I watch a fair amount of TV… but I used to watch a crazy amount.
Not too long ago I followed more than a dozen shows, keeping up with characters and story lines that seemed super important to me… until it just got really hard. Finding sites to stream them wasn’t as easy, and the quality was getting worse. So my TV watching just kind of tapered off.
Until … there was Netflix.
Netflix is amazing.
Up here in Canada, we have significantly less content than you do in the States, but as much as we like to complain about it… it’s still pretty great. And for the low price of $9.99, it’s unlimited access to a crazy amount of media.
What could be a more frugal choice for your entertainment budget??? Especially when going to a movie now costs a bajillion dollars (that’s Canada dollars… it’s only about 16 US dollars… )
Extra Extra: Personal Finance Blogger complains about super cheap entertainment source
Ya. Okay. It’s tough to knock holes in its value, but let’s take a step back.
Money is just one of the resources that we’ve got. Another big one is … time.
Ah… now you know where I’m going with this…
It’s uncomfortable to try to add up how much time I have spent watching Netflix in the last year. When I think about day to day usage… it doesn’t seem like much. Sure, I use it most days… but it really doesn’t feel excessive.
But I spent some time looking at the queue of things that I had watched… and then I found a website that can convert that queue… into the amount of days/hours/minutes those shows represent.
And that’s just TV shows… not counting movies… and I honestly thought I had been cutting back this year.
Um…
Shit.
A little dose of perspective.
Okay… so you knew that would end badly. We’ve all seen these counters before. We sit around and laugh about how much time we spend watching TV, and how we should really do other things.
But I don’t like that number.
Is this how I want to spend my resource?
This isn’t some sort of turn-off-the-TV-and-read-a-book lecture. I love TV. And the content that’s out there right now is really incredible.
But just like when I first started tracking my spending and found a bunch of purchases that I didn’t want to be making… I see the same thing in my Netflix consumption.
I’m spending a lot of time there.
It’s so easy to just ‘watch one more episode’, or flip it on to keep myself from feeling bored when I’m on the road.
And the truth is… the more time I spend with Netflix, the less I enjoy it. It’s kind of like eating out all the time. When you’re going out every day, or every other day… it becomes pretty routine. But when you’re only out once every couple of weeks it becomes really fun. Choosing the restaurant, not doing dishes… the whole experience.
Sometimes picking something on my Netflix queue… is actually a chore. I spent an hour once just browsing through titles looking for something to watch, and finally settling for something truly mediocre.
Did I even want to watch something to begin with?
Somewhere past boredom…. Is a whole heap of creativity.
There’s a thing I know, but choose to ignore most of the time.
If I just flip the damn thing off, and maybe even set aside my phone for a while, I’ll feel super bored. Often uncomfortable. Maybe even a little stressed out.
But after that passes (sometimes it takes awhile….) a part of my brain wakes up… and I start to feel creative.
The little kid in me wants to do stuff, ready to fill the time in more interesting ways: make sock puppets, or build a blanket fort. And then I can choose whether I want to use that creativity for pure fun (helllooooo chocolate pudding paint time), or channel it into some work: write a blog post, play act through an aria, or get excited about a new character I’m working on.
As an artist, creativity is more than a luxury… it’s my business.
So what’s the real cost?
Is it just $9.99 a month? Or are you more like me… is it costing you time in which you would honestly rather be doing other things? Is it costing you the uncomfortable feeling of boredom that leads to a blanket fort, or a really great angle to a new opera?
Or maybe it’s completely worth it. Maybe it inspires you creatively, and helps you wind down at the end of the day. Maybe it’s exactly the way you want to spend your time.
But just like with any cost it’s important to look at the resources it takes up, both time and money, and ask…
Is this helping me live the life I want? And if not….
Can I really afford it?
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