Evan Burke

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The Notebook is Mightier than the Book (Sometimes): Why I’m Trying to Consume Less and Create More

“One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

  If you were to ask me what my hobbies are, I would probably give you a list similar to this: hiking, drawing, reading, writing, crafting & tinkering, mudlarking, learning, gardening. If you had observed me like a laboratory animal for the past five years, however, you would probably raise your eyebrow at such an answer, and instead give a list closer to this: watching YouTube videos, anonymously browsing Reddit, and occasionally doing one or two of those things I mentioned in my list.
  Five years ago was when I started college. Most semesters I took a heavy course load, and often turned to Reddit or YouTube to procrastinate, relieve stress, or think about something other than my classes. These were also things my husband (then boyfriend) and I were able to do together, rather than shutting each other out after a busy week to engage in our own separate interests, which seemed harmless, and even healthy, at the time.
  However, at various points in the years that have gone by since then, I have been haunted by a few realizations:

  1. I seemed to peak, in terms of artistic productivity, around age 15-16.
  2. I haven’t really created anything I’m that proud of or awed by yet.
  3. I’ve wasted, in total, weeks, if not months, of my life consuming meaningless, repetitive posts, videos, articles, etc. online that I can’t even remember at this point.

  For whatever reason, it took me until about this past spring for those realizations to truly sink in. You could maybe call it a quarter-life crisis. But, whatever it was, as a result, I’ve been thinking more deeply about media consumption, and the acts of creating versus consuming.
  For one thing, it has occurred to me that, in terms of edification, media tends to fall into three distinct categories:

  1. Pure entertainment: You get nothing out of it; it’s pure stimulation. An example of this would be videos of people playing with slime put to music, or those AI fruit videos I see people refer to online. Some would argue that certain types of genre fiction tend to fall into this category. I think it’s fair to say that this is a pretty objective category: it’s difficult to imagine anybody having a Damascus Road experience from scrolling Instagram, watching a video of someone stocking their guest bathroom with toiletries, or reading a ghostwritten Tom Clancy novel.

  2. Entertainment that feels edifying: Consuming this type of media makes you feel like you’re learning and doing something “productive,” but you’re either (A) hearing essentially what you already know put slightly differently or explained with new examples, or (B) learning new things that don’t make you think differently, see the world differently, go about your life differently, and so on, in any meaningful way. This is not an objective category, unlike the first, as a piece of media that falls into this category for one person might fall into the next category for another, and vice versa. I realized this spring (far too late, in hindsight) that much of the media I and my husband have consumed together for the past five years–to relax after our classes, and then after our work days–falls into this category. We were constantly watching YouTube videos about finance, economics, history, politics, science, and culture, together and separately, as well as reading an endless number of Wikipedia articles. I spent a lot of time browsing health- and science-related subreddits that felt informative–and, I suppose, technically, they were–but I was really just making myself anxious about things that didn’t matter that much. To be sure, we consumed our share of pure, mindless entertainment as well (YouTube, most of what’s on Reddit, movies that were funny because they were so bad), but the stuff that wasn’t pure entertainment felt “healthier” and more “productive” because we were usually learning at least something from it, but that was kind of the problem (more on that below).

  3. Stuff that’s actually edifying: This is also a subjective category, and describes anything that truly changes your perspective on the world, makes you think about things in a fundamentally different way, inspires you to do something you wouldn’t have otherwise, and so on. For me, off the top of my head, this has been books like “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “The Great Gatsby,” and “Frankenstein”; the writings of philosophers like Nietzsche and Sartre (yeah, yeah, sue me); and the works of poets like Philip Larkin (side note: I swear I’m not as much of a jackass as these examples make me sound). Not that I can remember them individually now, but the many articles I read and videos I watched about a variety of subjects when I was younger that shaped the evolution of my present worldview, interests, and beliefs fall into this category as well. Much of the formal (e.g. math, science) and informal (e.g. natural world-related) education I received also falls into this category.

  But, it also occurred to me that even when it comes to stuff that’s actually edifying, when you spend more time consuming it than you do creating things, consuming it stops being a truly edifying activity. The best example I can think of to illustrate this is from my own life.
  I’ve always been a night owl, but when I was an adolescent, this was especially true. Often, very late at night, I would be struck by the overwhelming urge to create. I would have one million ideas racing through my head at once, a feeling that I could do anything, and a burning desire to create something original and grand. Whether because all of the possibilities were overwhelming, I was scared of not being able to properly execute on my ideas, or because I’m simply an easily distractible person, most of the time, I would end up starting a bunch of projects, then think, “Wait, I need to think about this more/gauge if this is worthwhile/learn about these related topics first.” The moment I did this, I would, 99% of the time, spend the rest of the night going down increasingly unrelated YouTube and Wikipedia rabbitholes and rarely ended up working on, let alone finishing, anything. The shitty thing is that, during these information and “inspiration” feasts, it would feel like I was actually working on a part of something big and doing something meaningful. I would get the same “high,” as it were; I would be in the same wild, frenzied, almost manic state as the times when I was actually creating.
  It’s nuanced, though, because on a lot of those occasions, I really was consuming genuinely edifying things. And part of me is glad I did, because (A) I wouldn’t be the same person had I not encountered those things, and (B) because, at the time, I was much younger and had more to learn about the world (I still do, of course!). I think, when you’re younger, it makes sense that your primary form of engagement with the world is learning about it (as opposed to changing it, adding new things to it–you need to have a body of foundational principles and knowledge before you can do those things well). It doesn’t have to be through media consumption alone–it can be experiential too, and I think there’s a lot to be said for that type of learning–but when you’re limited in the ways in which you can experience the world by nature of being a child, and when you’re very curious about things you wouldn’t be exposed to through the real experiences you could have at that point, media is a natural thing to turn to.
  At the same time, especially after the point where it was clear I had developed more or less the same interests, worldview, etc. that I have now, I sorely wish I had spent a much greater proportion of that time creating. I don’t have much aside from a few dozen pages of poems, a handful of short stories, and a couple notebooks’ worth of drawings and paintings to point to as my body of personal work. I’m proud of what I’ve created so far, don’t get me wrong, I just know I already could’ve done so much more. Moreover, the consequences of not creating go beyond merely looking back with regret; not creating is a negative feedback loop: the less you create, the less creative you get, the rustier your skills get in whatever your areas of interest are, the less confident you become, the more the pain and disappointment of not creating dulls, and so on. Creating and not creating have compounding effects.
  Fortunately, even though I have reached the ancient and decrepit age of twenty three, I still have a little bit of life left in my aged bones, as well as the capacity to do things differently going forward. As a consequence of this line of thought, here are some ways in which I’ve already started doing things differently:

  1. When I have free time, I’m currently prioritizing creative pursuits (mainly stuff that I can upload to this blog, for right now!).
    1. Side note: I spent way too long working on this blog post in part because it’s been so long since I’ve attempted to write something this length that’s also cohesive, coherent, and meant to be read by others. It’s been even longer since that was the case for something other than school or work. I’ve really only been journaling and free-writing since I graduated. As a consequence, I feel like I’ve lost my non-technical/non-professional/non-diaristic writing voice and it will take some time for me to “find” it again. I hope this will be reflected in subsequent blog posts!
  2. I haven’t mindlessly browsed Reddit at all in about three months. I can already predict the sort of things I’m going to encounter on every part of that website: it’s all the same thing, over and over again, and it doesn’t add anything to my life to keep consuming it. In fact, doing so makes my life worse: I’m more anxious, angry, bored, uncreative, and, frankly, dumb when I spend my time doomscrolling.
  3. My husband and I have stopped watching YouTube (and snacking…) as our evening and weekend pastime. Since late June, we’ve been going to the gym, cooking & eating dinner together (no devices allowed), and then working on our respective personal projects.
  4. When I am going to consume media these days, I’m focusing completely on what I consider to be high-quality stuff and have, at least temporarily, cut out edifying-feeling entertainment (and pure entertainment, of course, unless it’s a social activity like watching a dumb movie with friends).
    1. I’m not saying I think everyone should do this, or that these things are inherently bad; this is what I’ve determined to be the best course of action for me right now, when I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on them in the past five years or so, much to my regret at this point in time.
    2. So far, the only book I’ve started and finished this year has been “The Simple Path to Wealth” by J.L. Collins (that was back in the spring).
    3. I am currently, actively reading “The Art of Doing Science and Engineering” by Richard Hamming.
    4. I have promised my friends I’m going to start “Crime and Punishment” this weekend (I mean it!).
    5. Am at various points in, but haven’t picked up in a few weeks to months (in order of most to least recent):
      1. “The Republic” (honestly much less interesting than anticipated so far)
      2. “The Count of Monte Cristo” (not a huge fan of the prose so far, but I’m familiar with the story and like it enough that I’ll keep reading!)
      3. “Slaughterhouse Five”
      4. “War and Peace”
    6. There is a caveat to this, when it comes to scientific media: before I start working on environmental science projects of my own, I need to have a more thorough understanding of the current state of the specific subfields I’m interested in, and this will require a great deal of reading. But that is somewhat tangential to what I’ve been discussing here.
  5. My goals for the rest of this year, in regards to these things, are to:
    1. First and foremost, work on making things for this blog weekly, even if I don’t post them weekly.
    2. Finish at least all of those books I’ve started, and have read at least one that was truly edifying.

  I know it’s only been one to three months since I/we have made these changes, and progress is not linear. I don’t, for example, anticipate never watching a movie or YouTube video for fun again. But I have to try for the things I’m drawn to do. If it’s not now, it’s never. And having started already is, I dare say, better than not having started and still being in the “planning to start” stage. If I don’t create more–if I don’t create things that, upon looking back, truly required immense effort, creativity, problem solving, and innovation, whether they’re written works, works of visual art, scientific works, or something else entirely, and added something new and good to the world–things that took all I had and blew me away–I know I’ll look back on my life as somewhat wasted, even if I enjoyed it in the moment.