Creation Versus Consumption

Lately I’ve been thinking about the amount of information I’ve been processing versus what I’ve been producing. As a communications consultant information processing comes with the territory so I have to be extra vigilant to ensure it doesn’t get out of hand. To that end, I subscribe to just one print magazine, get only basic cable, scan the online version of the New York Times each morning, and don’t own a smart phone (yet).

However, there are ebbs and flows to my sea of information and adding to my typical consumption pattern is the fact that I am currently enrolled in an online course involving several pages of paperwork each week, I am editing what started out as a 400 page book for a client, I am continuing the research of material for a book of my own, and I am reading no less than four books simultaneously, three on my Kindle and one from my local library.

All of which has served to largely stifle my own creative output, save for the periodic blog post such as this one. Speaking of blogs, I came across one the other day that captured my conundrum exactly. With a post titled “The Creative Equilibrium” at www.jamesshelley.net blogger James Shelley aptly describes my experience: “The more content I am consuming the less margin I have for creating.”

Quality Control Issues

As I sit here typing on my laptop at the Barnes and Noble I just got word from the Apple Store that a new part they installed on our desktop to fix another issue itself needs a component replaced. The good news is that the original repair was for a known issue and so it was covered under Apple’s recall policy. And the technician confirmed that the cost of the component will also be covered to help compensate for my inconvenience.

This latest quality control issue comes on the heels of my wife and I getting our twenty-odd year-old VHS wedding video transferred to DVD at a local duplicating shop. After stressing to the tech the need to get the date on the label correct since the original videographer mislabeled the video, the duplicator proceeded to print the wrong year instead of merely the wrong day. Yes, we know our wedding date but that’s not the point.

What makes all of this particularly poignant is that I am reading a book titled The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time. The book decries the current state of language usage as the authors cross the country on a mission to fix literary faux pas. As a fellow editor, it is a mission close to my head and heart.