{"id":30407,"date":"2019-09-25T22:24:39","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T03:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30407"},"modified":"2019-09-25T22:24:39","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T03:24:39","slug":"briefly-my-favorite-things-dont-cost-that-much-money-to-enjoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30407","title":{"rendered":"Briefly: My favorite things don\u2019t cost that much money to enjoy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I know people who spend more than $200 every month with their television provider. At the end of every day, the people of those families disappear into separate rooms to enter different worlds of television, movies and gaming. They tell me their lives would be boring otherwise. I can\u2019t tell them they\u2019re wrong, but I do know the things that mean the most to me are more analog than digital. Lucy and I just got back from walking through the peaceful downtown of the sleepy suburb where we live. She loves sniffing everything and watching the sights and sounds. Traffic is endlessly fascinating to her. And I get to walk and think about life \u2014 about problems and goals and working all sorts of things out. Lucy isn\u2019t concerned with the same things I am, but she\u2019s a great listener. The things that bring us joy and meaning don\u2019t have to cost money. I suspect it\u2019s far better for mental health than more typical modern entertainment. Now if I just had a wife and some children to come along for the walks, things would be even better. There\u2019s a lot of peace to be found in simple joys which are completely free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know people who spend more than $200 every month with their television provider. At the end of every day, the people of those families disappear into separate rooms to enter different worlds of television, movies and gaming. They tell me their lives would be boring otherwise. I can\u2019t tell them they\u2019re wrong, but I Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[556],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-briefly","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-7Ur","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30407"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30410,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30407\/revisions\/30410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}