Staticfree Blog

This has been said many times, however I repeat these things here because they have made a difference in my life. They are not easy to do, but neither is changing one's life.

Fundamentally, these tips are about changing from a passive participant in the world (and in your life) to becoming an active participant. It is about getting on the other side of the screen and becoming a producer instead of simply a consumer.

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Switch from TV to DVD and DVR

I feel very strongly about this one, as television is a very insidious drug. I have seen people who waste away perfectly good evenings watching show after show that they don't actually care to watch. Television can be a drug or you can take control of it and take back the few after-work hours that you have.

Get a TiVO or other DVR and record your favorite shows. Use it to skip the commercials and watch the show with a friend.

Nearly all shows end up on DVD (or pirated on the 'net or available to watch online legally). Use one of these mediums where you can mediate how you watch the show. NetFlix is a great TV replacement and it costs less per month than cable.

Switch from television news to textual news

Television news channels, due to the nature of the medium, are biased. They can only fit so much in within a given time period that they must leave out news. And due news channels being 24/7, they need to repeat news throughout the day. That further limits the type of material they can show as well as how much time they can devote to a given story.

Television news also needs to compete with entertainment shows and to do that they must focus on sensational news stories. These stories are not always the most important.

Watch Fox News or CNN sometime and take note at how much time is being spent on what stories. Compare them to online newspapers or actual newspapers (plural here; papers need to be biased too, but are generally more respectable as they aren't competing with entertainment).

Instead of television news, read actual or online newspapers. If you feel that a story is biased at a particular paper, check it out!

Try an interactive activity

There are many interactive mediums available now, where you can be a contributor to something bigger than yourself (or where you can contribute your creations to a group who appreciates them).

There are:

• online forums that host challenges to create humorous pictures
• outdoor activity communities looking for members
• collaborative encyclopedias looking for people to add more knowledge
• open source projects looking for participants
• competitions of all sorts in all areas of life (art, science, drama, food) looking for entrants
• crafting groups looking for neighbors
• topical blog groups that are looking for writers
• community groups looking to improve their communities
• projects that are not yet even dreamed of

The key to all these activities is learning and participation: you will probably need to learn something to take part in it. But the world of information is now rich enough than anyone can pick up almost any activity for only the cost of their time and effort.

It's OK to fail

School taught us that we shouldn't fail, under any circumstances. Some of these activities will not be right for you, but that's OK. Try and learn why something didn't go right and do better next time. Or try something new, recognizing that you've learned a lot from just having attempted.

Avoid common pitfalls

Not all interactive activities are creative. They are often forms of entertainment, but are mistaken for being constructive. They generally include:

• pseudo-interactive activities, such as self-quizzes and other similar entertainment
• spending all your time discussing, never doing
• spending all your time reading, never writing
• debating politics or religion
• preaching to the choir
• video games
• writing blog entries ;-)

Good luck

The world is very large and I firmly believe everyone should take it upon themselves to explore it. One can glean information about the world through entertainment, but it is not the same as going out and learning it yourself.

I write these steps as more ideals than actual activities and am not the best at practicing them myself. But writing it down and sharing it seems better than not. Let me know what you think about this, as no doubt I'll offend at least someone who reads it. I consider this a work in progress and welcome any thoughts on how to refine it.