No-TV Tuesday: Mass communication before the Internet

We stuck with our No-TV Tuesday plan. Two weeks in the row - WOOHOO!

We have a very small fourth bedroom filled with bookshelves. A vintage loveseat, coffee table, and lamp make a cozy reading spot. We call it "the library," but it also functions as a catch-all room, especially during holidays when we bring in bins (and bins and bins) of decorations from the garage and also move out some furniture to make room for a tree.

Now that just a "winter" bin remains, I really wanted to straighten up the room a bit and reclaim that cozy reading spot.

My first decision was finally parting with my college textbooks:

My degree is Communications/Video Production, and I held on to pertinent texts thinking I might someday want to reference them. 

But a quick scan yesterday showed that these books will never be referenced!  

"The Practice of Public Relations" has Bill Clinton on the cover. And "The Media of Mass Communication" was written before the Internet was really a thing. Do you remember mass communication before the Internet? Me, neither. "Mastering Communication in Contemporary America" was written in the early 1990s. "Contemporary"? Hardly.

And I worked in TV news for 9 years after college... and now I've been out for 15. Most everything I knew during my television career is already obsolete. Those production books are for technology that no longer exists.

So I decided to make room on the shelves for some other works - ones I will more likely pick up and read.

I did some other reorganizing around the house, and it felt soooo great. But then I couldn't fall asleep because I had more ideas! I'm going shopping after work today :)

 

I've done music all my life, but guitar is brand-new to me. And it's really hard - much harder than I expected.

Mom bought me a left-handed guitar earlier in the pandemic, and I just haven't had the energy to dig in as much as I'd like. But now I'm trying to put more time and energy into learning, and the Fender app is helping me with the basics.

I spent a few minutes of my Tuesday doing some warmup drills. 

While Brad thrives on learning new things and mastering new skills, I don't have a lot of patience for things I'm not good at. I don't like the learning curve. I don't like struggling. 

But on Tuesday, I set aside some time to work on it. We'll see :)