A week or two ago I started thinking. I started thinking about how TV pretty much rules my life. Even though it was the summer and there isn’t any good TV on the 18 channels of television that Lyndsay and I subscribe to,  I realized that I fill all the gaps in my free time with television. 

I decided it was time to act. I began an experiment to break my addiction. For one month, I decided that I would not watch TV or play video games. 

I started strong. I bought a book on amazon.com, intending to read it when it arrived. I began reading other books and magazines sitting around our house. It was enjoyable. I felt intellectually stimulated. I had more time to read my Bible, and I took advantage of that.

The next day, I did the same. It was nice, but I felt a bit of a pull to watch some television. I ignored it safely.

The next day Lyndsay rented a movie. She was going to watch it. I decided that I would watch it too. Even though I had decided not to watch TV myself, she hadn’t, and I wouldn’t want to neglect her just because she was watching a movie. So I watched the movie. After the movie was over, I read.

The next day, something happened. I broke. I’m not sure how it happened or what triggered it…but I just started watching TV. And a day or two later, I was playing video games too. Complete relapse.

I did take a moment to sit and think about how completely addicted I was, and how bad I was at keeping this committment. It was a good thing to take a moment and observe. I took this moment while I was waiting for my video game to load. And then I was gone…and all of my shame with it.

After all, it was just an experiment, right? It wasn’t like I felt myself careening into sin and I started this seemingly absurd act of self-imposed legalism as a last ditch effort to save myself. I just noticed that as life fell into place, I would fill the gaps by staring at a screen. I chose to instead try filling the gaps by staring at a book. Even though my Bible reading time had expanded, it hadn’t gotten any more sincere, authentic, or frequent…just longer. So…judge me as you will (since I’m sure you already have)–I just marked my experiment as somewhere between “failed” and “impossible” and resumed my normal life.

Then this past weekend one of my roommates from college, Delanie, came to visit and left me a stack of xbox games that he doesn’t play now that he has an xbox 360. I’m still enjoying them…but I see an addiction looming on the horizon. Hopefully I can avoid it.