caging the beast

ugh.  I’ve been in such a weird place recently.  And I know I’m doing it to myself.

I go through these cycles where all I want to do is watch tv and lay in bed for hours on end, and I just can’t stop myself.  A whole day or sometimes two will go by like this, and my brain will feel all melty and my heart gets really deeply sunken into  my gut, and I start berating myself for being a waste of space.  Not in the literal sense, not like I really think I’m a bad person or anything so extreme.  More like I just feel so damn lazy.  So much like I’m wasting time.  As soon as I stop watching for a few minutes, I think how I should be meditating, or playing guitar, or studying a language, or making lesson plans.  And then to keep myself from thinking about it too much more, I click the link for the next episode.  No worries. 

I don’t really believe that I need to be doing something important every minute of the day in order to feel like I’m making the most of my life.  It’s more that I feel like the worst possible way to waste time, and to REALLY waste it, is to fritter away the hours watching TV and surfing the internet.  It’s not really because it’s not productive.  It’s because it’s more than unproductive.  It’s COUNTER productive.  It’s a drug that dulls my senses, glosses over all the things in my life that deserve my attention, and put me into a state of complete vegetation.  And I feel so hungover afterwards.  It’s exactly the same kind of depression I feel when I have a heavy night of drinking, go too crazy, and then end up wasting the whole next day in bed because I feel too shitty to do anything else.  There’s this additional feeling of guilt, in both scenarios.  About how I know better, and I should be past this kind of bull shit. 

I think it’s totally ok to have time to space out and do nothing.  In fact it’s essential.  But addictions are not the same thing as healthy, legitimate spacing out.  And for me, TV is an addiction.  I loose days at a time.  I don’t feel anything or think about anything while I’m in the middle of it.  And it’s so, SO hard to stop myself. 

So I’m instituting a week long ban on myself.  Just like self-improvement week.  No tv.  I feel strangely relieved to make the choice.  I need a reminder that I am in control of my life, and that it’s weak and selfish and wasteful to use this to hide from my own feelings, struggles, challenges, and demons, whatever they may be.  I can do this.  I can be a better person.