The Balance of Creation & Consumption

All of my life I have greatly enjoyed the act of consumption. It is as simple as opening our eyes to see colors, listening to the soft sounds floating past our ears, sticking out our tongues to taste a lemon, using our noses to guess what our Mom is cooking, or reaching out our hands to feel our surroundings. We are born with a desire to learn and understand what we don’t yet know.

But there is another side to consumption that a lot of people take for granted. Things that you consume must be created first. Without something or someone creating things around you, you would have nothing to consume (or at the least you would have to create it yourself).

Imagination to Designer

As far back as I can remember, I have always wanted to create. I wasn’t the best at creating, so I chose to figure out how things were made. Much to my parents dismay, I took apart every electronic toy I was given. More times than not I forgot the order of taking it apart and ended up with a broken toy. What I learned from this process is that people spend a great amount of time to create something to work correctly, but it takes minutes to destroy it.

Back in 2006 I enrolled at The Creative Circus for the Design track. This was one of the best choices I have made in my life, even though it is not my central focus currently. The first person I think of when talking about that school is Sylvia Gaffney. She was my color theory teacher, and she was merciless. I learned why creation was more than just puting two items together to make a finished product. To be able to create, you must have a desire, passion, and understanding of the product you are creating. In Sylvia’s class, she doesn’t ask you to discover those things. She makes you do unbearable amounts of homework to find them while drowning. You begin to understand the product as you work through each part and discover its needs and potential. As a result, passion and desire begin to build as you discover the meaning behind the product. I now have a passion for design and always look for meaning behind what I create.

Designer to Developer

As I walked out of The Creative Circus, I had an opportunity to join a small design/development studio, Hybrid (known as Hybr-id Design at the time). I would not be in the position I am in without this company or more importantly the guy who ran it, Chip Lay. Starting out as a designer I got to create web layouts and experiences. Over time I gave in to my urge to learn how the websites were built. Given the flexibility and relaxed environment at Hybrid, I was able to pursue learning code.

I want to note that I learned code differently than most. Most choose to read books and go to computer classes to figure out what the code does as a product. Being a designer I went backwards. I looked at design as the product and the code would be enhancing it. In this manner the design was my passion and the code would help me understand the design better. Looking back, I would attribute this style of learning to the speed in which I was able to learn. I also believe that my childhood desire to figure out how things work bleed into my ease and persistence of learning.

Now, there is only so much that you can learn on your own. And even worse, what you are learning by yourself is not always right. So when I got the chance to take a class at Big Nerd Ranch, I jumped at it. Hybrid sent me to a 5 day iOS Bootcamp class that rocked my world. What I had taken a year+ to learn was made so clear after going through that class. There is something so necessary about learning from a human who can personally interact with you.

Developer to Teacher

I noted in the beginning that there is no consumption without creation. For the past 8+ years I have been consuming very valuable knowledge. And yet, I have mostly created things that benefit me. I rave about the open source community, yet my Github public repos are lame. I have hit a point where I have a huge desire to give back.

I’m excited to say that I will be able to do that as the Atlanta iOS instructor at The Iron Yard. After spending a great week with TIY team in Greenville, I have gained an even greater excitement for the role I am allowed to play. Mason Stewart has pioneered a style of teaching that makes knowledge even more consumable than many other that have come before him. It is a great honor to be able to help create this new culture of learning.

Creation == Consumption

As I look forward, my pursuit will be to balance out how much I consume with how much I create. Not only will I be adding 10+ new public repos to my Github in the next couple months, I plan on taking an active part in major community based repos as well.

What will you choose to do? Consume? Create?