Quitting Cold Turkey -- June 2, 2021

Taken out of context, the following may not make sense to you. If it does not, see full essay here.

• Reader, try this one. There are certain things you did out of rote but had insidiously been tapering off. Yet suddenly, you inexplicably just quit cold turkey. The NBA became boring, then the NFL. And now MLB is too. Then they all disappeared from your life. Yet you never really noticed, much less missed them, until there was not a trace of them left. You become vaguely aware that you have not been to a movie theater since 2015, and haven’t watched a Grammy, Emmy, Tony, or Oscar ceremony in …when exactly? Now you feel zero need to do so, and are neither angry nor sad, but feel mostly nothing. These referents are about as important to you as a billboard on the freeway. You wonder, for a nanosecond only, how this happened or how little you must have been invested in any of these things in the first place. Were these always mere naked emperors in lavish robes, and suddenly you regained your child clarity, yelling out “They all are buck naked!”

• You were already but vaguely thinking of quitting an increasingly same old/same old club or burdensome association. You were getting tired of dutifully showing up at a particular event. You found yourself watching a television show and enjoying it less, listening to a music group that became monotonous, watching movies of a particular star, and gradually you suddenly and inexplicably taper off. Then suddenly, there is some sort of mental implosion. You abruptly tune them all out, politely so, but all the more firmly for your years of poorly invested patience. You are not mad, but simply “done with it.” The reaction is only momentarily remorse—a minute or two of regret for “chronicles of wasted time.” Then comes welcome relief if not euphoria that the virtue-signaling lectures are over, the self-pitying sermons gone, and the victimization schtick zilch! I noticed the other day I have not watched a major network newscast in ten years, maybe 15 years for 60 Minutes. PBS? Haven’t seen its Newshour in over a decade too. Is Face the Nation or Meet the Press still on? No doubt they remain highly rated. I used to watch both religiously—around the turn of the millennium.

My life became immeasurably better when I stopped watching almost everything except TCM some years ago. I now have Hulu but I still watch no network news, etc. A little sports, not much. My wife knows not to bring up anything with regard to current events unless it's something "I need to know." My life has become so much better.