Turn off your TV! This is Digital Detox Week!!

April 19-25 is TV TURNOFF WEEK! and as Adbusters takes it a step further and declares it Digital Detox Week"! (sorry the image I 'borrowed' was last years dates..)

As far as TV, well, we do not watch TV. We own an old TV set which is in the spare bedroom on the 3rd floor. It is used for the kids to watch VHS and DVD's. But we do not have cable or local channels. We have been TV free for over a year now.

Now I do watch House, Fringe and The Middle online and my husband and I watch The Office online together and we are big fans of Netflix. So we are not essentially TV free. But it is a big step from not having cable. So turning off the TV for a week is easy for us.

My children, who watch at least one movie a day, will not think it is easy. But I think they will be able to do it and will be ok without watching videos after a few days, especially with the nice weather, we will be spending our time outdoors.

However, I will admit I am hooked on the computer. I am a facebook, flickr, Etsy, blog reading addict, so for me to Detox from it all for a whole week is going to be hard. I told my husband I will be "attempting" this, he corrected me saying that was no way to go into it, thinking it it will be an "attempt", so I am re-wording it to I WILL BE DOING THIS! See I have made some lousy attempts at kicking my computer addiction and came crawling back to turn it on just hours later...finding one excuse or another to log in.

One downfall is my photography business and client emails. I am booking clients for May when I return to work, so not answering my email could be a problem. I will have an auto reply message on my email directing potential clients to call me on the phone rather communicate via email. I think in turn this may actually be a good thing. So often I only communicate with clients via email until the day we meet for the session. I think it would be nice to actually speak with them before then! :) You know, the phone, where you actually talk to people and not text :)

Speaking of the phone, I hate my cell phone. I am kind of a phone-phobic, I cringe when it rings. So technically with this detox I should not use my phone, which is fine with me, but I will keep it on b/c it is our only phone. But I will not be texting, not that I text a lot to begin with. And it is not a fancy phone, I can't even get picture messages so I definitely can not get online with it :)

Wish me luck, I may not do it and be back here posting in a short time about my failures :) Or hopefully I will be back in a week telling about how awesome it was to kick the habit and in turn be on my computer less and less.

So as much as I would like to beg everyone I know to do the same, chances are NO ONE I know will actually attempt this. Everyone will think it is stupid or find one reason or another to not even try. I do think Turning off the TV for a week is something EVERYONE needs to attempt, but I don;t think many, or like I said, ANYONE (that I know anyways) will Digital Detox for a week...so I will save my 'breath'... but if you are planning to ;attempt' to do either I would love to hear about it!! Please leave a comment!