I'm sitting at the table of my new apartment, waiting for the cable guy to come install internets for me. This place used to be an airbnb, and the TV is hooked up to a wifi which the landlord told me I'm not supposed to access. I didn't want to pay for internet, as I use it so little outside work and I can manage with my mobile data, but mobile + wifi will only cost me 5 euros more per month, so it was a no-brainer.
Yesterday, as I was having my usual dinner of salad (this time with boiled eggs instead of steak for protein), I turned on the TV and watched the first episode of Severance. This is the first time I've watched a TV series in... nine years perhaps? I have an ambiguous relationship with "media" in general.
I grew up without a TV. Well, that's not entirely accurate, I had a TV until I was six while growing up in Toronto, and when we moved to Mexico my mother thought it would be best not to acquire a new one. I don't trust my mother's memories (but that's ok, I don't even trust mine), but she says the reason why we didn't have a TV in Mexico was because I used to watch woody woodpecker obsessively and then repeat his laughter on loop like the semi-autist I am.
I'm glad about this decision, because TV at the time was largely a stream of bullshit news and entertainment. It still is, but now at least I can separate the wheat from the chaff instead of being fed whatever is on air. There were some shows that I really liked, specifically Saint Seiya and The Simpsons, and to watch them I had to go to my grandmother's house or go to the house of a neighbor who was my friend. Now that I think about it, TV at the time was ironically a way of socializing.
For entertainment I used to be the only kid at school that borrowed books from the school library for pleasure. I also listened to the radio, I liked stations that played music from the 80s ("oldies" at the time), and listening to the local news in the morning.
I used to resent not being able to participate in whatever discussions people had about a random show, and there's a part of culture that is/was transmitted through TV and I felt kinda alien in my own country, but looking back upon it I'm grateful for this. I suspect I'd be more indoctrinated into machismo, emotional dysfunction and status obsession of Mexican soap operas.
But I also have much more difficulty "tuning out" from a TV in the background. I used to take the bus from my hometown to Mexico City often, and I would deliberately take the second tier bus which took longer because it didn't have a TV. Buses used to run the most awful movies but I just couldn't tune out, I'd have to suffer through it all the way, but not only that: since I very rarely watched movies I would find myself thinking about the characters in the bad movie even after it had ended.
The cable guy has arrived and had difficulty finding the place where the fiber was supposed to enter my dwelling. After some fumbling he found it in an unexpected place.
Nowadays, in the rare occasion I watch a TV show I tend to binge. The last time I did this was with Game of Thrones, I watched the first two seasons in like three days, and when more seasons came out I chose not to watch it. I don't know why, but TV shows don't leave the same impression on me than books. Perhaps it's because I use my imagination more that I remember them better, and they tend to make an impression on my character. I read Les Miserables about two years ago and I still think about it sometimes.
I find so little time to consume media nowadays, but even when I had all the time in the world I preferred creating rather than consuming content. Nowadays I read what my friends write. I find it fascinating. It doesn't matter much if they are good at writing—the last book I read was by an acquaintance and it was one of the worst novels I've ever read, but knowing the author made me understand a fuller picture of that person. We put a part of ourselves in the art we create and this is what entices me lately to read form people I know, especially friends.