Subscriptions

I have all but pared down my current subscription services. Gone is DirecTV and also surprisingly Netflix, as I just did not have enough time in the day for that much television. The DirecTV people called me and asked me why I canceled. I told them I just had too much television to watch. I get Hulu free with Spotify, and I barely even watch that. I have a Roku with a couple hundred channels on there and I can tune into most anything I want to watch within seconds. For movies I have Amazon Prime and my DVD collection.

I just have too much to watch too much television. I couldn’t fathom watching a couple hundred channels when all I am really interested in are one and two programs.

I also found a couple niche streaming services for silly movies and softcore adult fare. The Full Moon Streaming service and the sister channel Erotic Movie House give me as many silly low-budget, late-night couples and horror movies as I could ever want. They are also filming 10 new movies this year so I choose to support their efforts and lift up independent film makers. If I’m going to watch anything serious or big-budget Hollywood I am going to do that on Amazon or a DVD, rent or buy.

I’ve also pared down some of my other entertainment subscriptions to just what I use. It is a bit liberating to start shedding these off, I subscribed to and à la carte game service that I never used, so I canceled that. There was a MMO I rarely played, so I canceled that. I felt this overwhelming sense of freedom with each service canceled, and I took back a little bit more of my free time with every account I closed.

I used some of the money I saved to subscribe to those niche services I mentioned previously, and also to update my Office 365 subscription so I could have a modern version of Word to use with my voice type dictation. This is a big help and it also gets me back into writing a lot easier than having to stumble over keys and I can also dictate while I am doing other things. It is just a huge quality of life improvement for me, and I have my voice type dictation profile trained so well it will type any word that I can say, even the nasty ones if I wish.

There are things in my life I simply do not have time for anymore. Often with a subscription service you feel the need to sit there and justify the money you paid, and it ends up taking up time that you would love to have for doing things that you really want to do. I was in this strange state of subscription fatigue, where I had so many choices available to me at any one time that I did not want to do any of them. I find the same thing happens to me with social media networks, the more of them I am subscribed to and have to maintain the less I do on each of them. It is a question of quality interaction versus quantity of interaction.

I am cutting out a lot of things in my life and trying to make time for writing which is what I’m doing now. I have so many words that need to get out, and so many things to say. I have sat silent for way too long, and my voice is an important one.

My head, on the other hand, is not where I would like it to be for me to start doing reviews again. I fear I would miss things, skip over important points, miss important plot developments, or loss over character development and that would be a huge disservice to the writers who come to me for feedback. I am not ready yet to start reviewing, but I am ready to start telling people what I feel. I am this strange, rare person who does this both for the community and for myself. To me, reviewing is a process of self-discovery and self-improvement, and it also lifts our community up with independent thought and feedback in a constructive manner.

You don’t get that very much on the Internet these days.

I want to get back to my main thought. Subscription services. They are in a way like voluntary sacrifices of our wealth and time, and we are promised something in return. We are promised entertainment, enlightenment, a service, or some sort of value for the money we pay for these virtual things. We are paying for access. I was in a place where I would collect subscriptions like bread ties in a junk drawer, and I never used all of them, nor ever got my money’s worth out of one of them.

Today I am in a better place because I am being discretionary and selective about both my interests, and my time. I have cut out a lot from my life, the things that I would love to do but will never do. It is not a defeatist attitude telling myself that I’m not good at something, it is more an attitude where I am telling myself I want to be good at the things that I truly love. I do not want the things that I kind of love to get in the way of what I really want to do.

There is a difference between defeatism and distractions.

My life has improved considerably when I started seriously considering what things in my life were distractions. I have time to be with you again. I have time to write. I have time to share my thoughts. I have time to read. I have more time for writing, which is what I love.

In a way, I have chosen to subscribe to you.