Being A Consumer

My life is interesting. It seems like every one of my blog entries should start with “my life is interesting”. If life wasn't interesting, what would I have to write about? Sometimes my blog and other writing is like Dumbledore's pensieve – something to allow me to take thoughts of my head, put them somewhere else, and watch to see how they look when they settle. Except writing takes more effort than just using a magic wand to drag thoughts out of my head.

Recently, I've had occasion and time to observe myself and my own reactions. A few weeks ago, the wheels came off of my dating relationship, resulting in something I imagine like a train exploding while at full speed. There was an abrupt transition between cohesive motion in one direction and suddenly BOOM, pieces everywhere; some flying backwards, some flying forwards at greater speed. (The physics major in me wants to point out that in an idealized case, both energy and momentum must be conserved, leading to pieces going all different ways) After taking a tumble in the crash, I've been getting back on my feet, only to duck as heavy things go whizzing by my head occasionally.

I've had a lot of free time lately, leading to empty spaces in my life. The first week of my “new life situation”, I was in emotional shock. Except for the friends who came alongside of me, my life would probably have completely stopped. Food? Sleep? Work? What are these things? All I knew was darkness and the crushing pain inside. I had questions, but didn't know where to find the answers. More often, there just were no answers no matter where or in whom I looked.

The next week of my life was marked by a profound emptiness. Were there friends in my life? Yes. Was there God? Of course. Still, though, when I got home from work, there was a boredom, an apathy. One of the things I observed was a change in my email and Facebook habits.

Usually I infrequently post status updates because Facebook is often a place where people with strong opinions and nothing better to do lie in wait to pounce on people. That kind of clash is not something I need in my life, so I stay out of the swirl. I've been posting again, but only in what one of my friends describes as “cryptic” thought fragments. It's a challenge to distill hours worth of thoughts and feelings into 420 characters that describe my feelings without assigning blame or projecting emotion onto others. There has also been a winnowing of my friend list, which will be long-term healthy for me.

The net result of all the changes in my life has been a significant drop in intellectual stimulation provided in my life. Part of my personal being requires that I have access to large amounts of information in order to stay engaged. This culture provides this in spades, but most of it is unimaginative dreck meant to garner attention, not to edify. I had my life all situated – the websites that provided info I thought educational, the people with whom I shared my day-to-day life, the few sites I follow in Google Reader, and so on. Now, the “people I share with” part has dramatically changed, requiring a far higher threshold of interesting before something is worth sharing. The sites that used to feed me with all kinds of thought-provoking happiness are now empty and stupid.

I notice that my new favorite keys on the keyboard are F5 (which refreshes Facebook) and Ctrl-Shift-T (which checks the emails. No, I'm not an Emacs convert “Ctrl-Meta-LShft-M-X-C-GFGSRDGSFGHSF”) It's funny how life works, though – pushing Refresh or Get Mail more often somehow doesn't bring me more content on demand just when I want. Then I remembered that someone has to create and someone has to share for something to exist for consumption.

I was listening to a sermon the other day about relationships and things that will tear them apart. One thing the pastor highlighted as toxic to relationships was the idea of being a consumer. When one is in a marriage or a “big R” Relationship and insists on being a consumer without bringing anything to the table, that relationship is doomed. Instead, one has to be thoughtful of the other person and giving of themselves. When both people in a relationship do that, the relationship will be sound.

See, my relationship with “the world” kind of works like that. If nobody posted on Facebook, there would be nothing to read. If nobody recorded the music, I would have no way to put on my headphones and be transported to another place. Therefore, it is slightly irresponsible of me to expect others to contribute to my informational appetites if I don't do anything for theirs.

The two philosophies, consuming and producing, don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Last weekend, I was in the midst of a long writing project. The thing with the headphones? It's not a simile or an abstraction, it's real in my life. With a word processor in the foreground, I just threw album after album into my Foobar queue. When the music stopped, the words would stop coming, but when the music kept going, the words came back. In this case, I was consuming music in mass amounts, but producing words in fitting quantities. (To the tune of over 7000 words, which I'm a little proud of.)

I found myself this week with thoughts in my head, but waiting to hear the detailed thoughts of others. Waiting is OK (they do say that patience is a virtue) but being paralyzed because you're waiting for someone else doesn't seem a good practice for life.

With my newfound free time, I've been trying to find new and productive pursuits. I was invited to a happy hour on Friday, but chose to visit the shooting range instead. The monetary and time costs were pretty similar, but the range time helped me to develop manual skills (shooting) and better myself, rather than sit behind a pint glass and pretend to solve the problems of the world. I had an informal dinner party this week just because I could, and plan to go outside and enjoy God's creation with (new) friends next week. Are these things required or essential to life? Of course not. But they are activities that create fellowship, meaningful experiences, and iron-sharpening-iron moments rather than just sitting back and consuming the stories and emotions of others. Creation. Sharing. Not consumption. This is one of the ideas I'm trying to implement in my life.

So what do you think? Are you a consumer or a producer or both at once?