Cord, Cut

You'll Rarely Miss It

I've been traveling on business for the past few weeks, as part of a long-term relocation project. For the next 2 to 14 months, I'll be living by myself, away from family, while situations shake out and we figure out the next place for all of us to be.

This also means that for the first time in my life, I'm completely without a television... and, also, access to all of the entertainment options that cable television brings.

What I wasn't prepared for was just how little I'd miss it. (By the way, this is a huge part of why AirBNB can be viable now. All you need to host now is fast and reliable Wifi; the one place that I've stayed in the past two weeks that had cable, it was unwatchable due to pixilation. But I digress.)

With the exception of NBA playoff games -- which I've picked up at various sports bars and gyms, aided by the West Coast time shift -- I haven't looked at anything outside of my Netflix queue for weeks now, and probably won't for the next few months. I've picked up topical stuff from online sources, but for the most part, I've just been watching less and less, and getting more done. (There's also a new gig that's pretty all-consuming right now, and promises to continue to be that way.)

I am long past the event horizon of people who should be cord-cutting, and if the NBA playoffs had been more compelling up to this point, maybe I'd be more annoyed by the loss of access. But the fact of the matter is that you can find most of the content that you are looking for via the Web now, and there isn't so much that demands a full screen, immersing experience to be enjoyable.

Eventually, my living conditions will change, and I'll have more than my own entertainment needs to consider. Perhaps I'll break down and go back to a bundled package or satellite system, especially if I'm entertaining others, or my football laundry has a particularly compelling year. Maybe once my Netflix queue stops being quite so compelling (new "Master of None"! new "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt!"), this will also feel more like deprivation.

But, still? Something I've had for decades and decades just went away, and I'm not missing it -- at all. If you run a cable company, or a broadcast network, and that doesn't put a little fear into you, I'm not sure what will. (Also, um, if your livelihood depends on 30 second spots that feed such things.)

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