The Choice to Turn off Satellite

Have you seen those infographics of what happens when someone quits smoking?  It's got these statistics at 2 hours, 12 hours, 2 weeks, etc after quitting showing how things in your body changes.  Well here is ours:

Changes After Getting Rid of Satellite

We had tossed around the idea of getting rid of satellite for awhile, but we could never commit.  It was pretty much our only entertainment and it was hard to decide to cut it out.  Two things really swayed the decision. First we got really serious about paying off student loans.  Satellite costs money.  I know, shocker!  But I HATE debt, so we looked at the budget and said that was a line item that could be deleted and those funds moved to debt retirement.  Granted, it isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things, but pennies turn into dollars.

The second thing was a really great sermon by Andy Stanley that we heard.  I wish I could remember the title of it so I could link  you to it.  It was basically about all the little things you do that take time that amount to nothing, but how if you had put that same amount of time into worthwhile things you would have something to show for it.  This came after a week of binge watching My 600 Lb Life.  It's not that the tv show itself was bad, but over and over that week one of us would say "I should study for the GRE" or "I need to do my Bible study" and the other would be like "But let's watch this episode first" and the stuff that was really important would get left by the wayside.  At the end of the week, very little productive, growing things had been accomplished, but we had seen ten people have gastric bypass.

We still watch tv.  We have Chromecast so we can cast stuff from the computer to the tv, but now we watch more intentionally.  It isn't just picking something, it's actually because we want to watch a movie together.  I think we watch "better" things too.  We stream a lot more documentaries than we would have chosen from just flipping through the channels.  It's nice when it's off too and it's quiet except for Curly Girly's squeals.  We take more time to sit down and all three play together.  I'm definitely not advocating this for everyone, but for us, it was a good decision that's had a positive impact on our time and habits.