Consumption vs Production

Ah, free time. Time to get some personal projects done. Or did I mean play the latest Civilization game? No, I definitely meant time to pick up an instrument and learn it…or did I really mean catch up on that Netflix backlog? Time to brush up on my Illustrator skills, or watch my favorite YouTube content creators for hours? Time to write that blog post I’ve been putting off for weeks, or time to nap for a bit?

This is the constant struggle of consumption versus production. I’m in my mid-twenties. I have lots of free time. I keep being told that I should be doing valuable things with it. Do tons of freelance projects. Explore as many interests as you can. Travel the world. Learn a language. Teach things to other people.

At the same time, I’m also living in an era where we have the highest quality of entertainment goods we’ve likely ever had in human history. There are incredible drama shows, unfathomably good video-games that rival the best novels with their storytelling capabilities, amazing content being put up on YouTube daily, and lots and lots of great podcasts, audiobooks, songs, and tech news to catch up on daily.

It almost feels like a disservice to society to not indulge in these things. This is all content carefully crafted and targeted to me. I enjoy very specific types of genres when it comes to games, TV, books, and movies. And I can find most of it online. I can literally fill an entire week with the stuff I want to watch, play, or read that month. Everyone’s talking about it.

And yet, I feel guilty for not creating anything with my time. I’m always taking in the best and greatest out there, but I’m not actively trying to put my output into the world. I know I have a treasure trove of information relating to UX, design, gaming, technology, society, humanity, and space exploration in my head. If I tried hard enough and really applied myself, I could be doing really interesting things and solving really tough problems.

But instead, I choose the easier path. I choose the lazy path of the consumer that doesn’t require intense focus and concentration. I choose to be passive and entertained. And that kills me inside. This may sound like a serious #FirstWorldProblems shitpost, but I kid you not, after a long day of work, I feel very little motivation to sit down and start “making”. I have tons of other hobbies I want to explore. None of them involve actively creating something for the rest of humanity to enjoy, but I myself enjoy them. Is that good enough?

Sometimes I wonder that when I’m 35, whether or not I’ll look back and go “Damn, all that time I wasted ten years ago lounging around and doing nothing!”. Maybe I will. But am I regretting the time I spend doing things now? Nope. I’m absolutely loving it. I have a very good life: a job I love, lots of time to seek out and do the things I enjoy, and getting to experience my twenties in a major city. There’s a lot of people out there who don’t have that, and I’m very grateful to be able to experience this.

It can just feel very underwhelming at times when weeks go by and you feel you haven’t “done” anything but are still feeling good about life in general. It’s a constant struggle between either consuming content or producing it. Maybe this is why I’m forcing myself to write this blog post at 1:00 AM on a Tuesday morning. I need to feel like I’m providing something to society. I guess I’m doing that at work, but should I feel guilty if I’m not doing it all the time?

These are just a bunch of rambling thoughts in my head for now. I get into some really weird states of mind sometimes and like to ponder over things like this for hours. And then all of a sudden it doesn’t matter anymore because five minutes from then, I’ll be playing a round of Overwatch with my close pals or getting lost in a good episode of Narcos. Life is strange, and if this is the quarter-life crisis that I keep hearing about, then maybe I’ll make it out fine after all.