More Creating, Less Consuming (Your mental health will thank you)

I’ve been doing too much consuming lately. Too many bites bytes in the morning when I wake up, lying in bed at night instead of getting a decent seven hours of sleep, and basically at every unoccupied moment of my day in between. I’m not talking about overconsuming food of course, but social media, and media in general. Lately, I feel like everything I do involves a screen.

And even if it doesn’t I feel myself itching to check my phone, scroll a newsfeed, check a message (even if I don’t type a reply), and general mindless scrolling. I won’t go to say that its an addiction, but its definitely become a habit, making me feel more scattered, anxious, unable to focus, and rather unproductive.

Ever since I was a little kid I have read a book in bed before falling asleep. Lately that habit feels like it has been crowded out by instagram. I pick up my phone to set my alarm for the morning, and check the forecast. Then I see a notification for facebook pop up. Next thing I know, thirty minutes have passed, I’m watching a video of someone’s cousin’s baby do something not all that funny, and my book sits on my nightstand untouched. And then I wonder why some nights I have trouble drifting off to sleep.

How many times have you picked up your phone or scrolled through a newsfeed as if it held some answer to the universe you mind find if you scroll just a little further?

Lately, I’ve noticed a very direct relationship between how anxious I am feeling and how often I am scrolling.

It seems to be a chicken and egg kind of scenario: am I scrolling more because I am anxious? Or is it because I am anxious that I am scrolling, like some kind of coping mechanism.

I am tempted to think both.

Whatever the cause, there is definitely a correlation between my screen time and my anxiety.

And conversely, there is a negative correlation between both these things and my creativity.

Take this blog for instance. This time last year, I was posting much more frequently. And not only that, but I was writing more frequently. Instead of being glued to my phone watching and reading other people’s content, I was making my own. And it didnt often feel difficult to do it, I wanted to be writing. I was feeling fulfiled by this act of creating, putting into words the thoughts and feelings that overcame me in a way that (hopefully) gave some insight or inspiration to others who have or had ever thought similarly.

Writing (and now blogging) has always been my passion, and in a lot of ways, my calling. Ever since I could read I have been writing. Poems, stories, essays, and even the beginning chapters of a few novels. There was a time whre writing was a meditatitve state for me.

Once I had gotten into the flow, I could be sitting and writing furiously for hours, completely lost in the words and worlds I was transporting from my mind onto paper, without any sense of time.

I was constantly sneaking in words or phrases, scribbling in notebooks at random times throughout the day.

Now any writing I do, I basically need to force myself to sit and get it done. And there are definitely no poetic lines or potential verses in the margins of my notebooks.

But no matter what, there is always my phone beside me, and those all too familiar icons of facebook and instagram that I seem to click on without even realizing I’m doing it.

Its not that I particularly like scrolling and reading posts and watching reels of other people, whether they are friends or influencers. Its that it has become a habit, or dare I say— an addiction. It’s not actually fulfilling or joyful, thumbing through pages of photos or status updates. But it’s the thrill of the potential of finding something that you need to wee or read or here— even if you don’t know exactly what it is you’re looking for in the moment. Its essentially an act that began as a way to kill time as the ultimate time waster.

I need to change this.

I wish I could have some marvelous plan laid out now of how I am going to do this, and get back into my flow state of creating. But unfortunately I have only gotten so far as the realization— not the plan of action.

All I can say at the moment, is that I’ll be posting again soon. Whether its by force or by some way of rekindling that intrinsic motivation to create, I am getting back on the creative train.

How do you rate your consumption vs creation ratio? What do you do to keep your screen time down? I need all the ideas i can get!

Happy spring!

Jordan