book, my blog, a guest post, or writing in my journal (about 1 hour) – I have much greater ease of writing non-fiction, it’s me writing about me… just like talking with you, I can even churn out 2000+ words in an hour when I’m on a roll.
• Learning – (1 hour) – something new in alignment with where I want to be, whether that be learning something about WordPress, or about publishing, or writing, or personal development. Could be online research, reading a book, or reading a blog, but this one hour would be devoted to learning something new, or reinforcing what I know.
• Social media – (30 minutes) – my feeling about this was to limit the time I spend just milling around in social media sites, and make real use of that time. Either connecting with people who are inspirational to me, making comment on posts that are relevant to my future direction or my current blogs, and taking the time to make my own comments/posts work for me.
• De-clutter – (10 minutes) – Like all good things, when I started to focus on de-cluttering last month, many posts appeared in my inbox about that very thing. One of them said just spend 10 minutes a day – set a timer even – and you will clear your cobwebs. I liked the idea.
• Meditation – (20 minutes) – this is one that I’ve wanted to get into the habit of for many years now, and I’m so glad I started this month. Not only was there a one month Meditation Challenge by Tuja Wellness which I have been doing, but it just feels like the right time for me.

While I’m excited about the new schedule and how productive I hope to become with it, the most important thing to me – always – is to feel good about what I am doing. If anything I’m doing begins to feel like a chore, then I need to reevaluate that thing in my life. Work out why it feels like a chore, what about it is making it feel that way and work out if it is something I really need to do at this time. This schedule will be no exception.

Still, I am three weeks into this schedule (including the final week of January) and so far it’s feeling pretty darn good, and it is much easier than I’d imagined.

While I don’t always follow my suggested plan for the 4 hours of evening time, I have achieved a lot in these past few weeks. I have spent at the very least one hour per day devoted to writing (and often many, many more), I have meditated every day, I’ve started blogging my memoir, I’ve continued working out at the gym, I’ve read new books, I’ve connected with people online who inspire me and have made some new friends, I have felt the forward momentum and opened myself up to the possibilities.

And, perhaps most importantly, I have felt uplifted, happier, calmer, and more inspired.

I feel this is a new chapter in my life and I’m excited to see where it takes me…

Let me know what you think about this, and if you’ve tried (or succeeded) in turning off the TV in your life?

Warm smiles and Love,

Ali Jayne 🙂