November 22, 2018 · self

Consuming, not Creating

Originally posted: 11.05.2013

It is possibly the most disturbing trend I've ever noticed. Have you seen it? People that buy and watch and listen and play and complain and just consume all the time, and never create anything. I just recently examined my own life. I eat pre-packaged breakfast, walk to class to be lectured to, talk with friends about assignments we've been given or tv/events that have happened, have a man in a cart cook my lunch, get lectured to some more, read some papers/books I've been assigned, watch some youtube, look at reddit or hackernews a bit, MAYBE cook my own dinner, or resort to Wawa again, do some more assignments and go to sleep. This in and of itself isn't sooo bad, but doing it every single day gets to be really bad - it makes it a habit to just consume what we are given, it makes us fat and dumb and useless.

Now imagine creating things every day. Making breakfast, making your body stronger, building part of a project, making lunch, having a class discussion throwing around ideas, recording a little video or writing a blog post or some poetry, and cooking dinner and working on another paper before bed. How does that sound in comparison - now don't let my author bias get in the way - think about a day of consuming vs a day of creating, picture one of each for yourself and compare them.

Now let me be careful and say that clearly I've been speaking in extremes up to this point. Creative people have to consume a bit and I would like to see more consumers create a bit, but these hybrids clearly exist. Maybe it goes back to "everything in moderation". But the point here is that I think our society as a whole consumes a bit more than it should, and to solve this it should start trying to create more.

I almost feel like I forgot how to create things. Noticing this has begun to change a lot of parts of my life. I can honestly say that I feel a lot happier. Yesterday I went back to my early high school days and drew a fantasy map, it wasn't my best work, but it made me much happier and got my brain/heart working again. This sounds cheesy, but I felt a small flame reignited in my chest - it was like I was glowing, and I'm in general much more happy. Now to stop tooting my own horn.

It's something I think our society needs to make time for - stop eating out with friends and have a dinner party instead. Stop watching TV, draw or write or dance or something. I promise you will feel better. There is a lot of soma out there, and it's quite dangerous, I may sound like I'm claiming a slippery slope, but all these little 'consumerisms' add up and make us miserable and dead. Make some stuff instead! I made a shitty map and it made me 100x happier than a box of cookies!

Show me what you create! Let me know if you've noticed any other consumer habits that are making you unhappy!

See? Doesn't matter how shitty!

My first map in a while.