Living A Full and Happy Life Without Cable

Summary: A cable-free lifestyle is a healthy alternative to couch potato entertainment and shows the ease in living a full and happy life without cable.

tangle of cables for cable TV, Dhaka, central Bangladesh: Mumpuni, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Economics and time are the reasons why I persist in my commitment to a cable-free lifestyle. Alternative sources of entertainment and recreation consolidate my decision and strengthen my resolve. There may be some programming that I miss, but not enough to go back at this point or in the near future.

My decision to question expenses and re-think budgets dates back to 2012. It finds initial inspiration in that year's rising gas prices. Despite falling gas prices three years later, my cost-cutting resolve gets bolstered by the lawn needing mowing more than once weekly because of fall, spring, and summer rains soaking the ground and strengthening grassy growth three-fourths of the year. My car likewise tends to get driven far afield daily since I live in a rural county that just has three main roads from which two-lane country roads meander.

In determining where to cut yearly costs, I always cast nervous eyes at the television. Ever since my teen years, I generally connect doing floor exercises, jumping rope and using treadmills with watching DVDs, programs or videos. That ironic link between not being a couch potato and yet not missing out on current programming is a habit that merges adolescence into adulthood. It therefore provides a comforting sense of continuity and well-being through juggling activity and recreation, entertainment and exercise.

Sentimentality nevertheless cannot prevail in the grown-up world of money coming in and money going out. Three years later, I still feel that watching cable is not the most cost-effective way of fitting in exercising and having something to show for my time. In 2015, I still hold to the conclusion that I really enjoy only HGTV programs.

That epiphany actuates the realization of another deep truth: Blu-ray, DVDs and video do not require cable! Additionally, news also comes from computers, daily newspapers, radios and word-of-mouth information networks. The final straw that breaks the cable-watcher's schedule emerges with the second deep truth: I prefer walking along park trails and side roads to using treadmills!

With the New Year's third anniversary of life without cable, I discover that my new-found preference is equally popular with cable-free and cable-full family and friends. Cable-free hours indeed get us all together over backgammon, cards, charades, chess, Monopoly, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit and with beloved musical instruments and scores. My life without cable therefore strengthens us all, through romping, star-gazing and strolling activities outdoors and solidarity-building entertainment indoors.

Outdoor strollers encounter nature's beauty, such as Virginia bluebells on Washington DC's Theodore Roosevelt Island, the national memorial maintained in the Potomac River by the National Park Service (NPS); "Mertensia virginica, Roosevelt Island, 4/16/13": Fritz Flohr Reynolds, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

tangle of cables for cable TV, Dhaka, central Bangladesh: Mumpuni, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cable_TV's_cables_in_Dhaka.jpg

Outdoor strollers encounter nature's beauty, such as Virginia bluebells on Washington DC's Theodore Roosevelt Island, the national memorial maintained in the Potomac River by the National Park Service (NPS); "Mertensia virginica, Roosevelt Island, 4/16/13": Fritz Flohr Reynolds, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/fritzflohrreynolds/8655607237/