I was reading one of my favorite blogs today, Go Fug Yourself, and go to thinking. The article in question was about the fact that there are no Golden Globes this year due to the writers’ strike, and therefore no red carpet fashion to look at. The mentioned that people are beginning to notice just how many people the strike affects, and that the high fashion industry is now impacted as a result. Not that they will be severely damaged, but it is a hit, since a major portion of their PR comes from celebrities parading up and down red carpets in the latest designs.

To make everyone incredibly incensed (and that’s not really my goal here, but it’s an unavoidable consequence), I’m going to admit that the writers’ strike doesn’t directly impact me, except that I’m going to have to wait even longer for the final season of Battlestar Galactica and I’m getting really sick of watching the same old Smallville reruns over and over again. Apparently the CW (or whomever produced the show) has negotiated something, because Smallville will be new starting January 31st, but the rest of television is mostly uninteresting to me at the moment.

So I wonder – what has the lack of new television gotten people to do? Have people started reading more? Is this going to be a boost for internet-based media? How will this impact the world knitting community (how many of us don’t knit because we can’t do it and watch TV at the same time)? Will it *gasp* force people to actually do things with one another? I’ve found that I’m listening to a lot more music, reading more books, and watching all those DVDs I hadn’t managed to get to before. I’ve seen three movies since the beginning of December! In the theater! That’s more than I watched all last year combined!

And even more amazingly, I’ve started a sweater, which was something I put off due to lack of concentration (because I was watching TV while knitting). And I’ve got a whole mess of projects in the ol’ queue, since now I have time to look for them.

I suppose you never really realize how much you rely on television until it isn’t there anymore, and then you’re forced to find other ways to fill your time. And I don’t even have cable.