Word detox

Last week was meant to be my week of non-reading, something Julia Cameron recommends in her book The Artists' Way. She recommends you take them about once a month, although of late I've been taking them for a couple of weeks in the year.
For a whole week, you're meant to do without the written word, plus television, radio, the cinema and the theatre. You don't even read a newspaper. You can write, you can have long chats, you can listen to instrumental music, you can do anything providing it doesn't involve literature or rehearsed speech.
It sounds severe, but I've found it helpful over the years for thinking, daydreaming, plotting through a project or even coming up with a brand new idea. Unfortunately, I can't seem to do it as completely as Julia Cameron. For a start, my day job involves reading. Secondly, my wife is addicted to three soap operas and the news. One of the drawbacks of Julia Cameron's books, and Natalie Goldberg's too, excellent though they are, is that they seem to be written for people who live on their own. If you want to keep any relationship going then having a notebook and flashlight at the side of your bed, so that you can jot down ideas in the middle of the night, is problematic. I would need to get out of bed and go into the living room, to avoid a kick in the shins.
Then there's the Artist's Date. Once a week, Julia Cameron tells you, you take off by yourself to do something you want to do. I only seem to be able to manage these after rows, by which time the attraction for them has severely waned.
It's hard for me to resist putting on a DVD when I've got the television to myself, which usually means the 15 minutes or so at bedtimes whilst I wait for the bathroom. I've had to watch whole films in 10 or 15 minute chunks because I so seldom get the set to myself.
Last week, though, I was good, and resisted another chunk of Van Helsing. I've been itching to watch certain programmes, and it's been driving me mad. I discovered that my favourite cop show, The Sweeney, is can be viewed via computer. Ten episodes from 1974 which I can barely remember, all waiting. But because I'd committed myself to this wordless week, I had to stick with it.
And so I played instrumentals as I made and ate my breakfasts. Autobahn by Kraftwerk (I suppose, strictly speaking, there are words in that, but sinced they are in German, which I can't speak, they don't count) . On the trains home, via an ancient CD Player, some new agey thing ith lots of whale cries in the background.
I always feel self conscious listening to the CD player. For one thing, everybody around me is listening to IPods or whatever they are, and I feel like I'm carrying around a wind-up gramophone. But also because you are, in effect, making yourself voluntarily deaf. Or at least you feel caught between two worlds - one a mundane, crowded, hot, sweaty train compartment and the other a celestial paradise where harps plink away. I've nodded off a few times when I've been able to get a seat.
But it's beginning to pay off dividends. Ideas are coming to me. I'm getting to work on time, because I'm not waiting to the very end of that sitcom episode before I get up and get ready (I even watch the end credits). And strangely enough, I'm beginning to feel better, more energetic. I should do this more often.