{"id":4522,"date":"2018-11-26T19:18:27","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T09:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=4522"},"modified":"2018-11-26T19:21:38","modified_gmt":"2018-11-26T09:21:38","slug":"the-me-without-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=4522","title":{"rendered":"THE ME, WITHOUT"},"content":{"rendered":"

A rainy day. I headed to the cafe, meaning to hole up with a pot of tea, a toasted sandwich and a book for the whole lunch hour. The book I grabbed from the pile of review copies was The Me, Without<\/em> by Jacqueline Raposo.
\nRaposo was a “middling successful” New York food writer and podcast host. She had creative work she loved, her own apartment, supportive family, and a beautiful dog. But in 2016, she was also single, struggling with chronic illness and broke.
\nThe Me, Without<\/em> (due for release in January 2019) is her record of an experiment, over the course of a year, in which she removed things from her life – for set periods –\u00a0 to see if she could become happier. Her ‘challenges’ were no social media: no shopping: no sugar: no holiday gifting: no negative thought: no waste: no hustle: and no habit. It’s a mixture of memoir, psychology, neurology, history and literature.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As soon as I started reading, I decided I was going to hate this book. I pre-judged Raposo as a whiny, entitled, neurotic New Yorker. And really, does the world need any more self-help books? But actually, once I got over my prejudice, I really enjoyed it. She’s engaging and funny and brutally honest about herself. She caught Lyme disease as a 12-year-old, and the toll on her health has been heartbreaking but she doesn’t paint herself as a victim. It is what it is.
\n\u00a0The Me, Without<\/em> has made me think about the time I lose doing things from habit. I like to think I’m pretty frugal and sensible and green, but when I think about it, there’s lots of stuff I consume unthinkingly. I could do so much better!\u00a0 I now have some very expensive cloth-and-beeswax substitutes for cling-wrap and a mission to reduce not just our rubbish, but our recycling as much as I can.<\/p>\n

Moreover, I have set myself my own little set of challenges. I feel I should apologise, because the first one is not very…well, not very challenging<\/em>, actually. It’s this: until Christmas, I’m not going to switch the TV on and watch random shows or surf channels any more. If I want to watch TV, I will look up the TV guide and choose something.\u00a0 Or not.
\nAnd mostly, it’s been not. Instead, I’ve been reading.\u00a0 Who would have thought?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rainy day. I headed to the cafe, meaning to hole up with a pot of tea, a toasted sandwich and a book for the whole lunch hour. The book I grabbed from the pile of review copies was The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4522"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4526,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4522\/revisions\/4526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}