Produce/Consume

You can produce or you can consume, and I think I want to produce. Experiences, artifacts, art, industry.

Unfortunately, I'm a low energy (read lazy) and low inspiration kind of guy, and that gets in the way. But I will try.

I salute all of you good folks out there who genuinely take steps to make a positive difference with something somewhere. I wish I was one of you, and maybe I will be.

The choice is particularly stark here in Cleveland, or any other place with an overall lack of dynamism. If you live in some place with a lot going on (New York, Washington, San Francisco, London, whatever), you can wait for things to be provided to you by the many many energetic people around you, and you can still feel like you're doing lots of stuff even when it doesn't take that much effort.

But the status quo in Cleveland is decline. If we all continue doing pretty much what we've been doing, then everything interesting here will just continue to slowly leak away, and that process feeds on itself. So, produce, produce, produce. Don't just wait for other people to give you something to do. (And certainly don't bitch because they haven't done so!)

(Incidentally, I don't know for a fact that the decline of Cleveland is ongoing, although that's what it seems to me in my more depressed moments. It's actually hard to see these things while you're in the middle of them. But, maybe, out there somewhere, there's a tipping point, and we've already passed it. Nice to imagine.) 

¶ 12/04/2005 09:46:00 PM