Produce More, Consume Less

 

I cannot believe I’ve let this much of January get away from me without blogging. This definitely does not fit in with my goals for the year, which include a lot of things I want to do with this space. But more on that later.

 

My tendency is to aim high and make too many goals for the year so that when I look back and see what I’ve accomplished and it’s more than half of them, I can shrug and say, “Eh, not half-bad…literally.” The thing is, though, there are always so many things I want to do and so little time (which reminds me of the Willy Wonka quote in the video up there). I want to write fiction: short stories, the novel I started, another novel I’ve had rattling around in my brain. I want to redesign this blog and have more posts and regular features and just generally do more with Pure Bright Fire than I’m currently doing. I want my writing to be published on other sites. I want to exercise more, cook more, and eat healthier. I want to volunteer and do more with my church and donate platelets more often. I want to travel and spend more time with my friends. I want to read a lot of books and watch a lot of movies and binge-watch a lot of shows. Oh, and I also have to work and hopefully get 7-8 hours of sleep a night.

 

I’ve found that a lot of bloggers, rather than New Year’s Resolutions, pick a word that’s their word for the year, something they want to focus on. I can’t do that because I can’t decide on a word, funnily enough. But as I was pondering what I want to do in this new year, a certain phrase popped into my head and I can’t get it out: “Produce more, consume less.”

 

Now, that doesn’t quite work for all my goals–exercise doesn’t really produce anything except sweat– but it’s fitting enough that I’m keeping it as a mantra of sorts.

 

I want to produce more fiction, more writing for other sites, more content for this blog and produce a new design.

 

I want to consume less of the useless crap I read on the Internet- especially when I decide to raise my blood pressure by reading comment sections.

 

I want to produce more of my own food- cooking healthy things, trying new recipes.

 

I want to consume less sugar, junk food, and takeout.

 

It doesn’t work so well for exercise, like I said, and time with friends, traveling, and other fun things don’t really fall into easy produce/consume categories. And there are definitely more books, movies, and TV shows I want to consume, but I want my media consumption to lead me to produce good writing.

 

But it works well enough that I’m going to try to abide by it. We’ll see how I do.

5 thoughts on “Produce More, Consume Less

  1. AnneMarie

    Wishing you the best with your “Produce More, Consume Less” goals! That’s a great way to look at it! Resolutions are hard, which is why I prefer to call my “resolutions” goals and why I try to make them concrete and flexible. And New Year’s tends to be a day when I re-evaluate where I’m at rather than come up with completely new goals (if that makes any sense). If you’re interested to get a sense of my goals this year, feel free to read about them here.

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  2. Brittany Pines

    I like this a lot. I am one of those bloggers who has a word, although it took a few years for me to adopt the practice.

    The phrase could be applied to less tangible things, I think: produce more health, consume less unhealthy foods/attitude (exercise), produce more memories (time with friends), etc.

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