I got a big reminder tonight why disconnecting cable last November was the right thing to do. I was on a call and her husband had cable tv on in the background. I’d forgotten about commercials! omg! I kept cable for so long because I was used to it. Since I didn’t understand how all the options worked, it seemed like such a hassle to switch. Even tho I usually watched with the sound off, I kept the remote at the ready to mute at the first sign a commercial was coming. I didn’t realize how much adrenline I was generating when I thought I was relaxing. And I’d mostly let the cable listings scroll on the screen instead of watching anything. That activated my dopamine: always on the hunt for something that might interest me. A galpal laughed at me years ago when she sat at my Adobe Pagemaker screen and saw I had so many options windows open yet only a small viewing screen for the layout itself. “I like seeing what all my options are!” Once I broke my addiction to the dopamine rush of viewing the cable listing lineup (my options!), the spell of cable tv was broken. Life without commercials is a whole new world. One where I can hear myself think my own thoughts. And between Netflix and HuluPlus, I get everything I got on cable anyway.

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I wasn’t addicted to cable, I was addicted to the cable guide