The morning after returning from my trip I made a call to Comcast and asked them to cancel my subscription. They tried to keep me as a customer, as they are wont to do, but I was convinced. The TV was ruining my ability to function. It had to go.

Backing up a bit:
I’m very much aware that I have a bit of an obsessive personality. It’s why I like projects so much. It’s why I was absolutely petrified to try alcohol for the first time (luckily I don’t particularly like it). It’s why I always make sure the candy bars are lined up at the grocery store checkout. It’s a personality quirk. Whatever. I deal with it.

Except when it came to TV. That thing just sucked me right in. I had My Shows that I just had to catch. It was to the point where my life was scheduled around prime time TV. Not cool. Especially when it meant that my social life and pet projects were suffering. It was to the point where I was so wiped out after work that I’d come in, take Penny for a walk, grab something out of the fridge, and plop on the couch for the evening. I’d often fall asleep in the middle of a show and wake up sometime around 2AM. Walk myself up to bed and catch the bits of the show that I missed via DVR before My Shows started the next day. Yeah. I’m not proud.

So you see, it HAD to go.

I had so much I wanted to do. I had 101in365 which I’d kind of let stagnate for a few months. I had people I should have been socializing with. I had a life to lead personally rather than vicariously through Meredith Grey or Rachael Berry depending on the day.

So I convinced Comcast that there was nothing they could do to convince me to stay as a customer and they finally turned the damned thing off. And off to work I went…

When I got in that evening I kind of stood in the middle of my living room for a bit wondering what to do. Then I sat down at my computer and started cranking out new features and improvements for 101in365 like crazy. I’m talking something new every day for weeks on end. Things were looking up!

Did I have some withdrawal? Not really. I replaced it with something else – something more productive. Ok maybe I did have some signs of withdrawal. I ended up rearranging my living room (the couch is now further from the TV!). And I painted my kitchen. But who’s counting?

After some time had passed I didn’t even realize it was gone. It wasn’t until my mom came to visit that I realized how free from the grip of TV I’d really become. Whereas before my first reaction upon feeling slightly “bored” would be to flip on the TV and end up losing hours in crappy reality shows, I now run errands, work on whatever projects I’m working on, water my plants, you know, NORMAL things. If I do want to veg out on the couch for a while, I plug my laptop into the TV and stream Hulu Plus or throw in one of the few DVDs I have of movies that I really love.

But now comes the hard part: Fall TV is starting to gear up again. When all of My Shows will be on full blast. The first batter up to the plate: Mad Men. I LOVE Mad Men. It was up there with LOST as a quality not-reality/generic melodrama-crap TV show in my opinion. Luckily I was out being social and productive that first Sunday night (yay Startup Weekend!) so I didn’t really notice. But then all of the tweets, tumbles, blog posts, and office conversation kicked in on Monday morning. Dilemma.

I did the math: My Shows consist of about a dozen series that I’ve been watching for the last 4+ years on average. The average show subscription on Amazon or iTunes is somewhere between $50 and $80. That’s about $780 if I decided to purchase every single one of the shows I watch. Subtract those that I could get on Hulu and we’re at something like $200. Given that I’m saving nearly $100/month by NOT having cable, I decided I could justify the $200 spending IF…that’s IF I decided I absolutely couldn’t live without a certain show. Problem solved.

So I went to Amazon and ordered a subscription to Mad Men. It turns out I can plug run an ethernet cable between the TV and my router and through Yahoo! Widgets I can stream Amazon On Demand straight to my TV. Ha!

The good thing about this new system is that TV-watching has an actual visible financial impact. It’s not some mystery $100+ that gets mixed in with taxes, internet, and who knows what other fees in my auto-billed, auto-paid Comcast subscription. I have to actively CHOOSE to put out the money for a certain show and it helps me realize that I should be dang sure I can’t live without this show. I’m sure there’s some sort of Time Value of Money or Opportunity Cost business analogy that could be drawn here, but I’ll leave that to the MBAs.

Anyway, the point of this whole exercise is to make changes in my life to force me to do the things I want to or should do. And lookie here – it’s Sunday night. Mad Men is on. And I didn’t even realize it until just now. It’ll pop up on my Amazon On Demand tomorrow. I could watch it then. Or wait until I can do a marathon one weekend. It’s UP TO ME. Oh, and did I mention I haven’t seen a TV advertisement in nearly two months now?!

Take that big media companies! It’s SO NICE to have my life back.

Related posts:

1. Cool Stuff: Free is Free!
2. Things I Love

Throughout the year I really enjoyed having my list to come back to when I was feeling bored, unproductive, or reflective. It was great to have a tangible set of things that I wanted to do that I could check off along the way. It’s why I created 101in365. I wanted to do it again, but even better this time around.

I rarely made a conscious effort to accomplish one of the items on the list. I generally just let life happen and along the way hope to tick off as many as I could. I’m disappointed that I couldn’t finish a few of them but overall I’m happy with what I was able to accomplish this year. So, without further ado, the list:

START: January 1, 2009
END: December 31, 2009

In Progress
Complete
Didn’t Complete

New Experiences:

1. Go skiing.
2. Master something I’ve never tried. – This is a tough one to determine completeness. I definitely learned that I need to make these goals more specific. I’ve done a lot of things I hadn’t tried before over the course of the year, but did I master any of them? Some more than others. For example, I’m excellent at dealing with my bills and things now, but I wouldn’t say that’s something to check off. Not like becoming a black belt having never done martial arts before. Let’s call this one a push.
3. Ride a Segway. – This one wasn’t for lack of trying. I’ve looked into Segway tours pretty much everywhere I’ve gone just to try it out but they’re always so darned expensive and not really worth the cost. Adding this one to next year’s list.
4. Road trip from Northern CA to Southern CA.
5. Tour Europe. – DEFINITELY accomplished this one. And it was the best decision I’ve ever made. I would do it again in a heartbeat. (See travel.jennvargas.com)
6. Travel to a country I’ve never been (Canada doesn’t count). – I consider this one kind of cheating since I’d never been to any of the countries I visited in Europe, but yes, this one gets the check mark.
7. Try real sushi – like raw fish sushi, not crab/shrimp/veggie sushi. – I’m not sure whether to check this one off. I’ve had raw fish, but I don’t know if it would be considered sushi. Raw fish is still a huge step for me considering seafood is probably one of my least favorite things, so I’ll call this a win.
8. See at least one Broadway show that I haven’t already seen.
9. Visit 3 states I’ve never visited.
10. Visit a place where I don’t speak the local language. – Another one that I can group in with the cheating list. I didn’t speak the local language in most of the places I visited in Europe.
11. Watch the sun set over the Pacific.

College Things:

12. Avoid senioritis at all costs. – I worked my rear end off for my final semester. I think it had to do with taking classes that I actually liked.
13. Become a morning person again. Up at 8 or 9AM, none of this 11AM nonsense. – I have to say that this one didn’t actually happen until after college, but I definitely wake up early now.
14. Go to the top of the Clocktower for a chimes concert. – This is the one I’m most disappointed about not accomplishing. I even had a chance when I went back to Cornell in October, but I didn’t have the time to go. I WILL get to the top of that clocktower.
15. Have lunch with a friend at least once/week. – Did this during school and arguably still since I have lunch with my coworkers.
16. Read at least 3 school/major-related books. (3/3) – I really should have written down the names of the books but I know Here Comes Everybody
    was one of them.
17. Try to complete as many things possible on the “161 things to do before you graduate Cornell” list — in one day. – Did pretty well with this one. Can’t remember how many I ticked off, but it was a decent number.
18. Go to sleep before 11PM twice/month. – Sadly I go to sleep before 11 more than twice/month these days. I usually fall asleep around 10:30 watching TV and then doze on and off until I actually go to sleep in my bed. This whole getting up early thing is a killer.
19. Hand off the Photo Department to Matt in a state that I can be proud of. – I like to think that I did a pretty solid job with the Photo Department during my time as Photo Editor and I think Matt got to start his term on a strong foundation. (02.28.2009)

Food-related:

20. Bake more.
21. Cook at least twice/week. (You’d be amazed at how many meals of chips and salsa or hummus and crackers one can eat in a week.) – I was doing really well with this one during school but then once I moved I lost it. I have been traveling too much lately to keep food around but that’s definitely one of my goals for 2010.
22. Go back to Pinkberry. – Went with Meghan and Matt during winter break. Now that I’m in San Francisco again it’s not nearly as novel but I still love this stuff! (01.13.09 [photo])
23. Go back to Serendipity 3 (thanks Lissy!)
24. Go on a picnic. – Another cheating one since most of my food consumption while traveling was picnic style.
25. Have more dinner parties. – Another where I did well during school but lost momentum after graduation.
26. Learn to cook empanadas. – I KIND of learned, but I need to get my hands on the recipe.
27. Learn to like wine. – I no longer have a complete aversion to it so I call this a win. There are some wines I enjoy – mostly whites – but I’m slowing acquiring a taste.
28. Make chocolate covered fruits (strawberries in particular). – I bought one of those microwave melt chocolate things and dipped strawberries in them every day for like 2 weeks. That was fantastic. (02.18.2009)
29. Make macarons.
30. Make my own pizza from scratch. – I’ve yet to make my own dough so I consider this incomplete. I do make my own pizza, though. Wraps make excellent bases.
31. One last Cooking Extravaganza.
32. Order out at most once/week, but as infrequently as possible. – I set a rule for myself: eating out more than once a week is OK when it’s with friends. Every once in a while I stop by the Taqueria on my way home from the train station, but on average I don’t pick up dinner on the way home more than once a week.
33. Try a new recipe at least once/week.

Friendship:

34. Call a friend, no matter how busy I am, once a week to see how they’re doing.
35. Catch up with at least 4 old friends who have drifted away. – I’m really excited about this one. I got to reconnect with a lot of people over the course of this year and I’m so glad to be back in touch with them.
36. Hang out with Bayonne friends at least once before moving to CA. – more than once! Ioanna and Jimelle came to visit me at the shore and I also went up to Bayonne for the night just before I left for my going away party. I have to hang out with those guys more often.
37. Have Sunday Brunch with friends at least once/month. – This has become Saturday brunch but is still an almost weekly ritual.
38. Keep in touch with old friends: distance and time are not excuses.
39. Meet up with Natalie at least once (it’s been over 3 years!). – Natalie came to visit me at Cornell. (2/22/2009)
40. See Erin at least twice. – Sadly we only got to see each other once this year and that wasn’t in the happiest of circumstances. Hopefully Erin will be able to come visit San Francisco in 2010.
41. Snail mail is fun: send holiday/birthday cards. – I was SO CLOSE to finishing this one. In fact, the cards are all written, sealed, and addressed in my backpack right now. Life kind of got in the way and I never got to the post office to get stamps. Sad.
42. Spend more time hanging out with Margot. – Yep. We hung out a bunch. Now she’s in Ithaca and I’m in SF so that’s tough, but I did see her when I went to visit!
43. Visit Shannon in Portland. – Another that I’m really disappointed I didn’t get to do.

Habits:

44. Be less wasteful. – With all of the moving I did this year I was definitely very wasteful. I did have a garage sale and donate the things I didn’t want any more, but with all of the packing materials and boxes, etc., this definitely wasn’t a “green” year for me.
45. Blog at least once/week. – I did so well with this until I moved out to SF. With the lack of school and travels I’ve yet to find my new blogging mojo.
46. Don’t be a lazy typist. Use capitals and punctuation where necessary, but not unnecessarily. – I’d say I definitely got better at not typing like a high school student. Still a long way to go, especially in terms of accuracy.
47. Don’t sit at the computer for long periods of time. – HAHAH yeah. Right. Like this one is going to happen.
48. Don’t slouch, especially when I’m sitting at the computer for long periods of time. – I’ve definitely improved in this area though. Now if only I could get my hands on a Herman Miller.
49. Go an entire month without caffeine. (I don’t drink coffee or soda, but I do drink a lot of iced tea.) – This one wasn’t very difficult considering I don’t really drink a lot of caffeine in the first place. I basically just had to cut out iced tea.
50. Go outside at least once/day. Pajama days are better when they’re infrequent. – Not quite there yet, but making progress. I don’t have much of a choice now that I have Penny.
51. Make my bed every day for a month (bonus points if I can keep it up for longer!) – I tried. I just don’t get what the big deal is. I’m just going to unmake it in a few hours anyway.
52. Pick 1 day of the week and limit myself to email and classwork-related internet use. No twitter, flickr, facebook, RSS, or other time traps. More on that later.
53. Use the word “I” less often. It’s not all about me. – Made a conscious effort with this one over the course of the year. Tough to measure if I’ve actually managed to complete this one but let’s call it done.
54. Water is my friend. Drink it. – Water is good.
55. Wear my hair down at least once/week or get it cut shorter. – It still surprises me that I’ve actually managed to do this one. I used to HATE wearing my hear down, and to be honest it still bugs the crap out of me, but I do it.
56. Write more. You know, like with a pen. And while I’m at it, fix my handwriting. – I promise I tried, but my handwriting is atrocious.

Having a Job:

57. Aim for 30-under-30. – Nothing to report. Boo.
58. Find an apartment in San Francisco that I love. – Yep.
59. Keep up with new CSS things. – Made up a couple projects over the course of the year just so I could play around with the CSS3 things. Still a few more things that I’d like to try, but at least I don’t feel completely out of touch.
60. Learn my way around JavaScript and Processing.
61. Learn my way around RoR.

Money Things:

62. Have at least $3000 in savings account at the end of the year. – Yeah. Not so much. If I didn’t go to Europe it probably would have been a different story, but it was money well spent.
63. Have no credit card debt by the end of the year. – I follow the gospel of I Will Teach You To Be Rich
64. Finance a good portion of my trip to Europe by selling things I don’t use anymore. – Yep.
65. Learn how to do my taxes. – Postponing this one until next year. Graduation, moving to a new state, and all that other stuff make this one a year for an accountant.
66. Make good progress on paying back my college loans. – Grade period just ended. Now I just have a process in place, the progress part won’t be noticeable until next year some time. Hopefully.

Organization:

67. Don’t keep junk. I only need so many free pens.
68. Get my bank accounts in order and track where I’m spending too much money (yay Mint.com).
69. Keep my desk neat. Piles are the enemy.
70. Keep my room clean/organized/neat for an entire month. – This one is easy now that my bedroom is literally just a bed and a side table. My whole apartment is generally very neat though.
71. Throw away/sell/donate at least one thing I’ve been keeping “just in case” each week.
72. Organize my out-of-control music collection.
73. Plan aforementioned trip to Europe. – See travel.jennvargas.com.
74. Reduce my RSS subscriptions to <100 quality reads. – I think I’m around the same number I was last year. Some of the old standbys are there but more photography and less Engadget type echo-chamber-y sites.

Photography

75. Be in more photos rather than just taking them all the time. – Did well with this one, especially toward the end of senior year.
76. Find and organize non-digital photos from childhood. – Made good progress by digitizing a lot of the photos I found in the process of cleaning out my room for the move.
77. Finish my Project 365. – Matt and I agreed to end it sometime over the course of the summer. It made photography too much of a chore.
78. Print and frame at least 5 of my photos. What’s the point if they’re just sitting on my hard drive?I printed a lot of photos, but never framed any of them.
79. Try to make at least 1 HDR. – Tried and failed. I don’t particularly like HDRs.
80. Sell a photo. (I’ve sold a bunch of photo shoots already, but no photos that I’ve already shot)
81. Shoot and develop at least 8 rolls of film. – Far surpassed this one doing my Psych of Visual Comm final project

Just Because:

82. Build a snow man. – Just last week, in fact!
83. Buy a pair of awesome black heels.
84. Buy a really cool vintage camera. – Bought a bunch of them but still want more.
85. Complete the NYTimes Crossword Puzzle at least once/week (bonus for Sunday!)
86. Get the Sims 3, but curb my addiction. (read: practice self-control). – Got it, played with it, over it.
87. Go ice skating.
88. Go on a date (perhaps combine with #23?).- FAIL.
89. Learn 50 ASL signs that I don’t already know.
90. Lose 15 lbs. – Backpacking for 6 weeks helps.
91. Make decent progress on watching CSI from start to finish.
92. Make a “soundtrack of the year” with 20 of the songs that I loved in 2009.
93. Read at least 1 book by Jane Austen.
94. Read at least 3 non-school/non-major-related books. – Definitely read more than 3.
95. Re-learn Spanish. – Going to Spain really helped but I have a long way to go before I’m anywhere near fluency again.
96. Re-locate my imagination. – Still not where I’d like to be.
97. See at least 25 movies from the AFI Top 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list – SO CLOSE! (21/25)
98. Sell something on eBay or craigslist.
99. Sell something on Etsy.
100. Try a sport other than volleyball, soccer or softball. – Unless paragliding counts?
101. Watch all of the Star Wars movies (I haven’t seen any!).

All I can say is thank god I don’t have to do that manually next year. 46 completed. Less than half, but definitely the better half. Almost done with my list for 2010. These things are tough! Check it out on 101in365: 101in365.com/jenn.

Related posts:

1. Announcing 101in365. 101 things to do. 365 days to do them.

1. Send a Snail-Mail Holiday Card from Google (for free!)

Google has a cool little offer this year: They’ll send a post card to someone via snail mail on your behalf. No stamps required! The cards all have little GMail icons on them, some more obvious than others, but they’re all pretty cute! There are only a limited number of cards available and each person only gets to send one, so hurry up and choose wisely! Check it out here.

2. Amazon’s Christmas Music Advent

Amazon is one free holiday song every day from now until Christmas. I bookmarked the page so I have something new to listen to every day. While I’m sure I won’t like all of them, it’s good to mix up my usual Christmas playlist!

If you’ve found something awesomely Christmasy in your online travels, let me know down there in the comments! Like I said, the list is still a work-in-progress – follow me on twitter and I’ll let you know when I add something new!!

Related posts:

1. Things I Love (Productivity Edition)
2. Google Wave Notifier for Firefox
3. Things I Love

I’ve seen a few cool projects go here or there that I was intrigued by, but I haven’t necessarily felt compelled to contribute – until today. There is a really good batch of project proposals vying for support and I finally gave in to one of them: Designing Obama.

The proposal is this:

…The Design Director of the Obama campaign, Scott Thomas, has collaborated with artists and designers to create Designing Obama, a chronicle of the art and design from the historic campaign. Get the inside story on how design was used by the campaign, and scope out the pieces, created unofficially, by grassroots supporters.

The 360-page book is full-color and hardbound, highly crafted with an embossed sleeve…

I’m a bit of a design geek and I can’t wait to get my hands on this book! Fellow design geeks and Obama supporters alike should definitely help Scott Thomas reach his goal. He’s 3/4 of the way there! And while you’re at it check out the other Kickstarter projects – there’s something for everyone!

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I’ve had the book on my to-read list for a few months now, but as part of one of my “money management” resolutions, I’ve decided to only buy books if absolutely necessary, especially considering the number of unread books sitting on my bookshelf at the moment and even more especially considering the fact that there is a branch of the San Francisco Public Library about 2 blocks from my apartment. It’s rather ironic, but absolutely fitting that I wouldn’t buy a book called Free. I’m glad I waited, though!

Yesterday, as I was browsing through the iTunes store looking for podcasts, I stumbled across this one. It’s a podcast of Chris Anderson reading the book! Why they chose to call it a podcast instead of an audiobook is an interesting question in itself, but that’s not the point. The book is free. Download it.

I haven’t finished it yet, but so far it’s pretty interesting in a Freakonomics meets the Internet sort of way. It does have a lot of real-world, offline examples, especially in the history of the Free model, so it’s not entirely tech-centric. From what I’ve heard so far it’s definitely worthwhile. There is a print version available too, if you prefer page turning and dog-earring.

Not sure if I’ll do any sort of review of the book once I’ve finished listening to it, but I thought it was a pretty nifty find (it is a $22 book after all!). If you’re into techy/culture/sociology types of books, almost all of Lawrence Lessig‘s books are also available online under a Creative Commons license with more coming soon. I haven’t found any free audio versions of them (or any other good books) yet, but if you have, let me know!

Enjoy!

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