I challenge you to create

Do it for you

There’s something magical about writing. When I put pen to paper it feels like anything can happen. I can write a poem, a book, a song, a screenplay or even just plan out my life by making a list.

I know we often mock people who lived in the medieval era - throwing their wee out of windows, not understanding they need to bathe and not being aware of what bacteria is - but, when I physically handwrite something I marvel at how intelligent they must have been. How smart they must have been to hold onto their thoughts and methodically take hours and hours to write them out by hand so they wouldn’t forget. Crossing out words or crumbling up paper and restarting when they got something wrong.

Ideas whizz around my mind - and perhaps all of our minds - so quickly that by the time it comes to write it down, pen to paper, most are gone. My brain has gotten used to the speed of typing, it was brought up on it and only weaned off it every now and then when sitting exams.

Thank God for typing and computers and modern technology but also curse them for making everything so quick. Curse them for not leaving us with enough time to think and meditate on a thing before pushing it out into the world.

I think a lot of us struggle with racing thoughts. Thoughts that never seem to quieten and so we mute them by watching content online and mindlessly scrolling and scrolling and scrolling until we fall asleep. We consume to calm down our brains. Inadvertently running out of time to spend time with our thoughts.

Time spent alone would provide space to contemplate the vast possibilities we might be able to create should our brains have the breathing room to contemplate how to get there.

But instead, many of us who were born towards the end of the 20th century spend all of time either working for someone else - creating for them - or consuming things other people have created.

Incredibles 2 was objectively a weaker film than the first Incredibles and while the villain, the Screenslaver, might have made points that felt dated (the risk of taking 14 years to create a sequel), the points were solid nonetheless:

You don't talk, you watch talk shows.

You don't play games, you watch game shows.

Travel, relationships, risk; every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance so that you can remain ever-sheltered, ever-passive, ever-ravenous consumers who can't free themselves to rise from their couches, break a sweat, never anticipate new life.

When is the last time you created something? Something for yourself? Not your boss or your friends or your family?

Lots of us love watching films or listening to music but we only have that music and those films because other people bothered to create them.

Lots of people spent time online yesterday discussing and debating Met Gala looks at an event those celebrities have only been invited to because they put effort into creating content that our society (or at least Anna Wintour) deems valuable.

But what are the things we are creating? Us, “normal” plebeians. What are the tangible ideas we’re leaving behind for future generations?

When I die, I don’t want to be discussed in relation to things I consumed - “she really loved Law & Order” or “she loved that one Beyoncé song” or “all her favourite clothes were from that one brand”. Instead, I want to be discussed in relation to the things I created. The things I personally left behind.

I know this life can be challenging. And that after a long day of working for someone else it can feel like a lot of effort to create. It can be more peaceful, more relaxing to consume. But I challenge you to try and create something this week, for yourself.

You could write a poem or write a diary entry or paint something or draw something or write a song or make a lego sculpture or make a new friend or go on a date or…the or is endless.

And if you like creating something for yourself this week, why not challenge yourself to intentionally create again.

I ask this of you because I realised something today that made me uneasy about the life I’m currently building for myself. Our days on this planet are short. And I fear that a life primarily orientated on consumption, rather than creation, is an underdeveloped life.

I’ve rebranded! I think the new title gives more of an indication of what this Substack is about. Pop Culture Takes was written in front of a live studio audience…(it wasn’t but, as someone whose favourite show growing up was Kenan & Kel, it just feels right to end the post this way)