If a TV addict gives it up, do trees make sounds?

So back toward the end of May, I decided to "pause" Dish for the summer.  Why?  I waste way too much time, especially on breaks, with the TV on.  A lot of times I'm doing other stuff and just turn it on for background noise, but then there is always that bit you have to rewind to catch up.  And in summer, it ends up being almost entirely reruns.  Plus, when you pause Dish, your bill drops to a $5 "maintenance" charge.  So, I thought, I could save $50 a month, not waste time on stuff I've already seen, or even worse stuff not worth seeing the first time around, and fill my summer with productive stuff.

Two out of three ain't bad.

I assumed when you paused service, you got nothing.  I was wrong.  There are a bunch of infomercial type channels that are apparently a free base of Dish service provided to everyone, including people on pause.  But, even while on pause, you also get the free "preview" channels.  This was nice, because for the first few weeks History Channel 2 was on preview.  I like History Channel stuff, so that saved me from going totally cold turkey.  It gave me something to watch before going to bed.  But the next month I didn't care for any of the previews, and I slowly got used to not having constant noise, and going to bed without a TV nightcap.  My TV viewing became catching the one current summer show I liked online - one hour, once a week.  I read a lot.  I worked on stuff for classes.  I occasionally put a movie on if I was really in the mood.  I realized I kind of liked it.

Earlier this month, I had a sudden craving for TV one day and signed up for Netflix.  And for a couple of days, I think all I did was watch TV shows on my iPad.  It was particularly fun when the battery would run down and I'd have to sit within a couple feet of an outlet to watch while charging.  But after those couple of days, after I finished out the show that I'd had the urge to watch in the first place, I realized I was doing that old turn-it-on-and-flip thing - it wasn't that I wanted to watch something specific, I was actively looking for the least boring thing to watch with no end destination in sight.  My month runs through August 6th, but then I'm going back to no TV.  In fact, for the past week, I haven't watched much at all.  The quiet really grows on you.  (I know Heidi is either laughing or shouting "I told you so" right now.)

Is this permanent?  I doubt it.  While a lot of stuff is available online, I'll want "regular" viewing for football and basketball seasons (especially basketball!).  But you never know.  I kind of thought this would be a noble, yet painful sacrifice when I jumped in.  It hasn't been that at all.  Right now, my thought is that I won't turn it back on unless/until I'm feeling deprived.  I may make it through football season.  I may get so used to the quiet, and reading, and having $50 extra, that even basketball doesn't move me.