Media-Free Day Reports

Electronics have been present in my life since I can remember. Media is accessible and easy to handle at anytime of the day and for any occasion. Society is surrounded by media and may not even be aware of it due to how rapid our lives move each day. Society has become immune to the usage of media, but if media is taken away from us I am not sure if we could survive. To prove this I tried not to use media for one entire day.
Monday the sixth of October was my media free day. I woke up at Twelve o’clock in the afternoon with an hour to spare before my first class begun. Luckily, I did not have anything that morning to wake up for because I could not use my alarm clock on my cellular phone. I unpack all of my dirty clothes from the previous road trip that I had been on for soccer and decided to do laundry and clean the kitchen before I went to class. After I finished my first class, I walked over to the training room for the athletes and was bombarded with media. The television was on, the radio was blaring, and my athletic trainer yelled at me for not answering her text that she sent me to come in early that morning for treatment. I was forced to hear the media, but tried not to watch or listen if it was possible to do so. After I hustled out of the training room, I went to the apartment and grabbed my school bag for class. Class was easier to stay away from the different media, but as I left the classroom I found myself again in the midst of media. I needed to check my email to see if a professor had sent me an assignment but decided not to. When I arrived back at the apartment I decided to start cleaning. While I began to clean, it was revealed that I was extremely bored. There was silence in the room and it made me feel uncomfortable. After cleaning the kitchen and my room I decided to go and visit with one of my neighbors. This was hard to do as well because they were watching television or on either on Facebook. Everywhere I went there was media. I decided to study as much as possible and resulted to going to bed very early to not further put myself in any other situations with media in it.
I choose this specific day to reflect on no media usage for many specific reasons. The first and main reason that I decided on a Monday was because I have no soccer games, practices, or meetings. Every Monday is the mandatory day off for the women’s soccer team at the University of Tulsa. The team practices on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday and then plays matches on Friday and Sunday of every week. This makes the week full of soccer and definitely full of stress. When I travel to and from practices and games I listen to my ipod for motivation before and also for relieving emotions and stress after. I am dependent on my ipod every time that I have soccer because it is a ritual and helps me play better.
Another reason that I choose this day is because this is a stress free day with my schedule for classes. On Mondays my first class is at one in the afternoon making it easy to sleep in and be able to relax in the mornings. I use Mondays to catch up on sleep, clean around the apartment, doing errands, and to finish my homework for the rest of the week. I also knew that this day would be a perfect day to trial the media free day because I was exhausted from the previous weekend of traveling and playing double over time soccer matches while in Houston. I knew that even though this day was my day off from soccer that this was a day of catching up on errands and homework and not of watching television or listening to music. I had no time to text or use the cellular phone to look at the internet because I was almost all of that time period sleeping.
When I was not using media my mind was working in many different ways. I was at a constant boredom and felt useless because all I was doing was sleeping and thinking of different things I needed to be doing. I did feel confident being able to finish my errands and do all of my homework, but there were not enough tasks to do in an entire day making it harder to stay preoccupied. I finished those tasks and then sat in silence before I went to bother some of my friends. When I did feel bored many time I would go and have face to face communication other than media related such as using Facebook, texting, or internet messaging.
I felt like I wanted to draw more and write in my journal as the day went by because of the lack of media to pursue all of my free time in. When I do have this free time it is easy for me to get caught up in thinking of tragedies that have happened in the last year, but I have learned that in the silence there is hope. Instead of going and watching the television or listening to music on my computer I went and talked to my neighbors to stay away from thinking too much of the tragedies and slept more. I believe that this face to face communication is much for beneficial than media, but there were negative points to the day as well. The biggest concern that I had without having media close and accessible to me was that when I do become bored and have nothing to do I usually decide to start snacking on foods around the apartment. The positive aspect of this was that I did not have much food around the apartment, but I was ready to venture out to my friend’s places to find whatever snacks I could to preoccupy myself in my boredom. Eating and cleaning were the main substitutes for the day that I did besides watching television or looking on the internet. Even though I was subject to different tasks than using the media I do not think that my mind was used differently than any other media filled day.
As I explained earlier the harder that it was to occupy my time without media the easier it became to think of the tragedies in the past, start eating, studying, and cleaning. I was influenced to have more face to face communication and to go visit friends that I usually would not see on a week day because I would be watching television or looking on Facebook. I was frustrated at the end of the day because I wanted to be able to do whatever I pleased to do. It is hard to restrict yourself to not doing habitual acts that have been going on for years when you have nothing else to do. The hardest part was not to be influenced by all of the surroundings that were around me constantly. When I would try and get away from the television and my computer and drive around I would have my radio on usually and listen to music to relax while driving, but this was using media which was hard to avoid.
This experience was interesting and difficult to keep the media out my life. I am very comfortable with using media everyday and it is habitual. We are surrounded by different types of media whether we know it or not and we are made to be in the midst of it. Anywhere I went I found media and there was no escape from it unless I was not awake.