etc. It helps that we are mostly retired, have a lot of friends in the same mode in many places and live in a very small town but we more or less lived this way even when we had full-time jobs in the Philly burbs. I put the asterisk next to the TV because we still watch the occasional sporting event, stream baseball from the Internet (with ads that we ignore) and I do watch Antiques Roadshow. I truly believe that to a certain extent you do create the world you live in. Years ago, I was inspired by a quote from the writer Annie Dillard, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." I found that the more I cherished the life I was leading, the more the life I was leading became the life I wanted to lead.