Return of NoVideo

I'll be perfectly honest: I spent nearly 2 hours today watching clips of Judge Judy on youtube.

It's really a good show. In a certain way, I love Judy's attitude, which really is a volatile kind of good-doing.

But that's not where I wanted to go with this. It made me sick to watch, as compelling as it was. I could directly feel the energy being sucked out of me, and a very ill, dark kind of feeling growing inside of me. A lot of it was fear; a lot was sadness. Whatever it was, I was passive in it.

I have been thinking about this lately: watching things is partly a way of managing stress and partly a way of having someone feel for me. Those are mutually inclusive ideas. I can't manage the stress - I have the show manage it for me, telling me what to feel, so I regain a sense of flow and control.

But it doesn't really work, ultimately. I'm left back where I started, almost every time. There are notable exceptions, but they are rare.

Also, watching video is a substitute for being social. I need to be more social.

So: I've decided to take up NoVideo once again. I'm still hammering out the terms. I can go completely without for at least a day or two while I come to a decision. So far it's this:

- I will not watch video on the internet or on television, alone, for entertainment.

- It is acceptable to watch video for educational purposes, as long as it is either part of a chosen course of study or, if it's something I encounter, it's something I have planned ahead of time. Even if it's something that has appeared in my blog feed, I need to at least take a moment to think about when I need to watch it; I will not just click on anything impulsively.

-Socially, anything is fine. However, I myself can propose watching a movie, but I cannot propose watching television or any video on the internet.

-Video games are okay. There is a bad side to this and a good side, but I'm just going to focus on video for the time being; that is enough for me right now.

On the positive side:

-I will be actively seeking out ways to counterbalance this. I'm going to have a steady stream of easily-digestible novels at my disposal, beginning tomorrow (I've got a lot of Asimov to go through still, for starters).

-I'm going to see about being more social. Whatever the hell that entails. But it's something I need to do.

One more thing: this is going to be permanent. For the rest of my life, or at least until my life has reached what I can reasonably say is settled and focused. Now, it is neither.

So I think this is a good bare bones; that is all for now.

Any suggestions, dear readers? Notice potential problems, inconsistencies? Want to know more as to why I'm doing this and what I want to accomplish? Leave a comment.

Quiet night, all.