Choosing Creating Over Consuming

preface

This one’s pretty much just going to be an unadulterated (stay away, word-probability machine!) stream of thought that’s been on my mind lately. I’ve increasingly been feeling that I spend much of my free hours consuming things (ideas, art, knowledge, food?) rather than creating them. On some especially tiring days, I feel like that might be okay. Why wouldn’t I want to rest after a long day? But on other days, where I’ve forced myself to just sit and do something, I end up feeling fulfilment rather than the notion that I’ve spent enough time awake to finally justify sleeping. While I do not align to the idea that every waking hour needs to be spent doing something productive, I do think it is a worthy pursuit.

While commonly conflated with this thought, I’m not referring to screen-time here. Perhaps because I’ve grown up in front of screens, I see no issue in the amount of time I spend looking at them (quite possible that old-age is just waiting to hit me with a sack of “find out”). If I was blessed so, I would’ve loved to spend my time creating digital art or animations. In any case, this post is an attempt to spend this weekend creating something instead of scrolling it away. If I still have your attention, here are some “assorted notes” on the things I spend time doing (my hobbies?).

the offenders

“the algorithm”

I know this is a bit of a broad term, but what I mean here is anything that has an infinitely scrolling feed; think Reels, Shorts, LinkedIn. There’s no measure to the amount of time I’ve lost just “doom-scrolling”. Unlike the other items on this list, there is no argument I’d make in favour of this. Every time I snap out of a scrolling binge, I just feel so disoriented (is that what fried dopamine receptors feel like?).

It’s especially hard to break this habit with how embedded these feeds are in most social media apps. I find myself unconsciouly gravitating into these quite often. You’ve got to applaude those with the mental fortitude to resist the temptation. For the rest of us, the common advice is to make the experience as frictional as possible; setting up app timers or using the web version of the UI for example. There’s always the option of just not using these apps, but I genuinely do enjoy the social aspects of it. What I personally choose to do is use third-party clients that offer a lot more control on what you see. Infinity For Reddit is one I’d highly recommend. There are similar work-arounds for other apps as well, though they might be a bit more ad and not as straightforward.

youtube

This too falls under the algorithm umbrella, though I somehow feel better about myself watching long-form content. I enjoy the content I watch on YouTube, and I routinely fall back on it as a resource every time I don’t know something or need some inspiration. While I’ve learnt so much about random things on there, I sometimes feel like I’m living vicariously through those videos. For example, I’ve watched so much content about building stuff or repairing tech, but I’d hardly be able to do any of those things. It feels wrong to say that I’m “familiar” with something I’ve never tried myself. Also, while I’m on the topic, here are some creators I’ve been watching recently that embody the whole idea of this post: Marcin Plaza, Sebastian Lague, marta.stl.

movies and tv

Watching a sitcom episode is absolutely essential to my unwind-after-work routine. Watching TV shows is one of the first things I answer whenever someone asks me what I do in my free time. Even a lot of the thoughts and ideas that make up “me” are derived from the media I’ve consumed over the years. Still, this remains an act of consumption. That being said, watching trash TV and joking around with friends, the discourse after a serious movie, or even just going out to the movies is exempt from this categorization. Chilling with friends or going out is always a win in my book.

reading

This one’s even harder to view as an act of consumption, and is very much on the borderline. Though the general idea here is similar to a movie (where you’re just consuming someone’s concepts), reading feels different. Perhaps because you’re actively in control of your reading pace, it feels a lot more intentional. You get the time to stop and ponder the ideas, and maybe even spark the creation of some of your own? For example, Butter by Asako Yuzuki put in to my head this cozy idea of gathering all the people I love to partake in a meal I prepare. The book is so much more than that, and I doubt this was the core idea it wanted to convey, but the whole idea that each person can take away something different from a book definitely has to sway the act of reading in favour of the realm of creation!

the defenders

gym

I’m not entirely sure if going to the gym counts as a creative activity, but it definitely does make me happy, so I’m going to give it a spot here. Plus, creating (growing?) them muscles has got to count for something, right? I’ve been going somewhat consistently to the gym for about 2.5 years now, here’s a quick representation of my progress.

While there might not be much to show, it’s a fact that I spend about 4-5 hours at the gym each week. Does that mean I can count it as a hobby? In my head, this is just routine, driven by some sense of guilt about all the unhealthy food I eat. How passionate do I need to be about this before I can tell people that “working out” is my hobby?

walk

An activity I can always fall back on, that requires very little planning, is taking a walk. Granted, this does require some level of pedestrian infrastructure in the city (blr does this a lot better than hyd). This can be taking rounds in a park, walking to a tea shop, exploring neighbourhoods, or even just walking to a restaurant to have dinner instead of ordering in. Whenever I do, I always end up noticing something (or someone) interesting, from where I can get on a train of thought and leave the station. Heading out for a walk/run and grabbing a quick snack at the end of it is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to spend a good weather day.

draw

I’ve always been a bit envious of those who were naturally talented at drawing. Unfortunately, I wasn’t bone with a single artistic bone in my body. While I’ve always had this need to be instantly good at the things I try, I’m putting in an active effort to keep at it even when I don’t like the final product. As I’ve been repeatedly told, you don’t need to be good at your hobbies. The point of them is to have fun, and I do enjoy the process of sketching out some random picture I have on my phone. Hopefully, a year of bad sketches will grant me the skill to become one of those people who sit in a metro and sketch the things they see!

crochet

I don’t really have a lot to say about this, but I attended a crochet workshop recently and just wanted an avenue to show it off (+ archive that it happened). Maybe this whole post was just an excuse to talk about this.

Crocheting (or working with my hands in general) is fun. It reminds me of the fun times making scoobie strings and loom bands in school. Unlike drawing, it feels like I’ve got atleast a bit of skill to start with. Not sure if I’ll keep at it, but sitting on a rocking chair, crocheting scarves, is a pretty good picture for my 60s.

cook

Cooking is an art, just one that I’ve not looked at with that lens. It’s always seemed to me as a life skill, and the food is the only thing I’ve looked forward to, in the rare (😩) occasions that I’ve cooked. I’d like to start cooking more, and start appreciating the journey: playing around with various ingredients and flavours instead of just blindly following a recipe. Until then, I’m still happy with my Buldak and chicken.

code

Goes without saying, but just adding an explicit mention here to remind myself that this was supposed to be a technical blog. I’ve got a whole list of prospective/unfinished projects, but it’s become harder to build side projects after a 9-5 that already scratches the coding itch. Still, it’s always fun to go on the odd side-quest. Most recently, in the process of writing this post, I modified the Hugo theme to add a Tenor shortcode (go up there an appreciate that meme again!), and to drop header tags from post summaries (commit if you’re interested).

closing notes

Looking back at the size of this, I think I might have rambled on for too long. Not a lot more to say, but I think just from looking at the above, you can see that there’s more to show for the items at the latter end of the list. I’d like to think that at the end of the decade, it’d be these pictures (and this blog?) that I’d be looking at, and not my YouTube history.

The hardest part of this whole post was just getting started. Once I did, the ideas and the side-quests started flowing, and before I knew it, a whole productive weekend went by. I realize this is corny and sounds like a school assembly speech, but I’ll wrap this up with a related quote.