This year, as every year, I resolve to create more than I consume.

(edit) WARNING: this was a shower thought and seemed very profound at the time. In editing afterwards, perhaps not so much. Your mileage may vary.

Of course this can be translated in a number of different ways, and I mean them all. But while I hope to create more in quantity than I consume, I realize that’s not always practical.

Consider, for example, if you consume a cheeseburger. In theory, that consumed the time and resources of at least five different businesses. There’s the bread, the beef, the cheese, packaging, and the company that sold it to you.

But in reality, you probably only consumed a few seconds of each of their time, if that. Likewise, if I try to create things that are a benefit to more than just myself, I can have a similar distributed influence.

So what I tend to mean, by my resolution, is that I intend to spend more time creating than consuming, and thereby do my part contributing to the whole.

This is a really hard thing to do in practice, because life is tedious, stressful, and exhausting. And at the end of the day, I really only want to sit and drink in the pablum of television.

So, anyway, here’s to New Year’s resolutions, and meaning them honestly.