active vs passive entertainment

In the past, when I was fed up with life, I would divert to travel planning, restaurant hunting and binge reading to release stress and find some joy in living. However, these joys were so short-lived that I unconsciously fell into a hedonic treadmill, looking for a higher and higher dose to resolve my dissatisfaction.

It’s only years later that I read about passive vs. active entertainment. Being a maker, to create something from scratch, to output while learning, is a form of active entertaining that you produce the output yourself in a very self-reliant way. In such a self-sustaining circle, your output becomes a fruitful input to the next task. The reward can be chemical (dopamine rush) or the joy of seeing a real product seeing the light.

I become much calmer after adopting active entertainment, being confident of my ability to make myself happy without too much reliance on external circumstances.