I stopped watching broadcast television in the spring of 2014, and I'm glad I did

I had reason to remember this fact twice in the last week, so something tells me it's relevant enough to write about.

I'm not quite sure of the exact day, but it was definitely related to the time before my solo show at the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art, and time was getting away from me. I was getting behind schedule and more or less in a constant state of anxiety. I do remember talking about this with a (former) friend who seemed to use whatever happened to be on that day with an intro into an epic negative rant that never seemed to go anywhere. About that time I realized that there really wasn't much on that interested me, even the PBS channels. So, for the time I had left before the show, I decided to unplug it and concentrate on what was at the time, the biggest exhibition if my career. It only took a latter of less than a week for me to not miss the habit of planning down on my sofa and zoning out to the pap and adverts smashing into my optical nerves. I do contemporary realism oil and watercolor painting. I've gritted it out and won my signature memberships to the American Watercolor Society and Florida Watercolor Society. I have a raft of other things that look good on a resume' but that's for another post. My paintings are usually quite large and with the amount of time that goes into them, even at an average or $2,000 to $3000 each, it still pays less than minimum wage. Even so, I never had a job or anything else that calls me like my art does.

That was the main tool to wrench me away fro the tube. The next fortuitous thing was that being a full time artist, I've always had to be careful about money. I can get big payoffs from selling my work or winning an award, but there's no way to know when that will happen or for how long that money has to last until the next one. I never did get cable. I suspect the this old derelict HUD repo house I got at auction might have had it still connected since I saw one day that the old wires were cut up at the pole. No matter, I had stuff to do. One of the first things I did when I got this house was to cut down the satellite dish and bury the wires since I knew that would be out of my budget and the yard was too small for such an eyesore.

Back to that spring though.

Obviously the first thing I noticed was that there was more time for things in the real world. Then, I started to see that the "friend's" negative rants were getting more noticeable and less tolerable. I lost touch with the happenings on tv and happily could not relate to what she was saying. A majority of her fussing was about fictional characters anyway.

The exhibition went on without a hitch and on schedule. The fake/negative and I suspect Borderline Personality Disordered "friend" became unmistakably toxic. Soon I was seeing other folks in my life show a correlation with lots of mainstream media consumption and having a generally sour take on live along with a pronounced inability to think for themselves. Other people in my life at the time would mention things seen on network or cable tv and I would tell them I had no idea what they were talking about . They would react with mild surprise and amusement, then let it go. Sadly, it took me a lot longer to get away from the aforementioned toxic friend - but that's yet another post.

Looking back, I can now see that my outlook gradually changed from that time. I lost my craving for processed/fast food. I came to see that so much of what was broadcast was amped up nastiness, outright lies, and just plain absurdness.

Since then the only times I turn on the tv is when there's an approaching hurricane in order to track where its going. That's happened twice since spring of 2014. I've ridden out four hurricanes total in this house now, and I can't remember how many tropical storms. If you've ever been through a hurricane, watching tv or using anything that requires electricity is self limiting since the power goes out pretty early on. The average time I spend without power after a storm is around 5 days. I'll have to put that in yet another post. Most likely the next storm (there always is one) will see me with some nice phone app for the basic details and warnings, and nothing else.

Nowadays, I can't bear the obnoxiousness of the tube. if I want to see a movie I have options but I've found that my tolerance for them has gone down too. Even the old classics just seem so ridiculous and hokey now. I tried to watch Lord of the Rings and could only stand about 20 minutes of it. I'd been an avid horsewoman for about 20 years starting in high school. Ask any horseman about horse themed movies and see their eyes roll since nothing in those movies are even close to real life. I'm finding that's the same thing with anything I've become familiar with IRL.

Fast forward to now.

While I'd surely like to have more real world human connections - a self employed visual artist tends to isolate to get work done - I find my general outlook is a whole lot better. It does seem harder to make such connections in real life when my head is up and looking in directions few other folks are looking. I'd like to be less dependent on social media but that's harder to do and still make money. I listen to people more. I sit out on my porch swing in the evening when the weather's good and take to people walking by - much like folks did when my 98 year old house was new. I'm absolutely addicted to learning new things and occasionally I still read when I have the time. Those hours I spent vacuously watching tv got filled up pretty fast. I feel sad to see so many people tethered to media to the point of ruining lives but I can't do anything about that. I can only manage me.

"Cabinet of Curiosities" Watercolor, 30"x22", 2014, Collection of the Artist.

Featured image for my upcoming exhibition at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum - opening 6pm March 9, 2018 through April 22 Free and open to the public.