During this month when so many choose not to partake of any alcohol in Dry January, I’ll reflect on my own chosen abstinence. I didn’t turn on my television in December. It just sat upon its table in my living room, blocking the fireplace that I’ll never use. This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this with the television. I’ve done it a couple of times in the past, every time with the same goal of a reset when I’ve felt too many hours slipping away. It’s not that I went the month without screens or without video; there were still plenty of hours spent on Zoom and typing away. But I did opt for other things in my hours of recreation.

I have watched a couple of things so far in January. This began with the first movie in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I watched once I completed that portion of the book. I’ll do the same with the other two movies as I progress, but it will be at least another week before I start watching the second movie. I’ve also watched a few other things, but my default has been to read in the evening instead of watching something on Netflix. It helps that I’ve been uninterested in watching football this season given just how awful the Titans were, but it might have helped even more that December saw its normal spike in the quantity of work I needed to get through.

Those caveats aside, though, I don’t feel as if I missed much and it’s not like I’ve had a tremendous desire to binge watch something now that the television is an option again. I expect it will stay that way for a while at least, and having the television be something that I only do on occasion makes it more of an event. It will also make me even less tolerant of filler content since I won’t want to waste the little time I devote to watching things. Has anyone else done a similar experiment? Or perhaps taken things even further and done away with their television entirely? If you have, I’m curious what results you saw.