Creativity and Consumption
Consume what fuels you
Creativity over Consumption was my mantra for all of 2025, bleeding into 2026. As a 9-to-5er (5 is generous), I wanted to make sure the right side of my brain didn’t atrophy while staring at Excel sheets all day. Painting, pottery, writing, mosaic art-- no creative niche was off limits. I just knew I wanted to build.
At the same time, everywhere I looked there was a push to create. When scrolling on my media of choice, every other video promoted posting: “Build your own brand, create your own niche, here’s how to make your video blow up”. I got the subtext, to paraphrase Kim K, get up off your ass and do something with your life.
This push to create is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I felt inspired to build something I genuinely care about. While I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that you have to love what you do for work (life should be fulfilling beyond work and your career should not be the sole source of your identity and purpose), it’s important to figure out what makes you tick. There should be some facet of life that brings you to the pearly gates of fulfillment. What began as a desire to exercise the creative side of my brain slowly became a mandate to find a niche. I pored over various hobbies and activities, trying to figure out my ever-elusive niche. I felt like I had to not only build something I cared about, but also package it in a way that would appeal to the wider public and make them care about it too. Otherwise, I was failing.
As an avid, and at times deliberately private, consumer, this was a mental shift. The hobbies I’ve carried with me since my younger days tend to be fairly solitary, a way for me to relax and unwind: reading a good book, binge-watching a TV show, snuggling under the covers and watching a movie late at night. Now, all of a sudden, I was being made to feel as if I was an over consumer, devouring content left, right, and center without bringing anything of my own to the table. I, the pig parent from Spirited Away, had been labeled a glutton by social media, gorging on my hobbies.
So, I did what most people in my situation would do. I overcorrected. I began my crash diet, cutting out my solitary activities that used to fill my cup in favor of doing activities that would get the creative juices flowing. I started taking videos of anything and everything, but when I sat down to create and put something I was proud of into the world, it didn’t feel fun. I wasn’t excited and would put off doing it in favor of other tasks, like laundry. It felt like unnecessary work, neither giving me fulfillment nor giving me the financial upside of my regular 9-to-5.
Most girls have had a moment when they compare their bodies to what they see on social media. For most of us, it starts in middle or high school, and then somewhere along the way you realize the media has been feeding you bull, that the standard is distorted. While the two are in no way equal, there are a lot of parallels in terms of how the media preys on an insecurity and magnifies it. Just as we learned to safeguard our body image from media messaging, we now need to protect our hobbies and creative pursuits in a similar way.
Just like putting food in your body is necessary to fuel you, consumption is what fuels creative pursuits. This is true for everyone. Dalí was inspired by Shakespeare. Michael Jackson was inspired by Fred Astaire. More recently, Nolan was inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. Just like food nourishes the body, consumption of creative media encourages creativity. Like a beautiful ouroboros, creation and consumption inform one another.
There can be disordered consumption: the expectation that everything you consume has to build towards something measurable. Media is compartmentalized into good protein that will build your output versus a sugary dessert that, while delicious, might leave you feeling ashamed after consuming it. Social media went beyond pressuring me to ‘eat healthy’ in order to create. It made me wary of the private pleasures that once brought me joy and made me want to create in the first place.
Like all things in life, when looking for something that fulfills me, I realized what I need more than anything is balance. Hard-hitting proteinacious pieces of media need to be balanced out by some Love Island Hot Cheetos sometimes. Putting pressure on yourself to constantly create, consume little, and then crank out the best output can stifle the best creative impulses, just like restrictive eating can do more harm than good in the long run. Creative inspiration is already a mythical beast most people spend their lives trying to capture and bottle. Putting more conditions makes it infinitely harder to chase, let alone catch a glimpse of it.
In the spirit of being wholly transparent and unashamed of my recent consumption, see below for my daily eats this past week. Some nourishing, some decidedly not. Every bite… delicious:
A Book for Breakfast: The Red Rising Series
This is without a doubt one of the best series I’ve read recently. The first book is a trojan horse, with a Hunger Games-like world set far in the future. The second book is a whole new world. If the first book is a conventional rock song, Golden Son is Bohemian Rhapsody. Everything is bigger, stranger, more dramatic, and almost operatic in scale. This is one of the few series that does not suffer from a sophomore slump. A delicious, nutritious, and filling breakfast.
A Podcast for Lunch— Empire: World History
For all my history lovers out there, this is the perfect podcast to keep you going during the workday. Empire follows British journalist and author Anita Anand and her co-host, historian William Dalrymple, on a fascinating and epic journey: the rise (and fall) of empires, political intrigue, the impact of colonization… this podcast has it all. The first few episodes follow the corporate greed of the British East India Company, told from a completely different and fascinating lens.
Sipping on an Audiobook— This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me
I am a sci-fi and fantasy aficionado. This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is the perfect vintage to pair with any meal. This book follows a woman dropped in the middle of her favorite fantasy series, where all she has to rely on is her knowledge of the books and some main-character plot armor. Normally, I switch back and forth between reading and audiobooks, but the voice actor for this audiobook was so fun, I found myself listening to good portions of it. I thought the concept was incredibly fun, and for anyone who’s ever loved a book or a series, I would highly recommend this beverage.
Snacking on Music— If You Love Me by Melody Gardot, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love by Olivia Rodrigo, & Favorite Girl, Daisies, and Yukon by Justin Bieber… to name a few.
Music is what I keep coming back to, something to snack on throughout the day, sometimes popping a quick song into my mouth, other times looping through a whole album (multiple times). These are my favorites on repeat right now, but they’re constantly changing.
A Glass of TV— Love Island to House of the Dragon
Sometimes, after a long day at work, you just want to pour yourself a nice glass of TV. I’m not going to tell you it’s good for your health, but hey, if something fills your cup, how bad could it be? My recently ended guilty pleasure was Love Island USA. I could completely turn my brain off and it had no nutritional value whatsoever (some may say it might harm your creative impulses), but guess what? It made me happy, so I don’t really care! I love trashy reality TV. Sue me! As Love Island has drawn to a close, I’ve opened my next bottle: the third season of House of the Dragon. If it wasn’t clear from my earlier bites, I love a story with scheming, political intrigue, high stakes, and drama. Is it filling the reality TV void? No. Is it okay to consume multiple glasses of different types of TV if that’s what makes you happy? Yes. You only have one life, live it.
With a Scrumptious Dinner— Scrolling on TikTok and/or Reels
I said this was an honest record of my consumption in a week, and I meant it. I feel better front loading the things that are ‘good’ for my brain in the morning. I love ending my evening with a little scroll sesh. I try not to scroll too late, but hey sometimes, you eat delicious food that’s too heavy or you have a little too much fun scrolling and then it’s 3 AM and your tummy and head hurt, but it’s fun in the moment, and that’s what matters.
Everyone can have different philosophies on what fulfills them and what is best for their life, but that’s the whole point: every body is different. This article was born during hour two of a scroll, after I encountered my twelfth video telling me to stop scrolling and post something myself. So perhaps consumption and creation were never opposites. Like the ouroboros, sometimes one simply leads you back to the other.