Summary: I invite you to reflect on the importance of creating, instead of just consuming. Writing can fill you with fulfillment and mental well-being. I’m not making this up; I rely on ideas from psychologists like Mihály Csikszentmihalyi and authors like Julia Cameron. We have a current culture of passive consumption, and the pressure of SEO strategies or AI-generated content leads us to fill the Internet with garbage. Create freely and authentically as a natural expression of yourself. Embrace daily creativity as a vital and personal act.
The other day, in an Instagram group that a good friend from the WordPress community, Gerardo Balboa, added me to, where we are people with spiritual or personal improvement interests, they shared this reel:
I’m not a big fan of that type of illustration, but I loved the main message:
“Humans are designed to create. That’s why you get depressed when all you do is consume”
When they say consume, they refer to the consumption of content on social networks (how ironic that this is what generated this reflection).
And linking to a very interesting interview by Jaime Rodríguez de Santiago (Kaizen) with David Cerdá, where he said something like:
Currently, people who work and come home to watch “La isla de las tentaciones” with the excuse that they need to rest and clear their minds actually live in modern slavery where the state wants you to work and not think for yourself
It made me reflect on the importance of creating. And how doing it fills me with fulfillment.
It’s as if my mind needs to empty its ideas, reflections, and mental noise through different methods, somehow organizing that chaos we can have inside.
I’ve tried different formats, podcasts, videos, but it’s always with writing where I flowed best.
Through writing, I flow, as explained by psychologist Mihály Csikszentmihalyi (1990) in his postulates about the state of flow. Great book I’m currently reading.
Cal Newport details it in his work: “Deep Work”, which I’ve cited in various articles on this blog.
As Newport points out: “Generally, the best moments occur when a person’s body and mind are stretched to their limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
Most people assume that relaxation is the path to happiness, but this psychologist’s (Csikszentmihalyi) experiments show that people are wrong.
Cal Newport
This flow theory describes an optimal state of experience in which a person is completely immersed and concentrated in an activity, feeling a sense of enjoyment, energy, and total focus.
Through writing (in my case, there are thousands of options), when I simply fill my “journal” with morning pages, I achieve considerable spiritual and mental well-being. Similar, I think, to that feeling of flow that the psychologist describes. I completely forget about time; I can be absorbed in what I’m doing for hours.
I had read about the practice of writing as something common among Stoics, but it was in the work of Julia Cameron: “The Artist’s Way”, a book I will always recommend, where she explained a method that helped me tremendously: Morning Pages.
Every morning, do:
“Three handwritten pages of strict stream of consciousness. It’s about draining the brain (…) You can reflect your anger, complaints, miseries, all the things that stand between you and your creativity. (…) Everything that numbs our subconscious and disturbs our days.”
As Cameron says: with morning pages, you’ll stop judging yourself and start writing.
“The artistic brain is our inventor, our child, our particular mad scientist (…) It connects disparate things (…) The artistic brain is our creative, holistic brain. It invents patterns and discovers nuances (…) The artistic brain makes free associations and is spontaneous, establishing new connections”
The morning pages, as proposed by the author, are a kind of meditation. They allow us to explore and delve into that creative artist brain that we all have inside.
My work is in services, and although in our digital world content creation is very common, such as an SEO strategy or marketing, in this case there are no strategies behind it.
It’s creating for the sake of creating.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t make sense for me to write this reflection on human creation in an SEO blog.
Rather, SEO has been a contaminating factor for blogs, and the Internet in general, which for economic reasons we have filled search engines with rubbish, because we know the value of that traffic and the importance of being in the top positions.
It’s nonsense. As an SEO, I have common sense, the critical sense of my profession in that area.
In fact, now with AI we are creating a new stage of spam at unsuspected levels. Carlos Molina reflected on this in his newsletter Multiversial, on May 13: “The spam of the 21st century already has a name: AI Content”.
Therefore, I create whatever content I want on my blog, be it about politics, humor, music, or simple spiritual reflections inspired by a song. Of course, we can rely on AI, they are wonderful and I use them every day, for example for the summary of this post or the featured image, but with “common sense”.
It is in the act of creation where we express our humanity and there should be no motivation other than the creation and expression of our human capabilities.
And never do it pressured by something or someone, we should do it for ourselves.
As Pepe Martín García from Minimalism said in one of his videos: “you have to be clear about what you are not”. Because if not, you pressure yourself for “not reaching” the standards you have for each of these aspects.
I am not a content creator. I am an SEO consultant who, occasionally and when it comes from within, creates content that, if it manages to connect with one person through these lines, I’m already immensely happy.
Send the strategy to hell and demonstrate your nature with creativity and art.
We all, at the end of the road, are artists seeking to express ourselves.
Don’t let anything or anyone take away your own nature (much less search engines, damn it).
That’s why I’ve become a faithful follower of Pliny the Elder’s principle:
“Nulla dies sine linea” (no day without a line)
Live long and prosper!
