RUT #2: Media Diet

So driving home from class on Thursday I found myself thinking and brainstorming so much, that I completely passed my house by about two miles. After I finally got home I told my husband about the assignment and we brainstormed for a while. We then changed subjects and my husband proceeded to remind me that the dreaded college football season was starting this past weekend. College football season consists of me loosing both my tv privileges and my husband for hours at a time, several times a week. So then I got to thinking, what if I went on a diet…a tv diet. Which would force our household to shut the tv off for at least 48 hours. Then, I could avoid at least one weekend of games and my husband couldn’t argue…because the tv being off was a part of my homework. Then I decided that I would push it further and go on a complete media diet for 48 hours. No tv, no movies, no computer, no internet (including internet on my phone), no radio and no ipod…for 48 hours. This was something I had NEVER done… I have always felt like my laptop and ipod were additional (yet necessary) limbs.

So I started at midnight on Friday night. Here are a few of the highlights that were a direct result of my semi-media free couple of days…
1. Went to the Provo Farmers Market and purchased items to make dinner on Saturday night that was made all from locally grown produce/locally made organic items. (Something I had always wanted to do but never had made the time).

2. Instead of facebooking a couple of my friends I went and actually visited them to ask them how they were doing and to get updates.

3. Instead of watching the BYU game… we went to the game (another first for me).

4. Visited our grandparents and had dinner with them

5. Got a ton of homework done

6. Read half of Living Yoga

7. Instead of watching videos we made home-made ones of us trying to make our daughter dance to Beyonce to send to our parents and family.

Some things I learned were…

--Those things that I had “been meaning to do” actually got done when distractions were gone.

--Getting to hear status updates in person is so much better than on the newsfeed of your facebook page.

-- And the number one thing I learned from this RUT assignment is that life is going on, all the time, all around me… and by wasting too much time on the internet or watching tv, im missing out on a lot! Not being able to fill my spare time by surfing the web or surfing channels forced me to come up with new things to do, it forced me to be creative, forced me to be more outgoing and overall forced me to use my time in a more colorful way. I’m not sure I would be willing to give it all up completely again for that long, but I do think that when I can I should slowly step away from the computer and GO OUTSIDE, GO SOMEWHERE, DO SOMTHING! And I say things in the…just kidding. –Summer Holm