It was last year that I gave up television for lent. It honestly didn't last that long. You have to have a plan of attack for lent and I didn't have a plan. It was like the day before lent I decided television. There is a way to choose what to give up; it has to be something that I love that tempts me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was saying, this will be really hard to do. It was okay for the first ten or fifteen days. It was also easier because the layout of my apartment. There were two rooms and a common area. The TV was in the common area kitchen. My roommate had her own TV in her room so that wasn't a problem. I stuck the remote on there, right on top of the television set and I said, I'm not going to touch it for forty days. I found myself sitting on the couch and looking at it with contempt. I don't know, it was really weird. It was because I had prohibited it. My days were really busy, I was taking eighteen credits and TV was my way to procrastinate. I would do other things instead, like clean my room, plan programs, cut up stuff, play Text Twist. It was like some ridiculously short period of days. There was one documentary or something or a cartoon all my friends were talking about it; my friends were no help either. You know, they'd taunt me, and stuff. Oh, they just saw this rare episode of Star trek or something. And I'd get this tight feeling in my chest of anger. They'd do things to rile me up. After day fifteen I made little exceptions: well, if I am watching a movie, then that's all right. If it's news, it's not like I'm being entertained, it's like I'm being informed. Or, if it's like a show I don't like, then it's like I am being punished. Like that show they make you eat bull testicles or a regular cake that has an insect in it. Or I'd watch MTV. It was mainly cartoons I avoided. Late night. Conan O'Brian, I was avoiding that, Family Guy, and The Daily Show. They keep showing reruns so it wasn't like I was missing anything. It was like I was trying to battle an addiction. I was always so guilty afterwards. I would turn it off and on again. If there was a funny or climactic moment coming up, I would turn it off. It got to finite things like that. It was more torturous when I started to watch. Subconsciously, I was trying to make the battle more interesting. I scare my roommate sometimes when I watch TV because I'll scream and I'll be like, oh my god, and it's just this thing that I saw. It's crazy and I'm upset.