I am thinking more and more about getting a divorce, or ten. No, no. Not from my treasured spouse. (Who else is gonna tolerate me on a 16/7 basis? Now that I use a CPAP, I am easily tolerable about 8 hours a day.) Nor is it a divorce from kith or Kkn, but from the 18 jillion streaming services that have wormed their way into and onto my monthly budget. Just this month, I paid Netflix $20.38 to watch whatever they served up. Beyond one Hollywood musical, I can’t remember what I watched, so it wasn’t very impactful. I have, however, been singing the score from Wicked throughout the evenings, so my wife’s life has been impacted … much to her distress.
Someone once told me the only reason for the invention of TV was to make us all want stuff.
(Was anything invented in the 20th century that didn’t have an eye towards either farming or military applications? I think not, although I’m hard-pressed to explain how the mascara tube fits either category.) Although I may not quite accept the idea that TV was invented for advertising, advertising certainly became its primary purpose. For a time there, the Marlboro Man was just as omnipresent as John Wayne. Both were deadly, but only one still survives, just not on TV.
As to wanting stuff, Amazon’s search engine has replaced TV to help me find the things I can’t live without. “Need” is an archaic term in my life, except, it seems, when it comes to surgeries.
I have too many hobbies to count.
They are all expensive. “The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.” I stand in the box, guilty as charged. Too often, the primary focus of my hobbies becomes acquiring the various accessories and accoutrements associated with the hobby, rather than the activity itself.
Anyway, the $20.38 (you haven’t forgotten we are talking about my Netflix bill, have you?) was somehow a number that registered as being “too much to spend.” A quick pull-up of last year’s bill shows current charges represent a 16.19% increase in one year. In my world, that is a ridiculously high increase for no discernible increase in value. Don’t even get me started on my homeowner’s insurance premium.
This leads to a brief mental inventory of the streaming applications we invite into our home.
In addition to Spectrum TV and internet, we have some extra Spectrum so I can watch college football on ESPN, Apple TV, Netflix, Amazon Prime, plus an extra $3.99 per month to Amazon so we can watch movies “ad-free,” and don’t forget Acorn TV, BritBox, Paramount+, and Disney+. Surely, I am forgetting one or two.
My wife turned me on to Acorn and BritBox, both of which I have thoroughly enjoyed. The Brits, I think, have made over one million detective shows. Man, they got a lot of murders in the same small towns every week. They should really do something about that. If you ask me to differentiate between any of these shows, however, I can’t do it. They’ve all run together in my mind. Rinse and repeat has become a habit without me realizing I made a choice. Oops.
Here’s the question of the day for me, perhaps even you: “How many of those purchases from Amazon or watched on TV were worth the time and dollars spent?”
I typically ask prospective clients if they live on a written budget.
Rare is the bird that answers with a yes. I think I have just been hoisted on my own petard.
The use of time and money requires their allocation. My recent Netflix bill and the awareness that although birthdays are still a year apart, they now come faster somehow, does make me consider just exactly what I get in return for a dollar or hour spent. In those British cop shows, the victim often cries out, “Wait, wait.” The perp never waits.
A fellow named James once wrote, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”
I’m nearly to the point of obsession when it comes to tracking my monthly financial budget. I think it’s way past time that I focus on the use of my time with just as much rigor. Budgeting is a good exercise. Neglecting it is all too easy.
I think this means that my July 1st New Half-Year’s Resolution needs to be, “Resolved, I will guard all my time carefully and try to be more intentional in their allocation so that they might reinforced my values and not diminish them.”
Wow, heavy stuff. Be assured, however, that I will still go to the movies, just not all of them.
Enjoy the journey, don’t spend your last dollar, and don’t shoot your last bullet.
PS: Word of the month is exiguous. As in what my budget should be.
For double, extra credit: exegesis
And we can’t look up exegesis without considering eisegesis
July 2025