Note: this is a complex topic, and I may not be able to properly capture all the different nuances involved. Certain statements will be overly simplified. Please be charitable in your interpretations.
Firstly, in spite of the title, I don't think that creation and consumption are necessarily opposites. In order to create somemething a form of input is first needed, impulses and knowledge that can combine into something new. Input can come from nature, people around us, things in our daily life, entertainment, etc.
However, at least in my own life, I very clearly see a dark side of excessive consumption. It makes me sluggish, lethargic, and diminishes my creative energy. I have lots of fond creative memories from my childhood and early adulthood. I want to reclaim this joy and the boost it used to give to my life. In order to do that, it's essential to find a balance that works for me.
This appears to differ across individuals, so please don't take my words as law. However, in my case I often find that there is a limit to what consumption can do for me when I'm feeling exhausted or downtrodden. For a long time I thought that watching videos was a low-energy activity that would help me recover, but I don't believe that to be true anymore (for me, again, people differ). Even on a generally contented day, excess consumption can tip my mood scale into the negative. If I watch one episode of a show I may come away feeling energized, but watching two or even three leaves me feeling lower than when I started.
I find that for actual relaxation, I prefer reading. As I've been practicing meditation I find it increasingly easy to get into what I perceive as a meditative state even as I'm reading. I'll be present for the story, not allowing my thoughts to pull me off in other directions. However, I will still be able to attend to the sensations of my body. A desire to shift into a different pose. Beautiful birdsong from the outside. The comforting touch of a soft blanket. It's a skill I look forward to further developing.
Don't get me wrong, there are days when a deliberately chosen series marathon can be the perfect course of action, or losing myself in a video game for hours feels truly satisfying. However, it's easy for me to overdo these things when it's not one of those days, and then they lose their positive effect.
Like most people I'm guilty of this with money-driven consumption, although I also can get unhealthily obsessed with collecting exaggerated amounts of freely downloadable content. The latter can go on for quite a while, eventually lessening in intensity but still taking up enough time to be noticeable. There is something frenzied and very draining about the whole affair. It doesn't feel like a net positive. It feels good in the beginning. Then the momentum grows and stopping feels impossible. It still feels some amount of good, but the feeling also becomes mixed with guilt, overwhelm, physical discomfort. Money-driven consumption is more self-limiting for me, as it requires me to first pinpoint what I want, which is an entire process unto itself. Free content lacks that restriction, as you can simply browse and hit download, and keep on browsing.
There are times in life when distraction is good, even necessary. But there are also times when it takes away focus from the important things, me getting absorbed to the point where I neglect properly feeding my body or doing the tasks needed to keep my home or emotional life reasonably clean and well-managed. Other times I attempt to slap consumption onto an emotional wound that is raw and bleeding, I slap consumption onto my stress to lessen the discomfort. I spend money on things to get that quick satisfaction, that brief hit that makes things feel better, even though it's just for a moment. Treating myself, I call it, but in the long run it's more like paying to deceive myself. I also see a pattern in this. It happens more easily when I've been very stressed for an extended period of time. Ultimately, I think it's a signal for me to be gentler with myself, sooner.
A defining feature of consumption driven by my stress or other discomfort is that it prefers to ignore all the things and media I already have at my disposal, steering me in the direction of new, new, new! I already have so much content available to me. I don't need more, yet I trick myself into thinking that I do, justifying senseless excess.
This little section is purely self-indulgent. By reliving some of my fondest memories I'd like to establish a guiding light for myself.
A year felt endless, each day full of possibility. I was constantly drawing, some ideas based on the natural world, others based on media I'd seen, either my favorite characters or reinventing a beloved concept. I couldn't possibly begin to count the number of Pokemon/Digimon clones I drew. Fake monsters and fake sets of protagonists. All the same story at heart, but different characters, different dressing. I relished it.
We were lucky children, plenty of toys supplied to us. And yet, we were also given the opportunity to create our own. Largely, our creations were characters from media that were dear to us, for which there were no offerings to be found in the stores. Spyro the Dragon, Sonic the Hedgehog, and their likes. We enthusiastically recreated our favorite characters and played with them. We drew houses and outdoor spaces on sheets of printer paper, created worlds for the characters. Our figurines were set up in precise constellations, webs of intricate relationships woven between them through a myriad play sessions.
Sometimes we did things differently. Once we recreated the entire cast of a Harvest Moon game as paper figurines. We drew the front and the back, and glued them together. A length of paper was left at the bottom of each side, giving the characters a base to stand on. We didn't even color them, but we were so pleased with our new toys and soon sowed chaos in our version of the quaint countryside village.
We had to adhere to relatively strict screentime limits, and our gaming time was limited as well. While it was the source of some discontent for a child, I'm truly grateful for those limits today. Our boredom propelled us to invent games, to exercise our creative skills, to play and discover in ways we otherwise never would have.
I was fascinated with the internet to the point where I would create offline websites in Microsoft Word, and even "message boards" on paper that would "update" once my sister had "posted" on them. Our pocket money as well as geographical availability prevented us from buying a lot of the shiny, shiny magazines that so appeal to a young child. What we instead did was to draw our own magazines, complete with made-up contests and amazing prizes that were equally made up. I always smile fondly when I think back on these memories.
I've yet to take some time to form proper thoughts on this matter. I'll add them once I do.