This story was originally going to be called, The Greatest Oppressor in the United States? It was just going to be me bashing television and television watching in general. But, then I though about it some more and realized the greatest oppressor is not television but the greatest oppressor is us. In oppressing ourselves I mean we are holding ourselves back from achieving things. Why haven't we had another "Age of Enlightenment" since the eighteenth century? Maybe it's just me, but I haven't heard or seen any new ideas, new approaches or great revolutions. It's easy to blame an inanimate object for these problems and not blame ourselves. But we make these decisions, we all make choices. We have all these freedoms and seem just to waste them.

I know for a fact I have been oppressing myself. How many times has this happened to you? You have something to do it's not critical but you've been putting it off for some time. But this time, you've made the decision you're going to get it done and over with today. You get home from work determined to do it but think to yourself well I just need to unwind for a minute or two in front of the television. The minute or two turn out to be an hour or two and now you've got to start dinner or go pick someone up or do something else. Now you've yet again put off the thing you were supposed to do. Just other day I must have wasted probably 6 to 7 hours in front of the television watching... I can not even remember what it was. What I do remember is realizing somewhere in the middle of those 6 to 7 wasted hours that I could be doing something, anything other than sitting here. I could've been reading the books I have on my bedside table just waiting to be read. I could have been drawing, paying bills, shaving, just enlightening myself somehow. How quickly the thought disintegrated from my mind once the commercial was over. Think about it for a second, this isn't just me doing this, if just 50% of the people in the United States do this exact same thing it's just sad. It really depressed me so much that I'm giving up television for a year. I know it will be tough for me not to sit in front of the television, but I just can't justify it anymore. I'm going to try to keep a daily journal of what I do to avoid sitting on the couch watching television and I'll post any struggle I had that day or anything interesting that happened as a result of this experiment.