Tag: Lunchclub

140321 – Morning Pages

Quick and dirty update from how I spent Saturday. Wish I the time to write more. The day was among the best.

6:24 AM, Mumbai.
Completed this somewhere on the Nashik highway at 10ish.

This is going to be one of those pages where I want to write a lot (I think I have a lot to write) but since I am short of time, I will not be able to get a lot of words in. I have to be at someplace real early. I had to be out and about by 6 AM, to be honest, but thanks to some snafu, I am still at home and that means I can get some words in. If not a lot, I can at least get a ToC of sorts in. Yeah, I have a table of contents of things that I want to talk about.

Here it is.

A. SG’s interview. There’s apparently some interview that I gave when #tnks came out where I have bared my soul. A stranger can read that and get to know who I am and what I think about. In that, I have even talked about my hatred for pets! To make matters worse, it has my photo on it. I need to do something about it. I can’t have my opinions floating around on the Internet like that. Lol. The entire life has been lived in making my life an open and public affair with this blog 😀

Need to find that interview and “fix” it.

B. Poker. A few days ago I was in this weird mood where I did not know what to do. None of my friends was around. Taarak Mehta felt like a drag. Brooklyn Nine-Nine was not funny no more. I couldn’t sleep. I had had enough of everything. I somehow remembered my love for Poker and after I don’t know how many months, I put money on a poker game. It was on Pokerstars and I sucked as bad I did when I played regularly.

Poker is one of those things that I think I can be really good at. There is an element of luck but you can control it to a large part. It just needs two things – knack for the game and the time required to build that knack. I suspect poker is like chess. You need to have some sort of inclination and “gift” for it and then you need to back it with consistent and focussed effort. You know, more you play, better you get.

Wait. Isnt this true with everything and anything? I guess!

C. SoG Grant. I saw a post on my Instagram last night and I reached this page on Thejesh GN’s blog. He’s started a grant in his mother’s name where he’s supporting independent creators on anything that they want to work on. I love the idea. I am so inspired that I decided on the spot that I want to start something. When I was growing up, I did not have the patron or the resources to chase what I wanted to. Now that I have some resources, I want to support others. An annual grant could be a great thing. Need to put things in motion. #note2self

D. Swiggy. Last night I was hungry and I decided to order something to eat. Good thing is that I ordered on Swiggy and that means the order was never delivered. Which is ok. I understand the business is run by people and they can often fuck up. But the way they handle these things is what needs fixing. The customer service is non-existent and the way they speak with you, they lack empathy. They assume that an order is a physical thing and if you refund the money, the customer is ok. They forget that it’s food delivery and the person on the other side could be hungry. And its well known fact across the world that when you are hungry, you are not the person you are. And you need to talk to hungry, angry, irate people in a different tone / manner etc. I promise I will make it a mini-project and try and teach these people how to be customer-centric and have some empathy.

So that.

E. NA. I also want to talk about this woman, NA, that I met via Lunchclub yesterday. Out of 30 odd people that LC has matched me with, she was only the second that I had wanted to meet.

And I goaded her into meeting me.
And we met.
And it was awesome.
NA is one of the finds of this year so far for me. I hope I can become friends with her and get her to do something with me. More about her on some other day. Today am kinda short of time.

F. Misc. Things that I want to talk about but don’t have time for. 1, I pet a dog at a friend’s place. My first time ever. 2, The realization that I am #foreverAlone and unlucky in love. Every woman that I seem to get close to tends to get away from me. The pattern repeats where these women think that am a loser and move on. 3, The feeling of heaviness and general lethargy and my desperate attempts to get over those. 4, Hunt for a new house (which I am hoping is a little better than the one I am on). 5, I am not sure. I forgot 😀

G. Streaks. Here.

  • Morning Pages – 92
  • #aPicADay – XX (will count at some later date)
  • 10K steps a day – 1
  • OMAD – 3 (thanks to Swiggy, the streak remains unbroken)
  • #noCoffee – 5
  • #noCoke – 5
  • 10 mins of meditation – 0 (adding this from today on)
  • #book2 – 0 (I REALLY need to start on this!)

So yeah, thats about it. More tomorrow. On a Monday.

140121 – Morning Pages

I talk about an important lesson I learnt – the difference between being a blogger and a writer. And the changes I’ll make in how I operate.

7 AM

Morning!

So, Rajesh Sir’s house is bang on Baga beach. And that’s a good great thing. And a bad. And that means that there is more hustle-bustle here than what an average road in Goa has. This means that I am not bored and there’s something to look at all the time.

And this also means that there are people at all times in all states of mind – sober, inebriated, happy-high, free, and so on and so forth. And that doesn’t auger well for someone that seeks peace of mind. No, I don’t. But others may. No, I am not complaining at all. Merely stating a truth. The fact that I can live here without worrying about basics is a blessing in itself!

So, yesterday was a mixed bag. Got some work done, got some mind-fuckery happening (even in Goa), spoke to some friends, met new people, passed on an opportunity to meet more people. But I think I am getting to understand how to go about it if I want to be known in multiple circles. A large part of it involves putting yourself out there and pimping yourself subtly. Truth be told, I don’t understand either – pimping self or subtlety. My life has been about muted peacocking. Lol, muted and peacocking in one sentence 😀 Lemme explain.

Muted. I don’t like the limelight. I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want to be known by the aam aadmi per se.

Peacocking. Without trying to be a PUA, the kind of clothes I wear and the way I talk and the way I behave, and the energy I have, all these make me stand out. Often as a misfit. Often as someone that people balk at. You don’t want to talk to someone that doesn’t care about how he looks. Someone that you don’t think of much of when you first lay your eyes on them.

That. Needs to change.

Talking of change there’s another thing I need to change in my personality.

This is something I intuitively knew and got reinforced in Goa. It is…

People want tangible things. Finished things. Finite things. They don’t respect a WIP.

For example, if you say you are a blogger, you get respect at, say, 6 on 10. On the other hand, if you say you are a writer and working on a book, the respect goes up to 9. Both are essentially the same but the subtle difference is in being a blogger and a writer. Just that the Blogger is a WIP. Ongoing. A writer is finite. Something that has been shipped.

People respect finished ones more than they respect WIP. We want to see output more than we want a process. The journey may be the reward for a few but most want a destination. The best part? They don’t care about the quality of what you’ve shipped. They just want to flip the pages of the book, see the URL of the film that is on Hotstar (not Youtube – youtube is WIP, an OTT platform is a finite destination). They don’t want to even do the work required to read or see. Just the signal that it’s out there is enough!

I have seen this in action in Goa like no other place. Probably because there are far less ‘finite’ ones than the ones that are ‘WIP’? In fact, this tweet that Krishna shared made this point beautifully well. And gives me further reinforcement.

I think that’s about it.

The lesson for the day is that being a finite is large in itself and will require me to make substantial changes in how I think and operate.

Here are two that I am making immediately.

A, rather than using all those adjectives that I think do an honest job of describing me (Jack of all trades, curious, marketer, podcaster, etc), I will introduce myself as a writer / storyteller. To hell with what people think about this. I am a writer first and then everything else. And that’s that. This is a sg5stars thing for sure.

Since this is new to me and not really my core personality, it will take time to implement. Do course-correct me if you see me doing otherwise.

B, the SoG series I’ve been writing for a few months? I will restart it at some point in time but I will also release the same as an e-book. And I have already initiated work on that. In case you want a copy, drop your email address on this form.

So that.

I also caught up with friends from the Long-Form-Writing Fans (LFW) Group. With the sketchy internet and a million mosquitos trying to sweep me away, the call was short and there was hardly any rasa but it was phenomenal to speak with them after this long. All of us shared our writing goals, issues that we’re facing (with writing and otherwise) and even spoke about our goals for this year. I wish we could meet more often. I wish we had more things to talk about. I think apart from Prak this set of people is going to be super-helpful as I go about book2.

Oh, I also met someone really interesting after ages on Lunchclub. Not to say other people that I meet are not worthy of a mention. This person was all of 27 and had so much clarity about life that I am left in awe. Apart from Shikha, I don’t think I’ve met someone with so much clarity ever. So that.

I think this is about for the day. The morning pages are now like a public journal but that’s ok. I think I like the idea of writing something to start the day. After all, remember what I said? I am a writer 🙂

Oh, here’s the #freewriting piece for #book2 for today. A writer has to write. Right?

Here we go…

Fire is probably the most misunderstood among all the things that nature made for us. Most people revere it. They don’t revere it really, they are merely scared of it. It is impossible to stop, is all-engulfing and all-consuming. It’s hungry. And it does not relent. The older Paul once told Mrs. Gomes that each fire is as distinct as people are. Each fire has a character. Each fire has a voice. The fires speak. Fire growls. And whispers. Fire can creep up on you silently. And fire can leap on you when you’re least expecting it. Like a person, a fire has its own life. From a spark to a tinder to a flare to a blaze to an inferno and to the biggest of them all, Sun. Sun is probably the only share that the fire takes that we truly respect.

Ok, that’s about it. Love this short para that I’ve written. Among the best, I’ve ever written. Don’t want to spoil it by adding more 😀 What do you think?