Welcome to the last post in my seven-post blog to keep the middle-aged mind sharp, given all the conveniences and shortcuts tempting us to hit Pause on our own brains. Nothing pauses the brain like audio visual distractions ready to invade 24/7 if we let them. Television. Laptop. Smart phone. Ready to plug into our brains and shut down our thoughts.

Occasionally, nothing is more blissful than staring into the black hole I call my television. After a long day, when all I want to do is block out everything that happened up until that moment, nothing rescues me like my television. Its endless streaming options, not to mention DVDs I can watch anytime, sometimes provide an escape no spa treatments can.

Most often, though, when I turn it on, the television goes from a literal black hole to a symbolic one. Once those colorful, or black and white, images start moving around, there might be no looking back. I fear I will fall deeper and deeper into the abyss until I lose my sanity. Must be age. When I was younger, I could watch TV for hours without losing my mind.

Now as I approach my mid-40s, one hour a day is becoming too much. Two hours are tolerable for a movie, requiring a commitment to finish what I’ve started. Binge watching is for those rare sick days. A few months ago, I watched TV for hours on a random Saturday. Simply because I was mentally and physically depleted. Afterwards, I felt more depressed and depleted.

I went down a rabbit hole in an app that turns curiosity into an obsession by pushing similar content to your feed. I watched one funny video and was offered an endless buffet of others just like it. I was too tired to protest and, before I knew it, four hours had passed, and I felt as though I had prepared for a marathon I was never going to run.

The content was fun and entertaining but, without a point, it was more draining than something with a point. Not thinking has become more exhausting than thinking, believe it or not. After that experience, I made a commitment to one-hour per day of television except the weekly movie night and the weekend. I leave one day every weekend to watch no TV at all.

Nowadays I read more than I used to. I’m doing strengthening exercises in addition to cardio. I’m playing chess again. I’m relearning to read and write a language I learned as a child but was forgetting in adulthood. I look forward to a day every week of paying full attention to my home. Making pasta. Samosa-calzones. From scratch. Or not. The time is mine.

For some reason, I am surprised that disconnecting the tubes from my brain freed it up to more productivity. Simply because I watch less TV, doing more does not make me more tired. It wasn’t my body that was tired anyway. It was my brain!

Disclaimer: This content is neither advice nor instruction. Medical or otherwise.