The Satisfaction In Creating
A long time ago, I read that everything we do falls into one of two categories: creating or consuming; we should focus on (actively) creating rather than (passively) consuming. Happiness, satisfaction or whatever feeling you want to call it, is greater and more permanent than the immediate short-lived gratification of consuming. Wish I remembered where that came from, as it comes to my mind pretty much every day lately.
For the past several months, to varying degrees of success, I’ve been trying to prune ‘consuming’ activities from my life and adding ‘creative’ ones.
For example, playing (consuming) a video game: I enjoy it and it’s easy to do; just buy the game and spend the time playing. On the downside, the pleasure gotten out of it is gone soon after the game is over, so I have to go back to get another fix. Plus what did I really get out of the quick fix of consuming? Other than some fast twitch muscle skills, very little at best.
On the other hand creating is much harder to do. It takes planning, time, effort, and maybe a certain amount of passion. To varying degrees I’d put cooking and photography in that category; admittedly, I’m finding myself lacking in the creative category. The satisfaction lasts much longer, skills are built upon the activity, and others might (or might not) also enjoy the output.
That’s why I’m posting the video ‘One Car To Do It All’. While at face value it’s about an unique all-around car and workspace, but overall it seems to be a great example of the satisfaction of creating. Maybe I’m duped by Mr. Olsen’s soft-spoken relaxed way of speaking, but he seems to exude satisfaction from working on his car and creating his workspace.
As I’m relaunching Harvard Avenue (version 5.0? 6.0?) I’m starting a new category called create/consume. As I become increasingly obsessed with this topic, maybe it will do me some good to post occasionally about it.
2 Comments on “The Satisfaction In Creating”
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about.me
J.F. Bruzan
Geek, weekend zombie hunter, music lover, reader, primal / paleo zealot and trader.
Love this. You describe the difference between what we “get” from creating and consuming so well, and I completely agree. I’m interested in reading your upcoming posts on the topic. More cooking?
I know that’s where I enjoy creating.
The good thing about cooking is that hunger is a great motivator to get up and do it! That and a hungry spouse helps too.