I Stopped Watching TV For 30 Days And Realized How Small My Life Had Become

Last month, I watched a tiny bug crawl out of my laptop’s keyboard.

I was watching a reality TV show called “Naked and Afraid of Love”while eating a Caprese sandwich ― the crumbs, no doubt, disappearing into my computer, giving the tiny insect something to munch on. It was gross, all of it ― the binge-watching, the bug, and the fact that I hadn’t gone outside in two days.

This routine of watching four to seven hours of TV daily was a secret that I’d kept close to my chest for over a year. As a creative writing professor, I’d tell my students that digital distractions are a surefire way to kill the imagination. But if I was a character in a short story, I would be a sad, middle-aged adjunct who lives alone, has no pets, and subsists on a steady diet of reality TV, carbohydrates and generalized self-loathing. Not exactly main character energy.

The previous year had been hard. I lost two full-time jobs that provided me with financial security for the first time in my life. At work, I’d begun having anxiety attacks, a close cousin of panic attacks, that lasted for hours. In a Zoom meeting, I had a sudden meltdown so bad that I crawled under my desk because my brain forgot how to go off camera and mute. My co-worker listened to me cry off-screen. I quit that job and started another eager for a clean slate. A few weeks in, however, I ended up locking myself in the bathroom, trying to catch my breath. I walked out on that job, leaving my laptop open on my desk.

It was evident that I couldn’t hold down a full-time job, so I cobbled together part-time teaching and freelance gigs, powering through class lectures until I could go home. TV became a way to escape feeling broken. Watching “Dance Moms” for hours on end, I could trust that I wouldn’t lose it ― walking out my apartment door, well, there was no guarantee. My TV habit morphed from a guilty pleasure to a way to survive each day.

I knew if I didn’t change, things would only get worse. It was already hard to leave my apartment without the thud of anxiety in my skull, every noise too loud, and the world too fast for me to process. I’d grown so used to the numbing sensation of watching “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette” and “Bachelor in Paradise” that I didn’t know how to function outside of rose ceremonies and group dates.

If I continued on, I’d only allow my life to unravel further. I pictured not showing up to class and staying home to watch Bravo until my landlord would eventually knock on the door to ask about unpaid rent. I decided to do a 30-day TV detox in an attempt to regain control of my life before it was too late.

The rules were simple: 30 days, no TV.

No “American Idol,” no “Selling Sunset,” no “90-day Fiance.” A month seemed like a good chunk of time to test whether my life would improve. I hoped that changing one habit might influence others. I wanted to eat better, sleep better, be better. And possibly figure out why I felt so on edge all the time.

At first, it was awful. On day one, by dinnertime, I was miserably eating spaghetti in silence, listening to the refrigerator hum and traffic pass on the street outside my apartment. Without my evening of TV to look forward to, I went to bed at 7 p.m.

Over the first week, I journaled about how miserable I felt. I was missing out on “Severance”and “White Lotus.” I was forced to read books again. I had been an avid reader, but had stopped reading in order to have time to cruise through shows with eight or more seasons. Picking up a book again felt weird. But soon I was able to find comfort and pleasure in novels again. It made me want to dust off my own book that’d I’d shoved in the closet after assuming it just wasn’t good enough.

The discomfort of having to sit with my thoughts in the evenings and the weekends was profound. I knew that if I didn’t replace watching TV with another (ideally healthier) habit, I wouldn’t make it to the 30-day mark. I decided to take 10,000 steps every day. That, too, started off miserably.

“Walking is boring, it takes forever,” I thought, passing the same cookie cutter houses each day. Not one to jog, or run, or go to the gym, I could only commit to taking a stroll around my neighborhood, until I eventually veered onto an urban hiking trail where other people were outside walking dogs and sticking to their New Year’s resolutions.

Finding the motivation to go on walks was hard. I asked my mom to help keep me on track. We’d chat on the phone, and she’d listen to my pent-up complaints about everything in my life, from my money-related worries to my career anxieties. Once, she innocently suggested that perhaps I should hold off on the no-TV thing until another time.

“No!” I shouted into the phone. “I have to do this!”

I’d made a promise to myself to change. Sometimes, I’d text her just to say that I was putting on my running shoes, and she’d send me a heart emoji.

The most profound realization I had, toward the end of my detox, was that TV was my way of coping with loneliness. Without the voices of the Real Housewives arguing, I was left alone. If I had the cast of “Love Island” within arm’s length from my face, I didn’t have to think about how small my life had become. The silence and lack of human contact was all-consuming. Isolating meant not risking the vulnerability of having loved ones see how much I was hurting, shaken by anxiety and depression, trying to find a way to recover on my own, as if struggling with my mental health was all my fault, as if my pain were somehow contagious.

It became pretty clear that during the year that my TV addiction was at its peak, I’d lost most of my friendships. Whenever a friend asked me to have dinner or go to an event, I’d make up an excuse for why I couldn’t go and spend the evening watching four episodes of “True Detective: Season 4” instead. I heard less and less from the people I love.

The detox provided an opportunity to turn things around, I started accepting pretty much every invitation to be social. Still, I was incredibly awkward in most conversations. It felt like I was wearing a name tag that read, “Hi, I’m Julie, and I do not have my shit together.” I did my best to push past this, and my closest friend started to join me on a few weekend walks. We talked about books, and I started to prefer human company to TV.

Sometimes, I backslid by watching an hour or two of my favorite YouTube astrologer. (I’d never properly defined what counted as TV when I first started my detox.) I also found myself losing a couple of my mornings to scrolling social media. I wasn’t ready to swear off screens all together, but I did stay off all the streaming services.

By the end of the 30 days, I’d lost a pound, read six books, and finished writing a short story. I’d applied for higher paying jobs, had begun taking multivitamins, and routinely ironed my pants. My friend commented that my skin looked good.

I felt confident that I’d moved past binge-watching for good. But by day 37, I folded. I watched a couple episodes of “The Bachelor,” but the experience felt different. I wasn’t hooked. In fact, I was bored by the same tired themes. The shift signaled that I’d put in the work to enjoy my real life more than a reality show.

I still miss Hulu, Netflix, Max and Apple TV. I’ve even planned a week, over spring break, to binge-watch all the shows I missed out on during my detox, but other than that I’ve decided to stay the course and keep deleting the emails from streaming services begging me to come back. I’d been trying to cover up sadness with consumption for too long. And that only made the sadness worse. Now, I look forward to seeing familiar faces out on the trail and stopping to watch a white egret fish in the stream.

A month later, I feel better. I can look back on the time I needed TV to cope with sadness with compassion. TV felt safe, but really it kept me paralyzed. Long walks helped me to trust that I can handle being out in the world. Now my body longs to move. My brain is perking up, too. I’ve started writing again. I heard a quote recently that you’re either consuming or creating, and I want to be someone who creates. I even met with a TV writing coach to discuss my secret dream of working in a writer’s room, contributing ideas for great shows.

I tell my creative writing students that the key to creating a great character is to show how they overcame obstacles. Going 30 days without TV doesn’t make me a great character, but it’s made me more present in my life so that now I can take charge and write a better next season.

Julie Poole is a poet and writer. Her book of poetry, “Gorgeous Freak,” is out now. She lives in Austin, Texas.

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