Turn off the TV and Read a Book, Or Write an Essay
I unplugged my Roku device the other day and took it to
work. Not so that I could plug it in at work, but so that I couldn’t watch it at
home for a while. Work is just a holding spot. I’ll get it back when I think I’ve
earned it. I needed to cut out distractions and streaming shows have made me a
bit lazy. I’m writing less. I’m reading less. I’m studying for this new work
assignment less. Time is slipping through my fingers and despite my awareness
of it, laziness can still get the best of me. Not that I sit and stare at the
screen while episode after episode loads automatically. But my laziness has
been enough to force a change. Even if just on the margins, I can increase my creativity
just a bit.
Fortunately I’ve started reading and writing more, both are
precursors to higher level thinking. This is a new year after all. I need to
get back to reading traditional books again. News websites form the bulk of my
reading for most of the week. But books aren’t quite as depressing as the daily
news, which is often designed to give you the most horrific stories. Elon Musk
said that the news tries to answer the question, “What’s the worst thing that
happened in the world today?” So less is more where that’s concerned. This is
often tougher than it sounds if you’re like me and suffer from a kind of
current events FOMO.
An honest question to ask, why should reading some mindless
book count for more than watching TV? How can one consider hours of true crime
novels to be of higher worth than hours of Court TV? Instinctively I’d say it
comes from a more creative part of your brain. Reading forces you to create
mental pictures and your comprehension and focus lock in. This is more or less the
view of social media. I did some quick, unscientific, research from Quora and
Reddit. Both are good for getting a sense of what people think, the equivalent of
polling the audience from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? TV is passive while
reading is active. That’s not to say you can’t learn anything watching a show,
but you can also zone out and refuse to connect dots.
Reading forces you to pay attention and create your own
world. The author will describe much of it, but your mind will fill in the details.
Writing takes reading and supercharges it. The world creation that your mind
does automatically when absorbing words is only the first step. World creation
doesn’t just mean fantasy kingdoms like ‘middle earth’ either. It means the
world you present to the reader. If you write fiction you have to write a
character that makes sense. I just finished reading John Grisham’s “The Widow”.
His description of the title character is needy, forgetful and desperate to be
seen as wealthy by those around her. It’s the world according to Grisham in
this small Virginia town. He’s really good at bringing the reading into the
legal world by explaining terms through characters.
The world can also be your version of how things should be,
or how you understand them. I wrote an article years ago, trying to convince
Oklahomans to reject medical marijuana. Signature seekers were everywhere
at the time. I couldn’t go into a Reasor’s (grocery) without someone asking me
to sign this or that petition to legalize it. Promoters leaned into the “medicine”
angle, which was always bullshit. I did a little research on California and Colorado.
At the time they were the only states with an extensive record to draw from. Typically,
it was a disaster for a lot of reasons.
The world I tried to present was one of carnage and decay if
legalization went forward. The trick is to be convincing. You have to know a
few things about Oklahoma law for starters, or the world falls apart. For instance,
we have a provision that allows a question to go on the ballot with only a
handful of signatures. This low threshold allowed the group Oklahomans for
Health to put it on the primary ballot and get it passed. It’s not enough
to say what you’re for or what you’re against, opinions must come with concrete
examples. I think my article holds up today as an editorial against a notoriously
bad idea. But I had to first write out some thought problems in my world and
knock down what didn’t make sense.
It’s not the textbook definition of world building, but it presents the same challenges of consistency in logic and
timelines. Because writing can feel like work I’ll often avoid it. Writing is
concerned with critical thinking and reading with creative thinking. TV or
streaming shows are neither. Going forward I’ll have to be more disciplined. I
can reward myself with a book.
