Ask Me Anything: Are you ever going to get a TV?

I get some Frequently Asked Questions, and since I process my thoughts much better in writing, I hope to have better thought-out answers here than when I randomly answer them on social media where my thumbs don’t go as fast as my brain does between activities or in passing conversations. I can’t promise I will be able to answer every single one, but I’ll try my best. That’s what a Work-in-Progress Mom means, right? That we do the best we can with what we have, and if not, we look for ways to improve!

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Onto the question…

Are you ever going to get a TV?

So for those who didn’t know, now you know. We don’t own a TV. There’s no box set, no flat screen, no LCD projector theater thing going on here. I don’t know if that’s weird or not. I’m assuming it’s not common, but I do know people who also don’t own a TV and have heard of others who don’t own one.

It’s not that we want to hide from the scary news of the world. It is scary, but I have found that we are informed of what’s happening near and far just as much as the next person, if not more informed. I’m often surprised about some news stories that others have not heard of yet.

Backstory

The backstory is that Norm and I dated for 6 years before we got married 13 years ago. Many hours of those 6 years involved watching TV or movies. Remember renting DVDs from Blockbuster? So for our first year of marriage, we just decided not to buy a TV. We were living in a small space that we eventually would move from so it didn’t make sense to buy a TV just to pay to have it moved later on…or even move it ourselves. We also served in many different ministries in our church which included a lot of driving back and forth and driving teenagers back and forth as it had been since I was a teenager. :p I don’t think it was even a conscious decision beyond that initial decision because we had so many other things that occupied our time.

When people find out we don’t own a TV, the follow-up questions we get asked are: what do you guys do instead of watching TV, don’t you miss the shows, are you ever going to get a TV?

We love to read, play board games, play music together, work on our hobbies, try new foods, explore, hang out with family and friends doing the aforementioned things. And in case anyone hasn’t noticed, there are plenty of devices if we wanted to do anything involving screens.

I can’t answer for the rest of the family but I don’t miss the shows at all. I do enjoy them when I get a chance to watch but I’ve found more time to do other things that I like. If you enjoy a good series or flick, that’s great! I’ll even watch with you if I get an invite. I didn’t even watch things that were “edifying” to my soul. I think the life-long learner in me enjoyed watching and learning about things that I’m not familiar with. CSI, ANTM, DWTS, and probably a few other acronym-y shows were on my watch list. And again in case anyone hasn’t noticed, there are plenty of screens everywhere we go, so I don’t feel like we miss too much if we watch when we are with family and friends, out at a restaurant, at the dentist office, and pretty much everywhere.

No plans to buy a TV in the near future, but maybe one day.

That’s the long answer. If you ask me in passing or in “real life” (I get this question often), the answer will usually be “We just never got one.”

Do you own a TV? What are you favorite shows? Do you use a streaming service? Is that what it’s called? :p

Are you ever going to get a TV?

Backstory

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