Once in a while, someone asks me how it is that I get so much done (writing essays and poems, composing music, leading the Jabber Software Foundation, etc., not to mention my rather intense day job). One part of it is that I don't have kids. But another is certainly that I don't watch TV (not out of virtue: I find TV viscerally disturbing, so I scrupulously avoid it). My friend Moira recently noted in her weblog that she was trying to kick the TV habit, and one thing she noticed after sitting around doing nothing for 15 minutes was that you get very bored very quickly, at which point you want to get up and do something. Since I have so many goals I want to achieve, I don't seem to have a problem finding something to do with all the time I have on my hands because I don't watch TV. The enjoyable thing about TV is that it's mindless, and sometimes what you need is to be a couch potato. Maybe blogging is my substitute for television.... :-)