The Experiment

I grew up in front of a television. I knew the jingles for every commercial (better than my multiplication tables) and I was a media junkie soon after being potty trained. 

I remain a media junkie to this day. It's this reality of who I am that makes last month's decision so surprising. 

Like everyone, I'm trying to watch my spending and each month, there were two bills that really, really irked me; the cable bill and my cell phone bill. Something had to give.  In the battle between television and the phone, the phone won. I called Charter last month and told them to discontinue my cable TV. Everything was unplugged on January 20th. 

I'm sure you're wondering how I've managed to make it through the media withdrawal. How have I survived without my connection to the outside world? 

It's called Apple TV. It's not the be all and the end all, but it's darn close. 

There were only a handful of shows that I watched on a regular basis and through iTunes, Hulu Plus and video podcasts, I think there is only one that I haven't been able to watch. I get Law & Order: SVU, The Daily Show and Glee through Hulu Plus ($8.00/month). I can watch NBC Nightly News, Morning Joe and the Rachel Maddow show via video podcasts (free) and the only one I have to pay for is NCIS via iTunes (at a whopping $2.99 per episode for HD)

Anything I can watch on my iPad, can be fed onto my Apple TV. All of my iTunes music can be played on the TV. 

It's not perfect, I can't watch live TV shows like the Super Bowl or the Grammys, but via Twitter and Facebook, I know if it's good or not and I'll be able to see the highlights on YouTube the next day. 

I'm also getting more work down around the house. I don't spend all night in front of the television. Ideally, I'm hoping to spend more of that non-TV-watching time at the gym, but one step at a time. 

And this is an experiment with potential end date of July 1st. That's when my lease is up where I'm currently living and when I move into a new place (location TBD), I can make the call if I'm going to sign-up for cable tv again or not. 

As for now, I'm not as much fun around the water cooler because I don't know what happened on Gray's Anatomy last night, but then again, I have never watched Gray's Anatomy anyway. 

Failure

I'm trying to be positive here, but the first four days living in my new abode have not gone smoothly. Packing and unpacking and organizing was the easy part. Each day I've faced one failure after another and I'm beginning to think I may be cursed or something. 

It started on Saturday with the installation of DirecTV. I've had DirecTV for years and I love it. I got a great deal with upgrades and an internet bundle because of the move and I was feeling a tiny bit smug with not having to use the dreaded Charter Communications. The installer was coming between 8 and noon Saturday morning. I called DirecTV at 11:50 am because I hadn't heard anything. Seems the installer was lost. 

When he arrived, I showed him the deck where the dish would have to sit because of the restrictions of the apartment management company. He was quick to point out that I had a western exposure and not a "clear view of the southern sky." He wasn't going to be able to install it and I was now without television service. 

At least I wouldn't have to pay a cancellation fee to DirecTV because there was no way they could get service. On Sunday, DirecTV called to tell me that they have to send a technician out to my place to verify that they couldn't put a dish up before they would cancel my contract. "They'll call you to schedule a time." Seriously? I am not waiting for someone to show up when you just have to look at my deck from the outside and you can see the problem. I still haven't heard from the technician and DirecTV still hasn't confirmed the cancellation of my account. 

And now I'm feeling bad for telling the people at Charter to take a hike; I would have to grovel now to get cable service. 

The second part of my DirecTV bundle was Qwest Internet service and that would start on Monday. I called Qwest on Monday because I hadn't received my information and they told me that UPS was delivering my modem that day. Strange, I told them that I didn't need a modem since I already had one. The service was to be switched on Monday at 5 p.m., but I wouldn't get the modem until Tuesday afternoon (I had to reschedule the UPS delivery). 

There are seven combination phone/cable jacks in the condo; two in each room and one in the kitchen.  I followed the installation directions step-by-step, but it wasn't working. I called Qwest customer service and they were no help. They didn't know which jack was the one that was activated; I would have to check all of them. Customer service asked me what time it was - I said 5:50 p.m. "Oh, maybe the service isn't on yet. If you wait an hour or so, then try again." Their records said that my service was to be turned on at 5 pm on Tuesday not Monday. And it didn't say which time zone for that 5 pm. 

I checked all the jacks and then waited two hours and tried them all again. No luck. I called Qwest Customer Service a second time. They said that since I don't have regular phone service (who does anymore?), they couldn't tell me what the issue was. They would be happy to send a technician out and check the outside lines to see what the issue is. If they couldn't determine the issue on the outside, they would need to come in and check the inside wiring for "a nominal fee of $85." 

I laughed out loud and repeated what she said back to her - "a nominal fee of $85!? Forget it! Cancel my order. I'll ship you back the modem tomorrow." Oh, no, I would have to call a different number in the morning to cancel the order. UGH!!

I'll also have to call the Charter Communications guy and find out if they would add Internet service to my cable TV order.  Grovel, grovel...

Recovery Is Not For Wimps

I saw the most amazing news story last night and had to share it with you. Fox 9 News told the very moving story of young woman's journey through recovery from alcoholism.

Heather King is a blogger, a mom and a recovering alcoholic who is brave enough to share her journey with others.  

The story was not just about Heather, but about the challenges addicted women face. I was proud that Trish Van Pilsum, the Fox 9 journalist, tapped into the resources of Hazelden's Women's Recovery Center and Hazelden's Butler Center for Research.  I learned so much about women and addiction during my time working for Hazelden. 

One of the most eye-opening experiences I had while at Hazelden was through their Professionals in Residence program.  During my first month on the job, I spent a week learning about addiction and recovery from Hazelden researchers and addiction professionals. It wasn't just lecture; I spent time on the units talking with individuals going though treatment. I was privileged to be included in their small group discussions where often times the true essence of addiction is revealed and break-throughs happen. 

I was struck by the difference between the discussions that happened in the men's groups and the women's groups. It was an Ah Ha! moment for me. 

There were core points talked about in both groups - what happens when I leave Hazelden? How will I handle life when I have to face what I left behind? Their answers were different - men talked about jobs and the financial repercussions of their addiction, while the women were concerned about their relationships with their families and feeling ashamed of themselves.

Before you accuse me of stereotyping, remember that these were small group discussions and the topics were common denominators, not what each person had to deal with individually.  Men in recovery worry about relationships and women in recovery worry about jobs, too. 

Unfortunately, addicted women have more barriers to getting help, some perceived and some real.  If you are a single mom, you wonder who will take care of your children while you're in treatment? Could you lose custody of your children?  What will people think of me? (I've only heard of one center that is set up for women to bring their children with them to treatment.) So often, women put their care giving duties before their own personal health.

When Hazelden opened their doors some 60+ years ago, they only treated men. After all, women weren't alcoholics. (It would be another seven years before Hazelden would open a facility for women.) Thank goodness, we've moved beyond that belief.

Thank goodness we have women like Heather willing to take us along on their journey. 

*******

IMHO: There is a difference between reporters and journalists. I don't believe the terms are interchangeable - a reporter stands in front of a camera and reads the facts while a journalist tells a story with words and images that engage you and connects with your emotions.  I saw proof of that last night in this story. Fox 9's Trish Van Pilsum is a journalist.  Kudos!

Where are the celebrities and Spill-Aid concerts?

A friend of mine recently posted a comment on Facebook that really got me thinking. She asked, "Where are all the "Save the Gulf" concerts? Where are all the TV benefits with celebrities and musicians giving heart-felt speeches about those fisherman, wildlife, beaches, etc.?"

Where are they?

I know the media is talking about the oil spill. Watching "Morning Joe" recently, they kept showing a video clip of a bird struggling to breathe and so coated in oil, you couldn't even tell what type of bird it was. I couldn't watch it. It was painful and just sad to see an animal struggle like that.

When I lived in Texas in the mid-1980s, I would travel down to Galveston and spend time on the beach. It was an incredibly peaceful place for me. But, I could see off-shore oil rigs in the distance and there was always a tar ball here and there on the beach. I'm not a big fan of big oil, so I would be disgusted by the tar ball, but thought that an occasional tar ball wasn't a huge environmental risk.

The disaster that looms now in the gulf is overwhelming to comprehend. It's been happening now for 56 days. (The counting of the days is reminding me of the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979/1980) Plumes of oil are being found 150 miles away from the oil leak site. No one can say for sure, how much oil is escaping from BP's containment cap.

It has occurred to me that the reason we're not seeing these celebrity fundraisers is, unlike Katrina and 9/11, this is a disaster was caused by a corporation. While it doesn't lessen the horrible impact on the economy or the economy, the expectation is that BP will be paying and cleaning up. I don't know if that is even realistic.

I've seen the public relations ad campaign that BP has started running and it just serves to anger me more than improve my opinion of BP.

I learned yesterday that BP had over 700 citations for safety, pollution and other violations - in just the last 3 years. Tony Hayward said that it wasn't an excessive number and they have been improving since he took over.The other Big Oil companies (such as Shell & Exxon)? The individual count for their violations weren't even double digit (yes- less than 10!)

How do you know when Tony Hayward is lying? His lips are moving.

The Value of Virtual Friends

I read a recent blog post by Seth Godin, one of my favorite marketing gurus (He is to marketing as USA Today is to news: short and to the point), titled "Maybe you need new friends." 

Here's the entire blog post (When you have ADD, short and to the point is the best.):

Maybe you need new friends

Real world friends are hard to find and hard to change.

But virtual friends?

If your online friends aren't egging you on...

If your online friends don't spread the word about the work you're doing...

If your online friends aren't respectfully challenging your deeply held beliefs...

If your online friends don't demand the best from you...

Then perhaps you need new online friends.
 (Click here to read Seth's blog)

I think online friends are awesome. I have connected with some great people online, particularly via Twitter in the last couple of years. These are individuals that I may never meet IRL*, but I'm sure if I were to meet them, we would talk for hours, just like old friends.

Online friends can push you and demand the best from you, partly because they don't have any other role in your life - they don't know your baggage or hang-ups - sometimes they are "the push" that you need to take a risk. 

A couple of my twitter buddies immediately come to mind:

• @LizStrand. We've been following each other for over a year and we've had several Twitter conversations about a huge range of topics. I think @LizStrand knows everything about sports while my knowledge is limited to just my favorite sports (and sometimes barely those), but I am continually learning things from her tweets.
• @MeredithGould has been a great resource in a wide variety of ways. She's tweets about healthcare marketing and faith (Very helpful when I started working on a church social media task force). She also wrote a book, "Staying Sober" that was published by my employer, Hazelden. (that's just too cool) Plus she seems to follow some excellent Twitterers.

And now I'm finding friends among my fellow Minnesota bloggers - some real and some virtual.

I know the value of online friends because having online friends is not new to me. Not even close!

In the mid 1990's, during the days when online was basically AOL, I was involved with a regular chat group that would talk about (don't be shocked) the soap opera, Another World. We would meet online once or twice a week chat about plot lines, but also daily issues in real life. After awhile, you got to know the regulars. Eventually, we decided that the chats weren't enough, so we started an email group. We were individuals from all over the country, with different life journeys and a wide range of ages. 

About a year into our bonding, we scheduled a get-together in NYC. I was sharing a hotel room with one of the other group members (whom I had never met) and her daughter. My family was freaked about this. They were sure that something horrible was going to happen. Instead, we had a blast and it was the first of many gatherings including weddings, birthday celebrations, etc. 
(That's a group of us from a 1996 NYC visit with actors Charles Keating and Victoria Wyndham. I'm the disembodied head on the far left.)

Another World went off the air in 1999 and the group is still exchanging emails and getting together when we're traveling near each other. Today, many of us are on Facebook

And thank goodness for Facebook! I have renewed so many friendship on Facebook and I am able to maintain friendships on there.

Social media may have its gawdy, commercial side, but the benefits of its reach are far beyond what some might have imagined. 

* if you're a neophyte, IRL stands for "in real life."

It's nice to know it's not just me

Last Sunday while relaxing around the estate and mindlessly channel surfing, I stopped on Channel 2 (our local PBS station) and found a program called "Change Your Brain - Change Your Body." Naturally the words brain and body sucked me in.

The gentleman speaking was Dr. Daniel Amen from the Amen Clinics and he said that his clinic had conducted over 55,000 SPECT scans of individuals' brains. He talked about how you have to know your brain type to be successful at losing weight. Since my ADD diagnosis, I had wondered how different my brain was and more importantly, how it worked. 

He sucked me even further because he started talking about the "Inattentive and Impulsive Brain Type."  He explained that the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) at the front of the brain is responsible for attention span, judgment, impulse control, organization, self-supervision, short-term memory, ability to learn from experience, critical thinking and problem solving. If the PFC is not functioning properly, those skills are at risk.  When he started to referring to this as the ADD brain, I was hooked. Tell me more!

He showed a scan of an ADD brain at rest and the PFC was active when it shouldn't have been. Then he showed the ADD brain when the individual was trying to focus/concentrate and the PFC goes dark with little activity. This means that just when the brain needs to be used for something, the activity decreases and the individual is screwed because the harder they try, the worse it gets.

So, how does this apply to weight loss? Dr. Amen explained that an individual with untreated ADD would have problems staying with a diet for very long. He gave a great example of an ADD person on a diet walking by donut shops - at the first donut shop, he is able to stay focused and walks on by. The second donor shop starts to weaken him and by the third one, he's given up and goes in for the binge, completely forgetting why he was avoiding the donut shops.

I wrote in a early post that I sincerely believe that my ADD diagnosis is the reason I was able to lose weight after so many unsuccessful attempts. While I've been on medications for almost eight years, there are still many of the issues mentioned above that I still struggle with such as short-term memory. 

Some days are good and some are bad. But having the list of skill sets that are impacted by my ADD has been enlightening. It's not just about lack of attention - there's so much more to it. 

I bought two of Dr. Amen's books, "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life" and "Change Your Brain, Change Your Body." (I actually bought them while still watching the show using my iPhone and downloading the books to my Kindle app on the phone. - I am a tech goddess!)  I have this feeling that I may be talking more about this in future posts. 

It's just great to know, it's not just me!!

Losing my cool

I am the person you want on your team for Trivial Pursuit. Because when it comes to cultural references, movies, television, and otherwise useless information, I rock. I used to be able to rattle off the top shows, who were the actors, plot lines, etc. I was Mom's go-to-kid when she was working on the TV Guide crossword puzzles. 

I don't know what has happened to me. When the Lost season premiere happened last week, the number of my FB friends who were excited and anticipating every twist was much larger than I thought it should be. I don't watch Lost. I did watch one of the first episodes years ago and never got it. Lost is lost on me.

There are also a large number of people who like to quote the most recent lines from The Office. Again, I've never watched it. I can fake it pretty well from what I pick up as others are talking nonstop about the most recent episode. Actually, I've learned that if I just mimic what the other person is doing when they're telling me about last night's episode, I can cover up my "uncoolness." 

Now, I can proudly say that I've never watched Survivor, American Idol, Wife Swap, or The Bachelor. Not a big fan of shows where the object is to destroy another person's self-esteem. The only reality show that I watch is Biggest Loser because the show is borderline educational and the participants have their lives changed for the better. (Full disclosure: I did watch Dancing with the Stars when Marie Osmond was on - but only for nostalgic reasons)

My loss of cool is a recent event. I'm pretty sure I still had the cool factor through the Buffy the Vampire Slayer years. I can still quote many of those lines.

I'm trying to figure out when it happened. When did I lose "cool?" 

I can't think of the one event that could have turned the tide or was it progressive (or regressive) over the last few years. Or perhaps I just got a life that doesn't revolve around what is on television. Talk about a lifestyle change.